Attack in Israel – Letter from Israel

Letter dated 25 March 1979 from the Permanent Representative of

Israel to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

On instructions from my Government, I have the honour to draw your urgent attention to a bomb outrage perpetrated in Jerusalem by the terrorist organization known as the PLO on Friday, 23 March 1979.

An explosive charge was set off in Zion Square in the heart of the city's teeming commercial centre. The explosion took place at 3 p.m. local time just as large numbers of the city's residents were making their way to their homes in preparation for the Sabbath. As a result, a 72-year-old man was killed and 14 were wounded, some seriously. These include a girl of three, a boy of four and three women.

Later the same day, the radio station operated in Lebanon by the terrorist PLO announced that the said organization took responsibility for this atrocity.  The radio commentator went on somewhat grotesquely to applaud this attempt at mass

murder as a demonstration against the peace process in the Middle East and the peace treaty about to be signed between Israel and Egypt.

There can be no doubt therefore that this act was staged and timed, as was the recent debate initiated by Jordan in the Security Council, with the specific purpose of disrupting and subverting the ongoing peace process. As I pointed out in my statement before the Security Council on Thursday, 22 March 1979, the bellicose designs directed against Israel from Baghdad, Damascus and, more recently, from Amman "are translated on the ground into attempts at subversion as well as into acts of terror perpetrated by the so-called PLO and, in the international arena, into the manipulation of the United Nations" (S/PV.2134, p. 72).

This is by no means the first time that terrorist outrages have been attempted in and around Zion Square in Jerusalem, nor is it the first time that they have been deliberately designed to give violent expression to the implacable opposition of the opponents of peace, both in the Arab world and beyond, to any step forward in the direction of peace and reconciliation. In their attempts to undermine the ongoing peace process in the Middle East, the opponents of peace use as their instrument the terrorist PLO – which incongruously masquerades as a national liberation movement and which has been granted irregular privileges at the United Nations, in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations.

Given the violent aims of the criminal PLO, the Government of Israel is duty-bound, as I have indicated in previous letters, to take all measures necessary to protect the lives and safety of its citizens.

I should be grateful if arrangements could be made for this letter to be circulated as an official document of the General Assembly, under item 25 of the preliminary list, and of the Security Council.

(Signed) Yehuda Z. BLUM

Ambassador

Permanent Representative

of Israel

to the United Nations

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*A/34/50.