Another Arab-Israel Flare-Up


Delhi. At the former meeting they rejected the proposal for a six- month moratorium on lay-offs, retrenchments and closures in return for an undertaking by workers to desist from gheraos. They also refused to accept a Government representative on the proposed Committee to look into individual Cases of lay-off, retrenchment and closure, and further declined to bind themselves to any but the Committee'? unanimous findings, which in the nature of things would be few if any. At the meeting of the Standing Labour Committee in New Delhi, employers' representatives threatened to disown all their obligations in the field of industrial relations unless gheraos were stopped forthwith. The meeting, which was attended by the West Bengal Labour Minister, passed a formal resolution disapproving of gheraos, and the Union Labour Minister, though speaking cautiously, left no one in any doubt about where his sympathies lay on this isssue. Later on other Central Ministers have expressed themselves more plainly. Speaking in Calcutta this Tuesday the Union Minister for Steel condemned gheraos as an invitation to lawlessness and anarchy and said they not only "threaten our economic wellbeing but our very continuance as a stable society". And. as if to lend weight to the Another Arab-Israel Flare-Up THE first thing to remember about the current UAR-lsrael crisis is that it follows a pattern laid down over the years; the only new element is in the UAR demand for UNEF's withdrawal both from Egyptian territory and the Gaza strip. The UAR argument is that the UNEF was in the Gaza strip by agreement between Cairo and the Secretary-General of the United Nations and not by virtue of any resolution passed by the Security Council or the General Assembly, The UAR was thus legally entitled to ask for the withdrawal of UNEF.