156. Madam President, the Government and people of Israel,
to whom you are well known, rejoice at your elevation to the
presidency of the General Assembly. We see your election as a
moving tribute to Africa, to its first sovereign Republic,
Liberia, and to your personal distinction. I do not doubt that
you will guide our labours with a firm and experienced hand.
157. We heard with grief of the passing of your eminent
predecessor, Mr. Emilio Arenales, the Foreign Minister of
Guatemala, whose loss will be sharply felt by his countrymen
and by the entire international community.
158. Madam President, in your opening words to the
Assembly [1753rd meeting], you expressed a constructive
disquiet. No other mood befits the realities which we have
come here to discuss. Any serious effort by the United
Nations to serve the human cause must take its starting
point from an attitude of criticism. We have lived a year of
frustration and deadlock. There has been no advance in the
solution of conflicts; and the United Nations has receded
still further towards a marginal role in world affairs.
Its resonance has diminished; and its flame is burning low. Yet
there was never an age which cried out so plainly for
institutions designed to express a planetary spirit. The
forces which draw mankind together in a single destiny
demand that we maintain a unitary framework for international
relations in addition to the normal flow of bilateral
and regional contacts. There is nothing obsolete, there is
nothing premature in the Charter’s central idea. A community
of sovereign nations united in a covenant of law and
peace is the highest vision that the political imagination
of men has been able to conceive. But there is a vast gap
between the vision and the reality; and it grows wider year
by year.
159. The truth is that the effective currents of action and
discourse amongst nations now flow mostly outside these
United Nations walls. This emerges clearly from the record
of the United Nations organ which represents us throughout
the year in the quest for peace and security. Since the
summer of 1968, peace and freedom have been convulsed
in Europe by the flagrant invasion of Czechoslovakia; in
South-East Asia by the continued fighting in Viet-Nam; in
North-East Asia by ominous lightning flashes on the
Russian-Chinese border; in the Middle East by the formal
and effective Egyptian denunciation of the cease-fire; in
Africa by the agony of millions in the Biafran region of
Nigeria.
160. Now, the Security Council was able to do nothing
about the invasion of Czechoslovakia; it has had nothing to
say about the war in Viet-Nam; it has not addressed itself to
the misery of millions of West Africans caught up in a fate
of bloodshed and starvation. It has been silent on the open
repudiation by the United Arab Republic of its own
cease-fire resolution in the Middle East. It has done nothing
yet about the growth of piracy in the air. It has been silent
about the macabre gallows on which scores of victims have
been publicly throttled in the streets of Baghdad; it has had
to listen indulgently to the effort of some Arab States to
launch an outrageous campaign of religious incitement,
reminiscent of the dark ages, in gleeful exploitation of the
deplorable Al Aqsa fire. It has been willing, it has been able,
as in previous years, to adopt resolutions about the Middle
East, and this on two conditions alone: that the texts are
acceptable to the Arab States, and that they contain no
word of specific criticism about the policies or actions of
Arab Governments which have led to the murder of our
citizens and an overt threat to assassinate our State. One
third of the Security Council’s members are States whose
diplomatic relations and sentimental predilections are
exclusively confined to one side of the Middle Eastern
dispute; yet this is the only dispute with which the Council
deals.
161. Political deadlocks and military escalation mark
many of the great conflicts of today, and the causes often
lie outside the power and will of the United Nations; but
this does not absolve us from the duty of self-appraisal. One
salient defect comes to mind, It was frankly expounded by
the late President Arenales in closing the twenty-third
session [1752nd meeting]. Resolutions are adopted in a
rhetorical spirit and by fortuitous majorities without regard
to their equity or prospect of fulfilment. It is no wonder
that they lack moral or judicial force. The difficulty can be
overcome only by resolutely and consistently seeking a
consensus including the interested parties. The United
Nations role should be to encourage agreement between the
Governments at issue, not to sharpen the differences which
separate them. The United Nations, in short, should adopt a
diplomatic rather than a parliamentary approach to its
work. It is built for the conciliation of views and interests,
not for adjudication between them —still less for enforcement.
And beyond this, it should strive to express the common
aspirations of mankind.
162. Cannot this session of the General Assembly, for
example, give dramatic form to the central interests and
yearnings of the peoples for whom we speak? I suggest that
United Nations Day, which falls on 24 October, should this
year be proclaimed as a day of universal cease-fire. On that
day armed action should be halted all over the world; in
Viet-Nam and in Nigeria; along the Soviet-Chinese border;
in all parts of Africa and across all the cease-fire lines in the
Middle East. When all the guns are silent, the leaders of
nations will be able, in that solemn and unparalleled
tranquillity, to hear the urgent voice of mankind yearning
for a world of peace. Of course, a cease-fire does not in
itself solve complex issues. But once a moment of serenity
has for the first time been lived universally across the
world, there may be a reluctance to give it up; and the hard,
long, indispensable road towards negotiated settlements can
be taken everywhere without the savage discord of bombs and shells.
163. It is especially in the Middle East during the past year
that the roar of guns has been constant and no calm
dialogue has been heard. Nothing has gone as rational men
expected. In September 1967 the Arab Governments took a
united decision to refuse negotiation, to withhold recognition,
to reject peace and to avoid the determination of
secure and agreed boundaries with Israel. This graceless
policy has since been maintained and reiterated with a
tenacity worthy of a higher end. Indeed, there has not yet
been any conceptual or political retreat by President Nasser
from his attempt in May 1967 to bring about Israel’s
destruction by strangling encirclement and sudden blockade.
164. Those dramatic events of the summer of 1967 should
not be lost from international memory. To forget them is
to renounce all understanding of the Middle Eastern reality
today. Israel will preserve an eternal and unfading image of
the peril and solitude in which it then stood. We live
intimately with that recollection. We brood upon it day and
night. For it was only by an exceptional vigilance, by
independent responsibility and cruel sacrifice that we
avoided a disaster which would have ended our people’s
historic journey and weighed forever on the conscience of
mankind. Whenever the summer months come by we shall
remember how everything that we loved and cherished
seemed likely to be swept into the flames of war and
massacre, We knew that without victory there would be no
survival. We recall the silence and apathy with which the
Security Council, between one adjournment and the next,
calmly observed the only attempts in modern history to
wipe a sovereign State off the map of the earth. We shall
not forget how the declarations, hopes, expectations,
understandings, promises, commitments on which Israel
had sometimes been advised to rely for its security proved,
in the event, fragile and illusory. We shall, of course,
remember how the conscience of free men everywhere was
roused on Israel’s behalf in deep anguish of spirit—but in
total impotence. And with the memory of the dark long
shadows there will go the recollection of how, in desperate
valour and perfect rectitude, we tore the strangling fingers
from our throats.
165. After all, a people which still remembers its revolts
against ancient tyrannies is not likely to forget the sharper
danger and the larger deliverance which it lived two and a
half years ago. It is a moment that will linger and shine in
the national memory forever—an incomparable moment
that will move all Israel to its ultimate generations; and
from that memory flows duty and resolve. It is our duty
and our resolve to ensure that such perils never recur. Never
can we return to the political anarchy and the physical and
territorial vulnerability which nearly brought about our
doom.
166. Now two years and three months ago the United
Nations, which had not been able to give Israel aid in its
predicament, did rally its moral energies in order to give
judgement on three central issues. It was a negative
judgement, but of great significance. It refused to condemn
the righteous resistance by which Israel has pulled itself
pack from the threshold of destruction. It repeatedly
dismissed by its votes the ridiculous Soviet and Arab charge
that Israel’s refusal to perish should be defined as
"aggression"; and it rejected all proposals for restoring the
situation which had led to one war and which would, if
reproduced, lead inexorably to another.
167. Thus, the discussions held here two years ago
amounted to an implied but incisive criticism of the Arab
hostility which had beset Israel for two decades—and which
has still not been renounced. World opinion rejected
solutions based on a return to the explosive situation of
early June 1967. Voices from all continents echoed that
rejection. An African statesman, the Foreign Minister of the
Ivory Coast, summarized the issue in three short sentences:
“...to advocate a political status quo in the region is
to seek escape from an ugly situation only to be brought
face to face with it once again ... the conflict between
Israel and the Arab world can be resolved only by means
of negotiation... Let but the dialogue begin, and the
solutions will follow.” [1540th meeting, paras. 47 and
49.]
168. Since then representatives of diverse traditions and
cultures have raised their voices in favour of a new and
stable regional order; against the vision that there could be
changes in the cease-fire line except in the context of
peace; in favour of establishing agreed permanent boundaries
and other arrangements ensuring security from terror
and war; against the ambiguities of an obsolete armistice; in
favour of a permanent peace to be duly agreed and
contractually confirmed.
169. This then is our position. The road back to the
explosive and fragile armistice situation is closed, but the
path leading forward to peace is wide open. Our business is
to ensure that a new story of co-operation and progress
never heard or told before, shall now be enacted in the
history of the Middle East.
170. But, unfortunately, the Arab policies in the past 12
months have been designed to close such horizons from
view. If we ask ourselves why there has been no progress
towards peace in the past year, we come back to the simple
fact that there has been no negotiation. In international
disputes the existence of negotiations does not ensure
success; but the absence of negotiations is an iron guarantee
of failure. The principle "no negotiation with Israel"
proclaimed at Khartoum in 1967, repeated ever since and
maintained with total obduracy stands out as an
insuperable barrier to peace.
171. The emphasis that any Government places on negotiation
is not an obsession with procedure. It is the heart
and centre of the problem. For a refusal to negotiate is
inherently identical with a refusal to establish peace. How
can a transition from prolonged belligerency to peaceful
co-existence be carried out on the basis of diplomatic
boycott and ostracism? Never, never in the history of our
times have two States passed from a state of war to a state
of peace on the basis of a refusal by one to meet the other.
There are apparently laws in international life, just as there
are laws in nature and in society. A refusal to negotiate
implies the lack of any common political or juridical
ground from which the parties can advance towards the
harmonization of their interests.
172. In particular, it is an error to regard the United
Nations as a substitute for direct settlement; that is the
opposite of what this Organization is meant to be. The
United Nations is an instrument for ending conflicts, not an
arena for waging them. It expresses its highest ends only
when it serves as a bridge, not as a wedge. There is no
parallel in international life for the refusal of States to
recognize another State, except for the purpose of exercising
a state of war against it, The alternative to a directly
negotiated settlement would, at best, be the formulation of
vague, ambivalent, unchecked arrangements open to contrary
interpretations—like the arrangements of 1957 which
fell down like a house of cards within a few hours in 1967.
The collapse of the 1957 arrangements had much to do
with the fact that Egyptian responsibility was never directly
affirmed or contractually engaged in 1957. We also learned
a stark and unforgettable lesson in 1967 about the fragility
of international guarantees and Security Council safeguards
in the present state of the world’s power balance. We carry
this lesson forward into our future history and policy.
173. To these considerations of principle we must add
those of effectiveness. It is only in the context of
negotiation that the parties at interest will see the augury of
a new era in their relations. It is only then that the
discussion will pass from the rhetorical and polemical phase
to the concrete, detailed formulation of specific positions
on all the matters at issue. Refusal to negotiate creates a
tense, suspicious and sceptical atmosphere. Agreement to
negotiate would open currents of thought and efforts of
imagination utterly different from anything that we have
known or that we can now conceive. I would not be
overstating the case if I were to say that the idea of passing
from war to peace without negotiation is far less realistic
than that of flying to the moon. The fact is that the moon
has once been attained by mortal man, whereas peace
without negotiation has never in all history been achieved
at all.
174. The principles formulated by the Security Council in
November 1967 [see resolution 242 (1967)] cannot have
meaning or utility unless they are interpreted and given
precision by negotiation. When the original sponsors and
supporters of that resolution commended it to us as a
framework for Ambassador Jarring’s mission, they stated to
us categorically that it was a negotiating framework. It was
drafted, as the United States representative said a year ago,
as a skeleton of principles on which peace could be erected.
It was not meant to be self-executing.
175. In November 1967 the United Kingdom representative
said that the resolution that he was presenting to the
Security Council was not a call for "a temporary truce or a
superficial accommodation". He said that it reflected a
refusal "to be associated with any so-called settlement
which was only a continuation of a false truce" [1379th
meeting]. He stated further that the "action to be taken
must be within the framework of a permanent peace, and
withdrawal must be to secure boundaries" [1381st meeting].
It was made clear in the Security Council that
secure and recognized boundaries have never existed in the
Middle East or in any of the engagements of the parties
towards each other. Therefore, they must be fixed by the
parties themselves as part of the peace-making process.
176. Experience exists in order that men may learn
something from it. Instead of arguing about theory, why
should we not look to the experience of the past 28
months? Every possible substitute for normal negotiating
procedure has been tried: special sessions of the General
Assembly, regular sessions of the General Assembly,
meetings of the Security Council, separate encounters of
the United Nations Special Representative with some
Middle Eastern Governments, talks between four permanent
members of the Security Council, consultations
between two permanent members of the Security
Council—all these techniques and devices have been tried—
and nothing has moved forward. Surely if those involved in
all this activity have not found an effective substitute for
negotiation, it is not through lack of perseverance or skill; it
is simply because no such substitute exists. So after these
28 months, I come back to repeat with increased conviction
what I said to the Arab Governments at this rostrum in
June 1967:
“You have chosen repeatedly to meet us in the arena of
battle. You cannot refuse to meet us at the negotiating
table.”
177. The absence of negotiation, of course, during the
past 12 months is only the symptom of a wider alienation.
Organized hostility towards Israel has been methodically
intensified. It has taken three forms: first, the cease-fire
concluded in pursuance of the Security Council’s resolution
of 6 June 1967 [233 (1967)] has been constantly violated
and subsequently denounced. The formal denunciation
took place in the address by President Nasser on 23 July
this year, when he said:
"The cease-fire cannot be eternal... and we now have
to fight. We are now beginning the work of liberation.
The six-day war has not ended. The two-year war, the
three-year war, the four-year war has begun."
178. Secondly, the Arab Governments which have not
denounced the cease-fire consider themselves in some cases
entitled to pursue armed conflict through the terrorist
organizations. The actions of terrorist groups are not a
consequence of the 1967 war; they were one of its main
causes. The problem has nothing essentially to do with the
fact that Israel is administering large areas under a cease-fire
arrangement. The terrorist assaults came before the June
1967 war, and they would be renewed with far more
devastating and perhaps fatal results if Israel were to move
from the cease-fire lines before and without the establishment
of peace, which, of course, it is under no obligation to
do. The nature and quality of these groups are revealed by
the methods which they employ: a bomb is thrown into a
supermarket filled with housewives doing their shopping; a
hand-grenade is diabolically placed in a university cafeteria;
a car laden with dynamite is introduced into a crowded
market place where-humble people transact the simple
business of their lives; civilian aircraft are kidnapped or
attacked on the ground in exploitation of their incomparable
vulnerability. All this activity has no durable
political effects. Israel’s existence is not affected by it. Not
a single inch of the cease-fire territory changes hands as a
result of it. Thus the murder of innocent men, women and
children becomes not a means to an end, but an end in
Itself-a dead-end leading nowhere except to bitterness and
rancour. If anything, Israel’s resolve never to change the
cease-fire lines except by permanent peace and in favour of
agreed boundaries becomes more passionate than ever.
179. What is threatened is not the existence of Israel but
the prospect of peace. The ideal and objective of these
organizations is that peace must be banished from the life
and prospect of the Middle East. What they do is consistent
what they want. Their mission is not liberation but the
destruction of the liberty which a small nation has already
won and the enslavement of the Middle East to a destiny of
hate and war.
180. Thirdly, the repudiation of the cease-fire and the
growth of terrorist activity have been crowned by a recent
innovation: hostility to Israel has burst out of the limits
which have restricted the techniques of war in all but the
most hideous and extreme conflicts. After all, war with all
its cruelty and inhumanity is unfortunately the work of
human beings. It has only in rare cases been conducted
without any inhibition. Today we find Arab organizations,
supported by Governments, destroying these civilized restraints.
They carry out revolting public hangings in
Baghdad streets. They maintain an unbridled religious
incitement worthy of the most bigoted phases of the
Middle Ages. They involve neutral States in their own
savagery and they add a new element by allotting a role to
children. When a million of our children were murdered
two and a half decades ago, that was held to be the ultimate
enormity. Today we see a new refinement: the training of
children to be murderers in a cause remote from their
understanding and judgement.
181. So at the worst moments of rancour and alienation,
we and others have hoped vainly for a future better than
the past. We now find Arab leaders projecting their
belligerency into the coming generation; a violent anti-Jewish
racialism now dominates the Arab educational
movement and it spills over into every street.
182. I stress these points because wars have their origin in
the soil of ideas. When President Nasser speaks in August
1969, a few weeks ago, of the necessity to "purify"
Palestine by armed force, he proves that his mind is still
faithful to the concepts by which he disrupted the Middle
Eastern structure in May 1967—"to purify Palestine". He
talks as though he is appointed by destiny to cleanse the
Middle East from some defilement. Where does that
language come from? Where have we heard it before?
What memories does it evoke?
183. The military and diplomatic consequences of such
virulent ideas are now evident. The military results have
been the denunciation of the cease-fire. The indulgence and
support of attacks by irregular units have resulted in the
transference of the fighting to the soil of other countries.
When Arab Governments shelter and sponsor those who
carry out or plan violent actions in the territories of Greece,
Italy, Switzerland, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, the
Philippines, and the Federal Republic of Germany, or when
those Governments fail to condemn and suppress those
actions, they show contempt not only for Israel’s sovereignty
but for the sovereignty of European and other
countries as well. They also adopt methods and arenas of
combat in which Israel, in accordance with its own
conceptions of international civility, is unwilling to make
any identical response. So much for the military story.
184. The diplomatic history can be more briefly told. In
October 1968 the United Arab Republic, followed by other
Arab States, broke off contact with Israel through the
Jarring mission in New York. In April 1969 the Arab
Governments, led by the United Arab Republic, formally
outlined their policies in written replies to Ambassador
Jarring. In its text, the United Arab Republic, while
professing to accept the Security Council’s resolution of 22
November 1967 [242 (1967)], refuses to abandon belligerency
unless the armistice lines of 1967 are totally
restored, whereas there is, of course, no resolution seeking
the restoration of those lines.
185. The United Arab Republic’s reply abstains from
specifically acknowledging Israel’s right to live in peace
within secure and recognized boundaries, free from acts or
threats of force. Cairo accepts that right for what it calls
"every State"—a phrase which in Egyptian practice and
doctrine has never included Israel.
186. It will be recalled that in October 1956, and many
times thereafter, Egypt agreed to give free passage in the
Suez Canal for every State in the world. Now, what did that
mean? "Every State in the world" has meant every State,
except for the eternal exception.
187. The Egyptian reply ignores the injunction to seek
agreement with Israel—although this is the operative part of
the resolution—and the United Arab Republic says that the
“secure and recognized boundaries” for Israel are those
which Arab violence swept away in 1947 and 1948.
188. The Egyptian reply declines to specify that the
freedom of navigation prescribed by the Security Council
resolution includes freedom of navigation for Israel. Egypt
deliberately avoids response to Mr. Jarring’s question
whether it understands the Suez Canal and the Gulf of
Aqaba to be international waterways open to Israel, and
not merely to what Cairo calls "all States".
189. Finally, the United Arab Republic declines to conclude
and sign treaties with Israel establishing peace by
reciprocal consent. It is prepared to conclude agreements
with the Security Council, with which the United Arab
Republic is not at war, with which it does not have a
common boundary, and in which Israel’s cause cannot be
defended or sustained. Nowhere is there any acknowledgement
that the relations between the Arab States and Israel
are governed not only by a Security Council text, which
Cairo interprets as compatible with the Khartoum decisions,
but also by the established norms and principles of
international law relating to the duties of States and to the
transition from war to peace.
190. Now, the suspension of the Jarring mission came in
April this year. There has been no forward movement since
then. Consultations between the permanent members of the
Security Council have, predictably, given no results. The
Soviet Union has not been willing to deviate from the Arab
positions or to accept the view advanced by the United
States that direct meetings between Israel and its neighbours
are essential at some stage, if agreement is to be reached.
191. Thus the Arab position, in our eyes, amounts to this:
that Israel should give up its security, without obtaining a
genuine, normal, stable, irrevocable binding peace. Now, we
shall do no such thing. After 21 years of siege and
thousands of years of struggle to maintain and preserve an
identity, we cannot put Israel’s existence under a mark of
interrogation which hovers over no other nation, least of all
over the Arab nation, in its 14 States and its continental
expanse.
192. The question is whether we can now break out of the
deadlock into a humane and rational order of relations. To
this problem my colleagues and I in the Israel Government
have given renewed attention in recent days. I wish to take
the General Assembly into the knowledge and understanding
of our views.
193. The first priority belongs to the renewal and reinforcement
of the cease-fire. Now, the cease-fire, as pro-posed
by the Security Council, was voluntarily accepted by
the Arab States as well as by Israel in June 1967. Its
acceptance served an Arab interest then, just as its renewal
would be in their interest as well as in ours now. The
cease-fire resolution was unconditional; it was not limited
in time or scope. No diplomatic effort can prosper without
a complete and unconditional cease-fire. United Nations
observers, for all their effort and sacrifice, cannot help to
maintain a cease-fire if the leading Arab Government
regards it as null and void.
194. I propose on Israel’s behalf that each of the
Governments which accepted the cease-fire resolution of
6 June 1967 [233 (1967)] should now pledge anew its
strict adherence to its terms. But the maintenance of the
cease-fire requires practical measures to give it effect. I
therefore propose further that authorized military representatives
of the forces facing each other across the cease-fire
lines should meet in order to work out effective arrangements
for strict and reciprocal observance. This proposal is
in full conformity with many United Nations precedents.
195. But while the prevention of war is our most urgent
task, this does not exhaust our duty. The consolidation of
the cease-fire should be followed, and indeed accompanied,
by a purposeful effort to promote a lasting peace. The
States of the Middle East should declare their readiness to
establish permanent peace, to liquidate their 21-year-old
conflict, and to negotiate detailed agreements on all the
matters at issue between them.
196. In a communication to Ambassador Jarring on
2 April 1969 Israel included all these undertakings. It also
declared that:
“...it accepts the Security Council resolution
242 (1967) calling for the promotion of agreement on the
establishment of a just and lasting peace to be reached by
negotiation and agreement between the Governments
concerned. Implementation of agreements should begin
when agreement has been concluded on all their provisions.”
197. In discussing the arrangements, the venue and the
agenda for negotiations, we could make full use of the good
offices of Ambassador Jarring. Twenty years ago Israel and
the Arab States found it possible to devise agreed arrangements
for meeting in order to negotiate and sign armistice
agreements. Is it really beyond our will and capacity to
make agreed arrangements now for meeting in order to
negotiate and sign peace treaties? Let us, the Foreign
Ministers of Israel and the Arab States take advantage of
our simultaneous presence, and that of Ambassador Jarring,
here in New York in order to begin this work here—and in
order to begin it now.
198. Let me make clear that Israel is prepared to negotiate
without prior conditions of any kind; it does not seek any
advance acceptance by Arab Governments of its own
proposals. And the word “non-negotiable” is not a part of
Israel’s vocabulary. You ask what can be discussed and
proposed in these negotiations. I answer: everything. You
ask what is excluded from discussion. I answer: nothing. In
the negotiations, we shall of course define where our vital
and indispensable interests lie. But once negotiations begin,
the participants must commit themselves to its fortunes;
and their task will be not merely to state positions, but also
to try to bring them into harmony.
199. Israel does not claim exclusive or unilateral jurisdiction
in the Holy Places of Christianity and Islam in
Jerusalem and is willing to discuss this principle with those
traditionally concerned. There is a versatile range of
possibilities for working out a status for the Holy Places in
such a manner as to promote Middle Eastern peace and
ecumenical harmony. In the meantime, our policy is that
the Moslem and Christian Holy Places should always be
under the responsibility of those who hold them sacred.
This principle has been in practical effect since 1967.
200. Instead of cease-fire lines or armistice lines, we
should establish secure, recognized and agreed boundaries
as part of the peace-making process, and dispose armed
forces in full accordance with the boundaries to be
determined in the peace treaties. It is important to break
away from the temporary territorial concepts which have
prevailed since 1948 in order to develop, for the first time,
a permanent structure of boundaries and security agreements.
201. A central weakness of Foreign Minister Gromyko’s
assertion this morning is that he totally ignored the
need—fully supported by international law—to reach agreement
between Israel and each contiguous Arab State on the
determination of secure and mutually agreed boundaries of
peace. Now, there is no need to be apologetic about the
doctrine that peace boundaries are different from armistice
lines. The Arab Governments wrote into our 1949 General
Armistice Agreements a provision stating that the armistice
lines were not to be interpreted as political or territorial
boundaries, and that those boundaries remained to be
worked out by agreement in the transition to peace. We
have now embarked on that transition. Israel in this matter
is not in a position of juridical defence. Indeed, in their
letter to Ambassador Jarring of April 1969, the United
Arab Republic and Jordan interpreted the term “secure and
recognized boundaries” as something different from the
armistice lines of 4 June 1967. If they interpret the
difference in one direction, others can interpret it in
another; and the only solution is to submit the problem to
the process of negotiation and agreement.
202. In conditions of peace, the people of Israel and the
Palestinian Arabs on both sides of the Jordan would be
living as citizens of sovereign States in accordance with the
boundary agreed to and concluded under the peace. But the
inherent geopolitical unity of this region argues in favour of
an open frontier such as that now emerging within the
European community and in other regional structures. The
freedom of movement and commerce which has evolved in
that area should be confirmed and broadened under the
peace by applying the community principle to the. peoples
who live on both sides of the Jordan and to both of the
negotiating States. It should be possible to reconcile our
separate sovereignties with our common regional interests.
203. We propose that a conference of Middle Eastern
States should be convened, together with the Governments
contributing to refugee relief and the specialized agencies of
the United Nations, in order to chart a five-year plan under
regional and international responsibility for the solution of
the refugee problem in the framework of a lasting peace,
and the integration of refugees into productive life. In view
of the humanitarian urgencies, such a conference need not
await the negotiation of any other issue.
204. Those are our positions. Those are the positions to
which Mr. Gromyko, in an unusual expression of humour,
referred this morning as Israel’s obstruction of peace.
205. Surely the States of the Middle East, by virtue of the
independence which they have sought and won, must see
the promotion of peace as their own autonomous responsibility.
It is anachronistic for them to cast their eyes
outward in the hope that a peace settlement can be
manufactured and imported ready-made from outside. The
peace must be built by Israeli and Arab hands, for it is
Israeli and Arab lives which are at stake. We expressed our
scepticism and reserve about diplomatic processes which
were undertaken early this year with the effect of removing
the initiative and responsibility of peace-making from the
Governments of the Middle East. For when the complex
national interests and rivalries of great Powers are superimposed
on a regional tension, the result is often not to
reduce the tension but to broaden its scope. Nothing has
happened to refute that prediction.
206. We particularly ask all Member States to understand
the anomaly and injustice of asking Israel to accept
proposals and ideas which have a Soviet component; for the
Soviet Union played a sinister role in the developments
leading up to the 1967 war by constantly stimulating an
arms race, by blind identification with Arab policies,
closing the Security Council to the equal and objective
examination of Israel’s interest, by giving false information
Cairo on an alleged Israeli invasion of Damascus. By
diffusing an odious picture of Israel’s spiritual heritage and
Jewish solidarities, the Soviet Union virtually became a
party to the dispute. Instead of being a disinterested source
of opinion and counsel. This one-sidedness was compounded,
after the hostilities by the rupture of relations
with Israel when Israel refused to be wiped out, by a
renewal of the arms race at an intensified pace after the
hostilities, and by an uncritical endorsement of all Arab
policies in the controversy on peace terms. Mr. Gromyko’s
speech this morning reveals no intention of departing from
these attitudes and he virtually promises us an indefinitely
continuing arms race.
207. It seems to us that the major Powers can promote
peace, if they will, by supporting the cease-fire, by
advocating peace negotiations, by refraining from all
temptation to globalize the conflict, by not substituting
their own views for the free interaction of Arab and Israeli
policies, and by separating the Arab-Israeli conflict as far as
possible from their own mutual relations.
208. Israel’s encounter with other sovereign States is, in
the deep, historical sense, a part of the unending dialogue
between the Jewish people and the rest of mankind. There
are two urgent problems here which should appeal urgently
to the universal conscience. The Secretary-General refers, in
the introduction to his annual report, to the widely-felt
concern for the plight of helpless Jewish minorities in
certain Arab States [A/7601/Add.1, para. 74]. Hopes for
an alleviation of the pitiful situation of the Jews of Iraq
after the accession of a new régime last July have been
dashed to the ground. Once again Jews as well as other Iraqi
citizens have, without public trial or evidence of any kind,
been judicially murdered on the basis of fabricated charges.
The small Jewish community there, which goes back to
centuries before the birth of Islam, lives in terror and
misery, unable to carry on a normal existence and refused
the right to leave even though several Governments of
enlightened conscience have offered them admission or
refuge. The situation is little better in Syria, and in Egypt
scores of heads of families are still in prison without charge
or hope of release. We appeal to international opinion to
intercede on behalf of these innocent and helpless people
and to enable them to secure the right to leave for lands
ready to receive them where they may hope to re-establish
their lives in conditions of human dignity.
209. Another situation, different in nature and scope but
also characterized by relentless hostility, affects the survival
of a great and ancient Jewish community in the Soviet
Union. Here the pressures exerted are not those of physical
persecution; rather there is the more subtle destruction of
the religious spiritual and cultural life of the Soviet Jewish
entity. At one time the assault was conducted against
so-called cosmopolitans, and culminated in the shocking
excesses of the “doctors’ trial". Today, virulent campaigns,
supported by the press, television and other mass media, are
directed at so-called international Zionism, as a cover to
bring about the spiritual and cultural death of three to four
million Jews. There is also, regrettably, a rampant anti-Semitic
literature in the Soviet Union which is utterly
repugnant to all who remember the Soviet role of resistance
to the Nazi plague. This campaign of distortion is not
worthy of the Soviet Union, and we appeal to that country
to accord to its Jewish minority the same rights to cultural
expression and survival that it accords to all other
minorities.
210. There are two international questions already mentioned
in this debate which engage Israel’s concern. Our
particular international vocation is to join with other States
in promoting accelerated development. We seek to share
with them the social insights and technical skills which have
contributed to our own economic and scientific growth.
This work has brought us into close and fruitful relations
with emerging societies in 70 lands with which we have
concluded agreements and arrangements on development
co-operation. It is, after all, in the creation of new
communities that men experience their highest sense of
creativity. From that vantage point I express Israel’s regret
that the United Nations has not been enabled by its
Members, especially the advanced States, to play a more
central role in the development drama. The first United
Nations Development Decade draws to an end with none of
its goals achieved or approached. The rate of economic
growth in developing countries is little more than 2.7 per
cent instead of the 5 per cent envisaged 10 years ago. In the
deadlock and frustration that have attended its political
work, the United Nations would have found an enhanced
prestige and enlargement of its universal role if it had been
given more support for its development activities. In the
appropriate Committee discussions, my delegation will
criticize all proposals for asking the United Nations to make
studies instead of enabling it to fulfil concrete projects. Let
us stop making studies. We know what the problems are;
the question is not how to investigate them, but how to
solve them.
211. The second point refers to freedom of aviation. The
historic journey to the moon was, after all, a development
of man’s earlier mastery of the air. Is it not intolerable that
the year of Apollo 11 should, on earth, have been a record
year for hijackers? In their indiscriminate warfare, Arab
terrorists have not passed over innocent civil aircraft far
from the arena of conflict. The events of Algeria and
Damascus are well known. Only a few weeks ago a foreign
aircraft on an international flight was forced at gunpoint
into Damascus, where the passengers and crew barely
managed to scramble out of the emergency chutes before a
bomb which the hijackers had placed in the flight-deck
exploded. Some passengers have been released, but two
Israeli nationals on board, one a professor of the Medical
School of the Hebrew University, and the other a citizen
suffering from chronic sickness, are still being forcibly
detained in Damascus. I wonder if any Syrian representative
could come and tell us on what possible grounds these two
people are being detained.
212. Other recent instances of political hijacking,
especially those affecting Ethiopia, are not unknown to
Members of the United Nations. Israel shares the view that
has been expressed here that these developments pose new
challenges to the United Nations and to the organizations
charged with civii aviation. The Government of Israel is a
party to the Tokyo Convention. We are following with
close attention the attempts being made, both in the
International Civil Aviation Organization and elsewhere, to
strengthen international practices so as to ensure that
whenever hijackings occur the passengers and crew are all,
without exception, enabled to continue on their journey
without delay and that the perpetrators of piratical acts are
brought to justice. I will say no more, for the Prime
Minister of New Zealand—not for the first time—has been
the voice of a disinterested conscience on that matter this
afternoon.
213. In an older and more chivalrous period pirates on the
sea were regarded as enemies of the human race: generis
humani hostis. They were given no asylum or quarter. Swift
justice struck them wherever they could be caught. The
new pirates of the air are no different; they are enemies of
all mankind and should be so treated by the international
community. But would it not be a gross paradox if a State
which is now in offence, in flagrant offence, against these
international principles were to be received in the Security
Council as a guardian of international peace and security?
214. If I close without any prediction about the prospects
of peace in the Middle East it is because so much depends
on the incalculable evolution of ideas. I fear that the it
essence of the matter is ideological.
215. The Arab view of Israel and of the Middle East is
deformed by a refusal to confront two essential attributes
of our region. The first is the depth and authenticity of the
historic forces which tie our people to the land of Israel.
Much of human history is unintelligible unless that connexion
is taken into due account. Remove Israel and all
that has flowed from Israel out of Middle Eastern history
and you evacuate that history of its central experiences.
Here we have the only State in the world which speaks the
same tongue, upholds the same faith and inhabits the same
land as it did 3,000 years ago. And our neighbours speak of
it as though it were some sudden eruption which might be
persuaded to disappear.
216. Arab political and intellectual leaders have never
tried, even in a reluctant spirit, to probe the factors which
make of Israel an integral part of the past history, the
present reality and the future destination of the Middle
East. They must ultimately come to terms, not just with a
community of Jews or Israelis, but with a sovereign Israel
of marked singularity and identity, embodying a tradition
and outlook which are separate from the Arab tradition and
the Arab outlook. For Israel can be a good neighbour of the
Arab world; it cannot be a part of it.
217. That involves the second issue, which is that of
diversity. The Middle East is a concept which cannot be
exhausted by Arab terms alone. Its genius in the past and
its vocation in the future lie in the diversity of faiths,
cultures, tongues, societies and sovereignties which compose
its life. It is a mosaic; it is not a monolith. It is the
cradle and the home of more nations than one.
218. The issue is how to bring about the peaceful
harmony of States which have different origins but common
interests and which belong in equal logic and in equal
justice to the Middle Eastern story.
219. There is room for profound disquiet, but not for
fatalistic despair. There is no such thing in history as an
irreconcilable conflict. In our own generation deeply-rooted,
traditional animosities between nations have passed
away. New forms and structures of international co-operation
have evolved. The world community should
summon the Arab Governments to abandon a hostility
which flows against the ecumenical and unifying currents of
twentieth-century life. If this is done, then the Middle East
will have a future even greater than its past, inspired by a
new and spacious vision, a continuing hope fed by
continuing achievement.