110. It gives me great pleasure
to congratulate the President on her unanimous election to
the presidency of the twenty-fourth session of the General
Assembly. This is a fitting tribute to the struggle for the
emancipation of women in Africa and other parts of the
third world. I should also like to congratulate her on the
manner in which she has been directing the proceedings of
this session, which is a proof of her ability and skill.
111. I should also like to pay a tribute to the memory of
the late Mr. Emilio Arenales, who presided over the
twenty-third session of the General Assembly. His untimely
death shocked us all and was a loss to his country and people.
112. Of all the international questions on the agenda of
the present session of the General Assembly, none concerns
Kuwait as intensely as what it has become customary of
late to call the “Middle East crisis”.
113. This special concern is caused not only by the fact
that issue affects the existence, survival and entire
destiny of an Arab people, the Palestinian people, as well as
the territorial integrity of three Arab States adjacent to
Palestine, some of whose lands are presently under Israeli
occupation. Besides the national bonds tying us to the
peoples and States concerned, there is another reason for
our special concern; all the elements which occur in the
persistent international problems of today may be found
together in the Middle East crisis, as interrelated and
interactive ingredients thereof.
114. In the first place, the heavy burden of colonialism,
which still weighs oppressively on some areas of the world,
is felt in the Middle East. For the Middle East crisis is, in
one of its aspects, a colonial crisis, where colonialism — clearly
reveals itself in all its classical manifestations: the
occupation of the land of others, the subjugation of its
inhabitants, the exploitation of its resources and the
introduction of foreign settlements on its soil. The only
difference between the residua of die-hard colonialism still
existing in some pockets which have thus far defied
purification and the Israeli colonial presence since 1967 in
the territories of three sovereign States, Members of the
United Nations, is this: the Israeli colonial presence was
accomplished in an era in which the conscience of the
civilized world had totally repudiated the logic of colonialism,
and the international community had established an
alternative international system on the anti-colonial foundation
of what the charter of decolonization calls “the
principles of equal rights and self-determination of all
peoples”. Nothing is worse than the colonialism which
refuses to disappear in the era of the liquidation of
colonialism, save that which comes into being in the heyday
decolonization.
115. In the second place, the influence of racism, from
which some parts of the world still suffer, is also present in
the Middle East crisis which, in one of its aspects, is a crisis
caused by the existence of a racist régime; racist in its
doctrinal presuppositions, racist in its inspiration and racist
in its programmes and actions. The quintessence of Zionism
is the call for the Jews of the world to segregate themselves
by withdrawing from the countries of their residence and
citizenship and to isolate themselves in one country which
would become “Jewish”, through the displacement of its
non-Jewish indigenous population. Accordingly, its programmes
and policies have been racist in inspiration and
their practical application has manifested all the familiar
features of racism; including racial hatred, racial self-segregation
and isolation, belief in intrinsic racial superiority,
resulting in the right for racial supremacy and the exercise
of racial discrimination in all fields.
116. In the third place, the Middle East crisis reflects
certain forms of international conduct which have come to
be considered discreditable by the civilized world. These
forms of conduct constitute in their totality an integral
behavioural pattern which, if followed by all States in their
international relations, would lead only to global chaos and
perpetual turmoil. I shall now discuss, by way of illustration,
three facets of this Israeli behavioural pattern. First,
clear and thoughtless violation of some established rules of
public international law which are also fundamental principles
of the Charter; foremost among these is the principle
of inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war or
military conquest, a principle which has been reaffirmed
four times by the Security Council in the past two years.
Nevertheless, Israel has, in fact, formally annexed a portion
of the territories it occupied by war in 1967, and has
proceeded to create in other portions new situations which,
as some Israeli leaders have candidly and clearly explained,
aim at creating new “accomplished facts”, the ultimate
effect of which would be to render annexation by Israel
inescapable and irresistible.
117. The determination of Israel to retain, under all
circumstances, its possession of at least some of the lands it
occupied by war from the territories of three Arab States,
Members of the United Nations, is no longer a secret. Nor
can sophistic reasoning and semantic acrobatics, however
skillfully practised by some of Israel’s spokesmen, succeed
in concealing the following facts: that retaining possession
of any part of territories occupied by war is an act of
annexation, whatever the pretext put forward or the name
applied; that such annexation constitutes a flagrant violation
of a basic principle of the Charter and the rule of
international law, which has been repeatedly reaffirmed by
the Security Council; and that such unlawful annexation is,
in fact, an application of the principle of territorial
expansion through violence, which is an essential ingredient
of the Zionist-Israeli programme.
118. Secondly, respect for the international conventions
and treaties to which it is a party, application of their
provisions and fulfilment of the obligations arising from
them, are elementary ingredients of the pattern of conduct
of a civilized State. Yet, in the two years and four months
which have elapsed since Israel occupied militarily territories
belonging to Arab States, the world has witnessed a
continuing, obstinate refusal by Israel to put into effect the
Geneva Convention of 1949 relative to the protection of
civilian persons in occupied territories, to which Israel and
the three Arab States immediately concerned are parties.
Even though the General Assembly, the Security Council,
the Economic and Social Council, the Commission on
Human Rights and the International Conference on Human
Rights have all reminded Israel of its obligations under that
Convention and called upon it to comply with its provisions,
in no less than 11 formal resolutions, adopted since
June 1967, Israel has persisted in its disregard of the
Convention, by its refusal to apply it to the situation at
hand, and in its flagrant violation of some of its most
important provisions.
119. Nor has this been the sole instance of Israel’s
disregard of international agreements to which it is a party.
On the contrary, the fate of the Protocol of Lausanne and
the four General Armistice Agreements of 1949 eloquently
testifies to the fact that Israel has generally displayed little
reluctance to abrogate international agreements unilaterally,
tearing them up at will as though they were worthless scraps of paper.
120. Thirdly, thoughtless violation of the fundamental
rules of international law and the habitual breaking of
international contracts are appropriately accompanied by
disdain for, and non-compliance with, the resolutions
adopted by United Nations organs. Israel has gone so far as
to wage an organized campaign against the United Nations
and its principal organs for adopting some of those
resolutions, even in cases where they were adopted by
unanimous votes.
121. Israeli leadership evinces no embarrassment at the
glaring inconsistency of official Israeli attacks on the
authority of the United Nations, and the persistent Israeli
contempt for dozens of resolutions adopted by its competent
principal organs. Their claim to legitimacy is based on
the authority of one recommendation contained in one
resolution adopted by one of those organs, even though
that single resolution was suspended by the same organ less
than six months after it was adopted.
122. There is little need here to cite individually the
provisions of all those resolutions, including many which
were adopted by unanimous or near-unanimous votes, with
which Israel has continuously refused to comply. Suffice it
to refer to those adopted since the summer of 1967, which
include the following:
(a) Ten resolutions adopted by the General Assembly,
the Security Council and other organs, calling upon Israel
to facilitate promptly the return of all inhabitants of the
occupied territories displaced since the war of June 1967;
(b) Three resolutions, adopted by the General Assembly,
the Security Council and the Commission on Human
Rights, calling upon Israel to facilitate international
investigation of the conditions of the civilian inhabitants of Arab
territories occupied by Israel;
(c) Five resolutions, two adopted by the Assembly and
three by the Security Council, enjoining Israel to rescind all
measures taken by it purporting to alter the status of the
City of Jerusalem.
Israel has complied with none of these resolutions and it
has continuously violated their respective provisions.
123. Much talk about international ethics by Israeli
leaders, and extravagant boasting about the excellence of
the moral values alleged to be inherent in Israel’s international
conduct, are powerless to disguise the truth that
Israel, colonial to the core in its reality and racist in its
ideology, system and policies, has, since its birth, followed
a course of action which desecrates those standards of
international morality enshrined in the Charter and which
civilized States aspire to achieve.
124. At the opening of my remarks on the Middle East
crisis a short while ago, I intimated that it was a
three-dimensional crisis, of which the conflict between the
Arab States and Israel is only one aspect. It is most
unfortunate that the general view of that crisis focuses
upon this conflict and is oblivious of the other aspects and
dimensions. Such distorted vision and conception would in
practice make for erroneous approaches. Efforts are exerted
to find a settlement for the conflict between the Arab
States and Israel without attempting to redress the wrongs
done to, or remedy the unjust conditions imposed upon,
the Palestinian people, prior to or since the establishment
of Israel.
125. The essence of the problem is the dispossession and
displacement of the bulk of the Palestinian people, the
subjugation and plunder of the rest, the deprivation of the
Palestinian people, as a whole, of the opportunity to;
exercise its inalienable right to self-determination on the
soil of its homeland, and the deprivation of Palestinians as
individuals of many of their other fundamental human
rights. It is this that is the cause of the conflict between the
Arab States and Israel. How then can this conflict be settled
as long as those conditions which gave rise to it remain?
126. The experience of the past 21 years, and in particular
of the past year, shows that forgetting or ignoring the
existence of the Palestinian people cannot serve to simplify
the Middle East crisis or facilitate its settlement, but, in
fact, renders it more intricate and its settlement more
remote. People do not vanish just because others prefer to
forget that they exist; nor are their rights lost simply
because they are forcibly deprived of them for some time.
127. These are truisms which the international community
can ill afford to forget or neglect, least of all the major
Powers which have endeavoured, since the beginning of the
year, to reach a settlement of the problem by way of
consultations among themselves. No formula for a settlement
which affects the fate of Palestine or its people can
have the slightest chance of working, or be just and
therefore worthy of working, if it neglects those people’s
rights or ignores their national will and legitimate aspirations.
128. At this stage, I cannot but note with much regret
that such neglect of the Palestinian people is at the root of
the policy of one of the major Powers towards the
problems of Palestine and the Middle East. I refer to the
United States of America. This is particularly sad, inasmuch
as the United States, which now views with disdain the
national right of the people of Palestine to self-determination
in its homeland, was once the foremost champion for
the principle of self-determination and played a leading role
in introducing it into the contemporary international system.
129. The faults and dangers of American policy towards
the Middle East, however, go beyond ignoring the existence
of the Palestinian people as a people and rejecting its
national rights as such, as well as many of the human rights
of its individuals.
130. How strange it is for the question of the Middle East
to be raised and discussed entirely within the context of the
analysis of American-Soviet relations, as was done in the
statement made before the present session of the Assembly
by the President of the United States [1755th meeting], as
though the situation in the Middle East had no objective
reality or character of its own, independently of the
vicissitudes of American-Soviet relations.
131. How strange it was for the statement of the
American President to raise once more the question of “the
limitation of the shipment of arms to the Middle East”
[ibid, para. 66] so soon after the United States itself had
brought the situation of armaments to a new and grave
stage by beginning to supply Israel with Phantom jets.
132. To further the military capabilities of the occupying
Power, particularly after it had made unmistakably clear its
determination to retain possession, under all circumstances,
of much of what it now occupies, can only embolden it to
maintain the occupation and indeed nourish its avaricious,
expansionist desire to annex more of the territories it now
occupies.
133. We find cause for anxiety in the failure of the
statement, made by the President of the United States, to
emphasize the obligation to withdraw, indeed, its failure to
use that word at all. Nor was that anxiety allayed — perhaps
it was aggravated — by the statement that “peace cannot be
achieved on the basis of substantial alterations in the map
of the Middle East” [ibid., para. 65] . This statement, in
reality, envisages and condones territorial alterations which
may be deemed “insubstantial”, in the course of expressing
disapproval of “substantial” alterations. By so doing, it
opens the door for acquisition of territory by military
conquest, which is precisely what the United States, on
more than one occasion, had joined other States in
declaring to be “inadmissible”.
134. This would indicate that the United States position
towards this vital aspect of the Middle East crisis has now
undergone an important change. Two years ago, the United
States position was one of the decisive factors which
prevented either the Security Council or the General
Assembly from issuing a call for complete and unconditional
Israeli withdrawal, and contributed instead to a call
for complete, though not unconditional, withdrawal. While
that position displayed disregard of the principle that
military invasion shall not be rewarded in the course of
reaching a pacific settlement, it did at the same time evince
respect for the principle of the inadmissibility of the
acquisiton of territory by military conquest. Now, however,
the doctrine of the admissibility of making “alterations in
the map of the Middle East” provided only that they are
not “substantial” — implicit in the statement [ibid.] of the
United States President—amounts to a violation of the
second principle as well as the first.
135. The world today is burdened with problems that
jeopardize the future of humanity. We must find a solution
to these problems if we are to enjoy the blessings of
stability and peace.
136. In Viet-Nam peace can only prevail when all foreign
troops are withdrawn and the people of Viet-Nam are
allowed to decide their own future.
137. In the colonized territories of Africa there can be no
stability and progress until the people there exercise their
inalienable right to freedom and independence.
138. Human conscience can only rest easy when the
apartheid practised in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia
is totally eliminated and the right of the majority to live in
freedom and dignity is respected.
139. Peace and prosperity are closely linked. The developed
countries should shoulder their responsibilities
towards the developing countries. It is a source of great
regret that the First United Nations Development Decade
has failed to achieve its main objectives. The gap between
the developing and developed countries is steadily widening.
The developed countries have been reluctant to fulfil
their obligations, particularly in the field of aid and trade.
140. We are now on the threshold of the Second United
Nations Development Decade. Poverty, hunger, disease and
ignorance have been the lot of the ordinary people in the
developing countries for centuries past. This poverty and
the craving for a better life that it engenders have now
become a source of active political discontent. It is the duty
of both developing and developed countries to agree on
concerted measures for solving this problem.
141. My Government believes that the sea-bed and the
ocean floor, and the subsoil thereof, underlying the high
seas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, should be
reserved exclusively for peaceful purposes. We have consistently
advocated establishing an international legal regime
for the area, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction
based on the concept that the area and its resources are the
common heritage of mankind. We are also in favour of
establishing an international machinery to promote the
exploration and exploitation of the resources of the area,
beyond the limits of national jurisdiction for the benefit of
mankind as a whole, taking into account the special
interests and needs of the developing countries. We believe
that only such an international machinery will be able to
exploit the resources of the area in a rational and
complementary manner, and distribute the income derived
therefrom equitably among all countries and other parties
concerned, while allocating a certain percentage to increase
United Nations resources, particularly in the field of
international development.
142. Almost a quarter of a century has elapsed since the
establishment of the United Nations as an international
Organization, entrusted with the maintenance of international
peace and security and the regulation of international
relations on an equitable and legal basis. In spite of this
lapse of time, the United Nations still does not enjoy the
unreserved and complete support of the Member States
which will enable it to discharge its duties and fulfil its
objectives. It is incumbent upon all States to respect the
provisions of the United Nations Charter, to desist from the
practice of colonialism in all its forms and to renounce the
use of aggression as a means of imposing de facto solutions
and the aquisition of territorial gains. Whenever any
Member violates the Charter and persists in a policy of
aggression and expansion, the international community
should not hesitate to act in a clear and decisive manner
against the offender. This is the only way in which the
United Nations can fulfil its mission and discharge its duties
according to the Charter.