122. Mr. President, Israel warmly welcomes your election to the Presidency of the General Assembly. Our satisfaction is grounded in a deep personal respect. It is farther enlarged by the cordiality which inspires the relations between our countries. Our peoples share the bitter and indelible memories of the European tragedy, They are now united in their instinct for national Independence and international co-operation. Above all, they are both sustained by the vision of a world order in which national and social diversities may be preserved, respected and reconciled. The principles which lie at the root of Romanian foreign policy are thus important for the promotion of international peace and understanding.
123. The international situation which we are now bringing under review cannot be defined in simple terms. The times are grave enough. But they do not justify apocalyptic predictions of a third world war. Our age is marked by a constant enlargement of national freedom, by an intensified social conscience, and by a slow but perceptible growth of world community. Conflicts which in other days would have widened into global war are now responsive to factors which limit their duration or scope. Moreover, it has been the general international experience that when issues are submitted to negotiation, a settlement is reached. The converse is certainly true. No resource, no technique, no remedy is ever effective for any dispute in which one of the parties refuses to negotiate with the other. This is the central fact about the hostilities in Viet-Nam and the tension in the Middle East. In both these conflicts, as in all others, every external device, including prolonged international discussion, has been doomed to frustration in the absence of agreement to seek a direct settlement.
124. It is understandable that the Viet-Nam question should so far have dominated this general debate. Hostilities there are constant and intense, no ceasefire has been achieved, and the great-Power relationships are dangerously involved. Last year I expressed the view that
"The choice lies between a negotiated solution now, and negotiated solutions at a later date ,.. the price of postponement will be exacted in heavy loss of life; in expanding ... havoc; in the prolonged agony of the Viet-Namese people". [1428th meeting, para. 87.]
Nothing has since occurred to change this sombre view. We are strengthened in our conviction that there is need for a simultaneous declaration by all parties involved in the fighting of their willingness to end the war by negotiation and to take reciprocal steps towards this end.
125. After all, it is now recognized by all parties that the Geneva agreements must form the basis of a settlement, It is also accepted that all parties involved in the conflict should participate in the negotiation of a settlement. Would it not then be tragic for this cruel war to continue merely because of differences on the sequence and nature of action which one party would take in response to action publicly pledged by the other? The statement made by the representative of the United States [1562nd meeting] fully justifies the rapid convening of the Geneva Conference as the most expeditious way of removing the dispute from the battlefield to the conference table. It will be difficult for peace-loving States to understand why this step should be further delayed.
126. On 19 June [1526th meeting] and on subsequent dates, I described my Government's views, and policies on the Middle Eastern conflict. These have not changed. Until peace is achieved we shall fully preserve and respect the cease-fire agreements. We stand ready to negotiate their replacement by treaties of peace which will ensure the security of all Middle Eastern States and establish conditions of stable co-existence. In negotiations with Arab Governments we shall make viable and equitable proposals compatible with the national honour and legitimate interests of all States. We shall also make suggestions for effective regional co-operation, and for the regional and international solution of population problems created by the wars and belligerent policies of the past two decades. We shall, of course, give consideration and make reply to whatever suggestions the other negotiating parties decide to submit.
127. In short, we propose that a nineteen-year-old war be brought at long last to a permanent end by pacific settlement and direct agreement. The principles held valid in all other international relationships must be applied in this case. Never in the history of nations has progress towards a durable settlement been made in the absence of a will to negotiate. Never has the United Nations approved or condoned a refusal by sovereign States to attempt a direct settlement of their differences. Indeed, repeated recommendations by the Security Council and the General Assembly calling upon the Arab States to negotiate a final settlement with Israel for the establishment of permanent peace have remained unfulfilled, with tragic results, for nearly nineteen years.
128. Our policy of seeking a transition from the cease-fire to a negotiated peace settlement deserves international endorsement and respect. There is no other valid choice. The Arab Governments have had nothing so far to suggest except a return to the situation which prevailed on 4 June. This we cannot accept. We shall not commit the irrational course of returning to the political anarchy and strategic vulnerability from which we have emerged. National suicide is not an international obligation. Our road does not lead backward to an armistice eroded by belligerency, destroyed by blockade, undermined by guerrilla war, and corrupted by the avowed contempt of our sovereignty. History summons us forward to a new spirit and structure of relations, for which there is no word but peace.
129. It has been said that the tense and dramatic United Nations debates during June and July did not lead to substantive conclusions. They did, however, shed a clear light on the choices before which we stand. The General Assembly Is not starting its work anew. It has rendered emphatic judgement on three central issues: It has declined to "condemn" the resistance by which Israel, through anguish and sacrifice, pulled itself back from the threshold of danger. It has repeatedly dismissed the ridiculous change that Israel's decision to resist annihilation should be defined as "aggression". And it has firmly rejected proposals for restoring a situation which has recently led to one war and which would, if reproduced, lead inexorably to another.
130. These three emphatic verdicts compose an international judgement of deep significance and moral force. They stand before the States of the Middle East as a warning and a guide. They warn against the Illusion that States which proclaim and practise war can receive international indulgence when, having provoked war, they go on to refuse peace. And they guide the Governments of the Middle East away from the debris of past conflicts towards the horizons of a new and better age. Thus, the recent discussions of the General Assembly, with the concurrent expression of massive world opinion, amount to an incisive criticism of the intense and virulent Arab belligerency which has beset Israel for two decades, and which has still not been renounced. Every year the Arab Governments come to the United Nations to complain of Israel’s energetic refusal to disappear. The complaint has begun to evoke the reaction which it merits.
131. The most important operational conclusion of our debates so far is the rejection of solutions based on a return to. the explosive situation of early June. Voices from all five continents have echoed that rejection. The Foreign Minister of the Ivory Coast summarized it 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. [1540th meeting, para. 47.]... Let but the dialogue begin, and the solutions will follow." [Ibid., para. 49.]
132. In similar vein, representatives of diverse traditions and cultures from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australasia raised their voices against reproducing the precarious conditions of early June; in favour of a new and stable regional order; against the illusion that there could be withdrawal from the cease-fire lines except in a context of peace; in favour of establishing accepted boundaries and other arrangements ensuring, security from terror and war; against the ambiguities of an obsolete armistice; in favour of treaties of peace, ensuring security for all.
133. I have here summarized only a small part of the impressive international consensus on the main question at issue. The central logic is that the time is now ripe for constructive innovation. The reckless decision by President Nasser last May to disrupt all the elements on which a decade of relative stability had rested was not a transient episode. It has led to revolutionary consequences. The previous structure has been shattered beyond repair. Coming after nineteen years of implacable belligerency, the Egyptian move towards swift encirclement and sudden blockade; the Syrian practice of terrorist war; King Hussein's fateful initiative — to which he has publicly confessed — of opening hostilities from which he had every opportunity to abstain, have all contributed to this disruption. A new edifice has to be constructed. It cannot now arise or thereafter endure unless the States of the Middle East decide to build It together.
134. The force of Israel's position and the intensity with which it upholds that position can only be understood against the background of sharp experience. Preoccupation with the consequences of the war should not lead us to forget its origins. The dominant memory in Israel today Is not only of military success but also of the peril and solitude which preceded it.
135. In early May, we still believed it possible to prolong the situation and arrangements which had existed for ten years. Our most urgent concern at that time was to frustrate the terrorist infiltrations organized and launched in growing intensity from Syria.
136. It was then that clouds hitherto unforeseen began suddenly to gather thick and fast. On 15 May Egyptian columns began to move into Sinai. On 17 May the United Nations forces received and accepted a notice to quit. On 21 May Egypt mobilized its reserves. On 22 May a blockade was announced and imposed in the Strait of Tiran. On 1 June the Egyptian Government notified other States in writing that the ground for that action was the existence of a state of war. Operational orders were then issued to Egyptian air forces designating the Israeli targets which they were to bomb, A daily reconnaissance of those targets began. On 25 May Cairo radio had officially announced that "The Arab people, is firmly resolved to wipe Israel off the map". On 30 May Egypt and Jordan signed a pact for the encirclement and strangulation of Israel. On that day Nasser declared that "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are stationed on the borders of Israel. Behind them stand the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan, and the whole Arab nation. This deed will astound the world. The hour of decision has arrived."
137. By early June Iraq had joined the Egyptian- Jordanian pact to the accompaniment of Nasser's ominous words to Israel: "We are facing you in the battle and are burning with desire for it to start in order to obtain revenge." And so by 4 June the noose had grown intolerably tight. Ninety thousand Egyptian troops with 900 tanks were massed on our frontier with their advance columns a few hours away from Tel Aviv. Forty thousand Syrian troops were poised to strike at Upper Galilee from advantageous positions in the hills* Jordan had trained its artillery and mortars on Israel's population centres in Jerusalem and in the vulnerable narrow coastal plain. Troops from Iraq, Kuwait, and Algeria were moving into position in expectation of sharing the glory and the spoils of Israel's annihilation. Two hundred tanks were massed against Eilat at Israel's southern tip. The blockade had cut Israel off from its commerce and maritime contact with the entire eastern half of the world, Israel's economy and commerce were paralysed in a total mobilization of manpower. All that time, the Security Council was listening with patience, and without much rebuke, to frank statements by Arab representatives calmly announcing that a state of war existed with Israel and that that gave the Arab States all the rights resulting from belligerency.
138. With every hour that ticked away, it became more evident that no organ of the United Nations was going to be able to do anything, or even to say very much, that would assist or even console Israel in its impending ordeal. World opinion was gripped by an ardent but powerless horror as the prospect of Israel's disaster came into view. The moral and historic implications of Israel's possible doom became central themes of agitated discussion throughout the world, A people which had lost six millions of its brethren in an orgy of hatred was now embattled and about to be assaulted in the shelter and refuge of its nationhood. The Assembly should reflect that this monstrous and sudden design of aggression was concerted by Egypt against Israel at a time when not a hair of Egypt's head had been touched; when no Egyptian interest had been violated, and when for ten years there had been no clash whatever between Egyptian and Israeli forces.
139. Israel itself during those tense days pondered the issue of survival in deep solemnity of spirit. There had not been many such moments in three thousand years of national history. For what was at issue had been made clear in the words of President Nesser, which will be inscribed on the tablets of history as long as the drama of last June is narrated or milled. For the statement he made on 26 May solves all problems of motive and of responsibility. It reads:
"The Arab people wants to fight. We have been waiting for the right time when we will be completely ready. Recently we have felt that our strength has been sufficient and that if we make battle with Israel we shall be able, with the help of God, to conquer. Sharm-el-Sheikh implies a confrontation with Israel. Taking this step makes it impel alive that we be ready to undertake a total war with Israel."
140. And three days later, us more armoured brigades moved towards Israel, the same message WHS conveyed in briefer words: "If we succeed in respiring the situation to what it was before 1956, there is no doubt that God will help us and will inspire us to restore the situation to what it was prior to 1918.” That is to say, prior to Israel's existence.
141. Thus, for the only time since the creation of the United Nations, the intention to wipe nut a sovereign State had been openly proclaimed. And it had been proclaimed amidst the conditions conducive to its fulfilment.
142. Everyone in Israel and multitudes throughout the world will always recall the darkness of that hour. Only exceptional vigilance and speed in resisting the aggressive design avoided a disaster which would have weighed for ever on the conscience of mankind. Now this memory haunts and inspires our policy for the future. It is our primary duty and supreme resolve to ensure that such a dangerous situation shall never recur. This duty and this resolve must prevail over all other considerations.
143. The lessons of this experience present themselves to us with lucid clarity. The new situation which we seek must differ from the old in several essential respects. We cannot reconcile ourselves again to unilateral belligerency, or be satisfied with intermediate situations which are neither war nor peace. In accordance with all the traditions and precedents of international law, the cease-fire situation must be replaced by peace treaties with the automatic corollary that belligerency is at a permanent end.
144. We agree with those who have said that the fragile and violated armistice lines' must be superseded by accepted frontiers and other arrangements ensuring security against terror, destruction and war. And it is vital, in our view, that the new situation should rest on contractual arrangements which commit and engage the responsibility of Israel and each Arab State. No external declarations or guarantees, no general affirmations of Charter principles, no recommendations or statements by international bodies, however unexceptionable in themselves, can replace the sovereign responsibility of the Governments concerned. I stress this point in the light of proposals such as those, for example, presented by Yugoslavia to other Governments — but not to Israel — according to which there would be a movement away from the cease-fire lines without any direct peace arrangements with the Arab States.
145. No service is done to international causes by seeking clever but ineffectual substitutes for direct and reciprocal national commitments. The collapse of the 1957 arrangements on Gaza and the Strait of Tiran had much to do with the fact that Egyptian responsibility was never directly affirmed or engaged, And our ordeal in May and June teaches us a lesson about the limitations of international guarantees in the present state of the world's power balance. The Middle Eastern peace, with its relevant agreements and provisions for enforcement, must spring up from within the region. It cannot be grafted onto it from outside. The Middle East is not an international protectorate. It is a region of sovereign States which bear the main responsibility for adjusting their mutual relations.
146. These considerations have a direct bearing on the role of the United Nations in the Middle Eastern conflict. The fact that the United Nations was unable to prevent the war has a direct bearing on the question of its capacity and title to impose a peace. The interests of the parties and of the Organization itself require that United Nations action be realistically adapted to United Nations capacities, A call to Middle Eastern States to negotiate the conditions of their future coexistence is the most constructive course which the General Assembly can take. What the United Nations should strenuously avoid is the tendency to make its existence a substitute for negotiation and a barrier to direct settlement, This danger was frankly discussed by our Secretary-General in his Annual Report to the twenty-first session when he wrote:
"In such cases as the United Nations Emergency Force, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Palestine, the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan and the United Nations Force in Cyprus, the crux of the matter from the standpoint of the United Nations is the continuing absence of any earnest resolve on the part of the parties directly involved in the dispute to seek a reasonable way out of it. Indeed, at times it seems, and it may actually be the case, that they tend to take the attitude that the very United Nations presence frees them from any pressing obligation to exert a really serious effort towards a settlement of their differences."
147. There is already evidence that Arab States regard the United Nations as a shelter against the necessity of peace. This is the precise antithesis of what this Organization is meant to he. The United Nations is an instrument for ending conflicts, not an arena for waging them. It expresses its higher ends when it serves as a bridge, not as a wedge. There is no precedent in international life for the refusal of States to recognize another State except for the purpose of exercising a state of war against it. United Nations organs should take care lest by action or omission they inadvertently sanction or condone this refusal. For our insistence on direct negotiation is not a matter of procedure. The issue is one of principle and substance. A refusal to negotiate is inherently identical with a refusal to live in peace. Surely a process as complex as the transition from prolonged belligerency to peaceful adjustment cannot possibly be envisaged in an atmosphere of ostracism. Indeed, my Government can never regard the state of belligerency as terminated so long as Arab Governments, whatever else they do, maintain their refusal to negotiate a settlement with us.
148. It was the general view of the Assembly in its fifth emergency special session that a radical change in the Arab attitude towards Israel is an essential condition of any movement away from the present situation. While we hope and believe that this modification will ensue, we must acknowledge that it has not yet taken place. At the recent Arab Summit Conference held at Khartoum from 29 August to 1 September, the Arab Governments proclaimed three principles: no recognition, no negotiation, and no peace or conciliation with Israel. But recognition, negotiation and peace are the central themes of the Charter system. By rejecting them all, these Governments place their relations with Israel outside the Charter context, and thus forfeit their moral and legal right to invoke the Charter in their own cause.
149. An ominous interpretation of the Khartoum decisions emerges from the article published last week by Mohamed Hassanein Heikel, the leading spokesman of Egyptian policy, in which he said that: "The door to political action in dealing with the immediate stage of the Arab struggle is not closed, but there will be no peace or negotiations with Israel." He went on to say that:
"The door to military action is open at all times for those able to take such action, provided they are backed by other Arab States so that their military power will not be undermined by economic pressure. The United Arab Republic, more than any other State, is capable of military action for several reasons. Therefore, fighting is a major possibility in settling the urgent problem. In fact, the main responsibility in military action falls on the air force."
150. The conclusion is plain. Arab policy can be simply defined. The aim is to secure Israel's withdrawal by political pressure while refusing any commitment to peace; and thereafter to be free to resume, in more advantageous conditions, and with the aid of new Soviet arms, the attempt at Israel's annihilation which was mounted but frustrated three months ago. That is what current Arab policy is. Everybody in this hall knows this to be true. That the United Nations cannot co-operate with this policy or do anything to encourage it should lie beyond doubt. To ask Israel to exchange security for vulnerability and to put itself in the position most convenient for the next Arab assault would be to violate international prudence and common human morality. By standing steadfast against such a course the international community will promote an eventual understanding of the need to pass from two decades of war to new vistas of peace. The firm attitude of the General Assembly at its last session may have set some realistic tendencies afoot. It would be tragic if a loss of patience or an unconsidered change of position were to prevent them from coming to maturity.
151. In the forthcoming debate on the Middle East situation we shall make further proposals on the international and humanitarian aspects of the current crisis. It is deplorable that the Jordanian Government, whose warlike decision on 5 June provoked the journey of refugees from the west to the east bank of the Jordan, should now be using their plight as an instrument of political warfare. A month ago they were urged to return westward against a background of incitement to civil disorder. Now when thousands could be returning at this very moment under categories approved by the Israel Government, their return is wantonly delayed or prevented.
152. I regret to note another element of discrimination in the international comment on the Middle Eastern travail. There has been an intense campaign of interest concerning west bank residents who moved without coercion across the Jordan as a result of King Hussein's wanton war. They are now free in personal movement; thousands have returned, and thousands more have been authorized to return. But there is relative silence about Jewish communities, especially in Egypt, whose members are not free to move—because they are held in conditions of cruelty in concentration camps for no reason or purpose except of sheer malice. The fact that universal Jewish religious interests could have been violated for many years by Jordan without international protest, and that Jewish victims of a war provoked by Egypt can thus languish amidst international silence has a grave significance in the light of a particular historic experience going back many centuries.
153. In a recent communication to the Secretary-General, I have commented on the present situation in Jerusalem. We cannot think without indignation of the policy adopted during the period of Jordanian occupation and annexation. I have found it shocking to behold with my own eyes the destruction and sacrilege suffered by Jewish religious institutions and to reflect that the principle of access to the Holy Places of the three religions was so wantonly violated for so long. Those who read the records and annals of the United Nations in future years will be astonished not to find a single word of criticism directed against a regime which made Jerusalem a military frontier, which separated its citizens into two hostile camps, and which, by obstruction of access, desecrated some of the highest and noblest sanctities in the history of mankind. After twenty sordid years of division, war and sacrilege, there is now unity, peace and the assurance of access to the Holy Places, There are still matters to be resolved in Jerusalem, As we have pointed out in our communication, the present situation, which has arisen directly from Jordanian aggression, does not foreclose or pre-empt the agreed settlement of those important aspects of the Jerusalem problem which have always been at the origin of the universal interest in the City.
154. My Government and delegation have carefully studied Foreign Minister Gromyko's address in the general debate [1563rd meeting]. The General Assembly in its fifth emergency special session emphatically rejected all the accusations, charges and proposals brought before it by the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Soviet Union secured practically no support for its policies and ideas outside the Soviet and Arab groups. A distinguished representative of the Latin American group spoke of "an extremist and ridiculous Soviet resolution". Indeed, the Soviet theory of alleged Israeli "aggression" was so far-fetched that only Bulgaria and two other members of the Security Council gave it their support. It was, therefore, surprising to find Mr. Gromyko coming back here to present the very merchandise which had been rejected by this body a few weeks ago.
155. The tension which exploded in the Middle East on 5 June was largely of Soviet manufacture. For over a decade the Soviet Union has initiated and developed a vast programme of one-sided arms importation into Arab States with a resultant escalation in the quantity and destructive quality of weapons in the Middle East. The Soviet Government has for fourteen years prevented the Security Council, apparently as a matter of principle, from ever expressing any criticism of any act of Arab hostility against Israel, The denial of free passage in the Suez Canal; the violent obstruction of legitimate water development; the murder of Israelis on Israeli soil by Arab infiltrators; the sponsorship by Syria of terrorist infiltration — all went forward under the protective wing of the Soviet veto. Not one specific public word has been uttered by the Soviet Union for several years concerning the duty of neighbouring States to respect Israel's sovereignty and security. And according to President Nasser, it was a Soviet report of nonexistent Israeli troop concentrations on the Syrian frontier which influenced the decision of the United Arab Republic to mass troops in Sinai and to dismiss the United Nations force. This is a grave and fearful guilt. During the first weeks of the recent hostilities, the Soviet Press, which is not entirely resistant to governmental influence, published a series of caricatures portraying Israel in monstrous anti-Semitic stereotypes reminiscent of the Stuermer. On 6 September, a violent attack on the Jewish religion and on its concept of divinity appeared in the Pravda Ukrainy.
156. The unbalanced policy of one of the Powers charged with primary responsibility for international peace and security has thus served to aggravate hatred and rancour amongst Middle Eastern peoples. Writers, intellectuals, and socialist and communist leaders in many lands have expressed a strong wish to see the Soviet Union adopt a more balanced policy in the Middle East and to show a sensitive regard for the cultural ties and spiritual solidarities which bind Jewish communities throughout the world, including those in the Soviet Union.
157. Mr. Gromyko's address [1563rd meeting] said in effect that the best way to promote peace is to restore the conditions which have led to war. His denunciation of Israel runs counter to the passionate sentiment of progressive opinion in all countries, including Eastern European countries. In not one single word did the Soviet Foreign Minister suggest any modification of extremist Arab policies towards Israel. He made no appeal for the cessation of belligerent practices, for free navigation of Israeli ships and cargos, for negotiation or for the conclusion of peace between the Arab States and Israel. Speaking for a country which in the past two decades has expanded its territory over vast areas of Europe in the name of security, Mr. Gromyko seems to be indignant at the idea that a viable security system and permanent frontier agreements should be constructed in the Middle East for the first time by negotiation and mutual accord. Finally, the Soviet Union, which has exceeded all other Member States in the number of Assembly resolutions to which it has refused compliance, volunteered its presence for the imposition of sanctions against, Israel for not having passively submitted to the Jordanian bombardment of Jerusalem — and for having established unified and equal services in a City against whose illicit invasion by Jordan Mr. Gromyko himself spoke so eloquently in the Security Council in July 1948.
158. Is it not unfortunate, even incongruous, that the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution should be clouded by a Soviet policy of hostility to a small people which achieved its independence with strong Soviet support: a nation which suffered untold anguish in the Hitler decade and now finds its last hope of identity and survival under such persistent challenge and assault?
159. Surely the aspiration of the Soviet Union to be acknowledged everywhere as a peace-loving and progressive Power demands a policy less hostile to Israel's security and legitimate rights, and more respectful of the Jewish cultural and spiritual heritage in the Soviet Union and the world. If the anniversary of the October Revolution were to inaugurate this revision of policy, then the international outlook would be greatly transformed and the anniversary itself would become a positive political event.
160. The Israel delegation will give its full attention to the forthcoming discussion on the definition of aggression. That discussion does not begin anew. There are already established criteria which most peace-loving States would accept. The official Arab war against Israel, now entering its twentieth year, offers many examples which the Soviet Union and Israel should be able to assess in a similar light.
161. First, there is the use of armed force across a frontier with the aim of destroying a sovereign State. On 7 July 1948 Mr. Gromyko in the Security Council denounced what he called the "armed aggression and military operations directed against the Jewish State" by the invading army of Transjordan, On 21 May of that year he had already expressed:
"...surprise at the position adopted by the Arab States... and particularly at the fact that those States — or some of them, at least — have resorted to such action as sending their troops into Palestine and carrying out military operations aimed at the suppression of the national liberation movement in Palestine".
162. Now we should do well to remember that the Middle Eastern tension today is nothing but the unfinished sequel to that original aggression. It is as true today as it was in July 1948 that to plan or carry out operations designed to liquidate a sovereign State is inherently aggressive. It is also aggressive to intervene by subversion in the affairs of sovereign States.
163. Israel affirms its solidarity with the resistance of the American States, as expressed in their current meetings, to interventionist policies and acts of subversion carried out against Venezuela, Bolivia and other American States under the spurious cloak of liberation,
164. But there is one document on the definition of aggression which puts this subject squarely in the context of the Middle Eastern crisis. Here is an extract from a draft convention on the definition of aggression submitted some years ago by the Soviet Union to the Sixth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly:
"1. In an international conflict that State shall be declared the attacker which first commits one of the following acts:
“...
"(e) Naval blockade of the coasts or ports of another State;
"(f) Support of armed bands organized in its own territory which invade the territory of another State, or refusal, on being requested by the invaded State, to take in its own territory any action within its power to deny such bands any aid or protection;
"...
"6. Attacks [such as those referred to above] may not be justified by any considerations of a political, strategic or economic nature, or by ... the refusal to recognize that [the State attacked] possesses the distinguishing marks of statehood."
165. Who in the Middle East imposed a naval blockade on the coast or port of another State? Egypt or Israel? Who in the Middle East supported armed bands organized in its own territory to invade the territory of another State and refused to take in its own territory any action within its power to deny such bands any aid or protection? Syria or Israel? Who has sought to justify such action by the affirmation that the State so attacked lacks the distinguishing marks of statehood? Israel or the Arab States?
166. Is there not a vast gulf between the objective Soviet criteria on aggression and the refusal to apply those criteria to the policies of Arab States towards Israel? This is the crux of the item proposed. What is the use of elaborating general principles if they are not to be objectively applied in particular cases? Discussion on the Soviet item is therefore to be warmly welcomed. The definition of aggression is for us a matter of deep historic and moral importance. All that the appropriate committee has to do is to enumerate what Israel has suffered from the Arab States in the past two decades. It will then have a complete and detailed draft for a convention on the definition of aggression.
167. In the appropriate committees, my delegation will strive to promote the pacific settlement of disputes; the accelerated advancement of developing societies; the defence and consolidation of human rights; and the elimination of colonialism, racialism and religious and ethnic discrimination. Amidst national ordeals we must all pursue our international vocation. Indeed, the pathos of Middle Eastern life lies in the useless draining away in regional strife of vital energies which should be brought into the service of the great human causes.
168. For nearly twenty years the United Nations has been discussing the issues arising from an obdurate refusal to acknowledge and recognize the sovereign rights of one of its Members. This is the primary cause and single origin of the conflict. Just as the conflict has a single cause, so also does it have a single solution. The mere decision to negotiate a peace settlement embodies the prospect of solving the political, territorial, humanitarian and security problems which will never be overcome across a gulf of sullen separation. The United Nations will serve the deepest international truths if it summons the nations of the Middle East to their inalienable responsibility for shaping the future of their common region.
169. The shocks and ordeals of the past year have added a new dimension to Israel's experience. They have also reminded the world of what is involved in our nation's survival. History speaks to us across centuries of time. Civilized humanity cannot ignore Israel without rejecting its own youth. The first need is for greater vigour and boldness in resisting the policies which deny the central fact of Israel's sovereignty and right to peace and security. The issue thereafter is whether the Arab and Israeli nations, which have been primary agents in man's spiritual adventure, can transcend their conflict in dedication to a creative future. If international bodies and friendly nations can help to keep this vision alive, then the past year may have seen the last of our region's wars, and the first glow of its future peace.