1. In the name of God the merciful and compassionate, Madame President, my delegation tenders to Your Excellency its whole-hearted congratulations on your election as President of the twenty-fourth session of the General Assembly. We also wish to express our congratulations to our African brothers on this occasion. 2. The passing away of the late President of the Assembly, Mr. Emilio Arenales, in the prime of his life and activity, has saddened us all. We not only esteemed him for his wisdom and dedication to the United Nations, but also marvelled at the exemplary courage which he manifested by resuming his duties when all the odds were against him in the mortal disease that snatched him from amongst us. May God in His mercy let his soul rest in peace. 3. Before embarking on the substance of my statement I should like to take this opportunity of applauding our indefatigable Secretary-General U Thant for the tireless efforts he has exerted for world peace ever since his election to the post. 4. It would be banal for me to repeat what has time and again been mentioned by others, namely, that there is no alternative for the United Nations as the best international organ for establishing world peace and security. On the other hand, I would be failing in my duty if I were to ignore the fact that the United Nations has not, so far, succeeded in averting wars from which small nations have principally suffered; nor has the United Nations been able to eradicate racial discrimination and some forms of classical colonialism in Africa. We do hope that it will not be long before South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal realize that it is in their own interest to liberate the peoples that are still unjustifiably under their control. 5. We also regret that the policy of spheres of influence still prevails, especially among the great Powers. The great Powers which had a major role in drawing up the United Nations Charter are still more or less acting in the same way as the erstwhile great Powers did during the days of the League of Nations, whose Covenant was ignored whenever it did not serve their narrow national interests. Likewise today we find that the principles set forth in the Charter, instead of transcending the national interests of States, are subjected to all kinds of dialectical interpretations and rationalizations. It is for these reasons that we have hardly made any significant progress towards paving the way to world peace, and it becomes evident that some world leaders have learned very little from the harsh lessons of two world wars. 6. The Treaty of Versailles, no doubt, sowed the seeds of the Second World War by flagrantly flouting the principles of the self-determination of peoples and nations. The leaders of the victorious nations which, to a large extent, imposed the terms of peace on the defeated nations and dictated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, gerrymandered certain parts of Europe without due regard to ethnological origin or the rudiments of justice. The spoils of the First World War were also divided among the victors in both Asia and Africa. 7. A mere glimpse at the world map after the Second World War reveals that the same gross mistakes were committed by the leaders who won the war for themselves but left a legacy of perpetual conflict for small nations and peoples. Motivated strictly by national interests, they may blindly have sown the seeds of a third global conflict, even before the Charter of the United Nations was signed. What did these leaders do? They bisected countries and partitioned lands without due regard to the wishes of the people. They even went as far as dividing the capital of one of the defeated nations into four zones, which they garrisoned with their own troops. They drew an imaginary line dividing the people of a South-East Asian country. All this and similar arbitrary arrangements were made shortly before and immediately after the United Nations Charter came into being. All this was done by these leaders since they thought this was the best way of establishing international security. In fact, what was done simply duplicated what had happened at Versailles — new spheres of influence were created. 8. This is not all. In spite of the fact that the principle of self-determination was enshrined in the Charter and later elaborated into a well-defined fundamental human right, we find that the great Powers and their clients learned nothing from the blunders of recent history because the right of self-determination was entirely forgotten. Palestine was partitioned in 1947; and in 1953 a South-East Asian country, inhabited by one people, was divided into two separate States that are at war with each other — all this in the name of international security and democracy. 9. All that has happened in the post Second World War era in Europe and South-East Asia is nothing compared with what has befallen the indigenous people of Palestine. While colonies were emerging as free countries in the continents of Asia and Africa following the fall of empires, an alien people from Central and Eastern Europe, most of whom had embraced Judaism in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., and were far from being Semites, usurped the homeland of the indigenous people of Palestine. In 1947, the year of the perfidious Balfour Declaration, the indigenous people of Palestine constituted 94 per cent of the whole population of that country. It is superfluous to mention that neither Balfour personally nor his Government had any right whatsoever to promise an alien people from Europe a homeland in Palestine on the grounds of their religion. Nevertheless, we must state that the dictators at the Versailles Conference endorsed the treacherous Balfour Declaration at the expense of the Palestinian people when President Wilson clamoured for the principle of self-determination. 10. In 1939, the Jewish population of Palestine, which had been placed under a British Mandate, grew by massive immigration, mostly illegal, to one third of the whole population. When the British mandatory Power tried to regulate the immigration that had swollen in the thirties and immediately after the Second World War on account of the resistance of the indigenous people of the land, the Zionists organized several terrorist gangs who literally got away with murder by hanging British Tommies, killing Lord Moyne, as well as massacring Palestinians who persistently resisted this new invasion from Europe under the banner of Zionism. This invasion was not dissimilar to the religious wars of the Middle Ages which were motivated by religion for political and economic ends. The Zionists have claimed Palestine on false and baseless grounds. Time and again our delegation has asked that the usurping State of Israel produce the title deed to Palestine which, it is claimed, the Creator gave to the Jews. By the same token, we ask, did Balfour and those who implemented his foul promise have a power of attorney from God to transfer Palestine to these usurping Zionists? It is indeed ludicrous to put up such claims on the grounds of which these alien Zionists, mainly of Khazar origin, have been granted the right to rob the Palestinians of their land and patrimony. 11. The usurping State of Israel, abetted as it has been by the great Powers and their clients who voted for the partition of Palestine and the ultimate introduction of a foreign element in the body politic and body social of the Middle East, will remain an abscess in the area causing a high fever of tension and perpetual conflict which may, God forbid, plunge the world into another world war. If the Jews, as a persecuted people in Europe, had taken refuge in Palestine and the Middle East, motivated by religious sentiments and not by false political claims, they would have lived at peace with the Semitic indigenous people of Palestine. Instead, they invaded the land with false claims and intimidated the whole population by crimes such as those perpetrated in Deir Yassin and other localities. When these usurping Zionists suspected that Count Bernadotte might level some criticism at them for their dastardly acts, they shot him with impunity. 12. Over a million Palestinian refugees who fled in terror and now live in camps on six or seven cents a day per person, together with compatriots of theirs scattered in many countries, have finally awakened to the fact that all the United Nations resolutions concerning the Palestine question have been futile, having had no impact whatsoever on the usurpers. 13. Consequently they have organized themselves to regain their homeland, as it has dawned upon them that the whole United Nations family is not willing to or capable of rendering them justice and redressing the grievous harm done unto them. These freedom fighters are called terrorists by the Zionists and their cohorts. On the other hand, the forces of resistance that went underground against the Nazis in occupied Europe have been dubbed heroes; so were the Irgun, Zvai Lumi, Stern, Haganah and other gangs who massacred the indigenous people of Palestine, destroyed their homes, killed their cattle and cut down their trees. The Arab people have been galvanized into action by the sacrificial resolve of the people of Palestine to regain their homeland. 14. Neither the late Mr. Churchill nor the late Mr. Roosevelt, nor the late Mr. Stalin for that matter, considered the nazi conquest of European territories as a fait accompli. can assure the General Assembly that the occupation of Palestine by these alien people, the non-Semitic Khazars of Central and Eastern Europe, will never be considered a fait accompli by the whole Arab people — a hundred million of them who are steadfast in their faith that, as in the past, usurpers come and usurpers go but ultimately the Palestinian people will regain their homeland. 15. As far as Jerusalem is concerned, let me be explicit once more about our position, which has repeatedly been made clear since the desecration of that Holy City by the invader. This is not the first time that Jerusalem has fallen into the hands of alien conquerors. Where are these conquerors now? They are but names in the annals of history. Jerusalem is as holy to Islam as it is to the other monotheistic religions. If the Christian nations, whose populations number about a billion, do not care about Jerusalem falling into the hands of Zionists, who, incidentally, are a mere fraction of world Jewry estimated at about 17 million, let me make it patently clear that over 600 million Moslems will not continue to remain with their arms folded and accept the spurious claims of those Zionists who are unwittingly creating a world problem which may very well make a scapegoat of innocent Jews, especially in the Western world, where Zionist activists have wormed themselves into the policy-making machinery of governments, including legislative bodies, quite apart from controlling the mass media of information. 16. The Islamic Summit Conference held from 22 to 25 September 1969 in Rabat has shown the whole world that the Islamic world has been jolted into a consciousness of the danger that threatens its first kiblah. The sincere solidarity and the fervent fraternal spirit manifested at Rabat is only the beginning. It is the dawn of Islamic unity all over the world. The millstones of Islam may grind slowly but they will grind and grind and grind until, God willing, Jerusalem and the whole land of Palestine is restituted to its legitimate owners, who have been denied their right of self-determination by pressures and conspiracies inside and outside the United Nations. 17. While we are aware of the multifarious problems facing this Assembly, my Government wishes to reiterate its unequivocal position regarding Jerusalem and Palestine because of its deep concern with this question, which, as you may have noticed, constitutes the theme of my statement before this Assembly. If peace with justice is to bypass the peoples of Palestine, we predict a continuous state of conflict and turmoil in the Middle East. Should this be the case, we also fear that a third world war may be inevitable. The turn of events in the Middle East will, therefore, determine the fate of the United Nations. Either this Organization will follow the same pattern as that of the League of Nations, which led to its disintegration, or it will muster enough courage to rise above petty national interests and the policy of spheres of influence pursued by the super-Powers irrespective of the aspirations of peoples struggling for their independence and the redemption of their sovereignty. 18. In conclusion, I should like to state that His Majesty King Faisal and my Government still hope that, before it is too late, the better part of wisdom will prevail, especially among the great Powers, which, if they wish, can pave the way for peace in the Middle East by having real justice done unto the indigenous people of Palestine. 19. I cannot bring this statement to an end without invoking God’s guidance to us all.