55. Madam President, our congratulations
upon your election to preside over the twenty-fourth
session of the General Assembly, necessarily evoke
in our mind the rise of the great continent of Africa to
independence and dignity, and the renaissance of its role
and culture. You symbolize this great emancipation, and
you symbolize our hope that the remaining part of Africa
still under colonial domination shall be free and sovereign.
56. You succeed a distinguished son of another great
continent that is marking our era with its renaissance; Latin
America. Mr. Arenales succumbed prematurely, after a
strenuous session, to the eventual fate of all human beings.
We address to his country, Guatemala, to his Government
and to the Latin American continent our deepest and
heartfelt condolences.
57. Madam President, a recurrent theme in the general
debate so far has been, as it was in past years, self-examination
and self-criticism and your own opening address
[1753rd meeting] eloquently set the tone. Any sensitive
observer, viewing the discrepancies between the elevated
ideals of the Charter and the tragic state of the world, must
welcome this spirit of introspection. For, as the Secretary-General,
with understatement, put it in the introduction to
his annual report, “the deterioration of the international
situation, which I noted ... last year, has continued”
[A/7601/Add.1, para. 1].
58. We are indeed worlds away from the high hopes for a
new world of law and international comity as envisaged by
the founders and drafters of the Charter. Two possible
explanations for the failure come to mind. One is that man
is incorrigible. He refuses to learn and persists in the blind
pursuits of the law of the jungle. However, the nobility of
the Charter, drafted by men, repudiates this pessimism. The
second explanation for the disparity is that, in our
preoccupation here with the legalisms, the cynicisms and
evasions of diplomacy, we have shut our hearts and minds
to the world of men we say we represent.
59. There are 104 items on the agenda of this session. All
of us, in moments of genuine honesty, confess to our
inadequacy in coping with all of them in any satisfactory
manner. But despite this feeling of inadequacy, I mention
this agenda because, if examined closely, it reads like an
inventory of the hopes and fears, of the progress and
failures of those we are mandated to serve, “the peoples of
the United Nations”. From economic development to
human environment, from the outer reaches of space to the
beds of the ocean, from apartheid to the education of
youth in respect for human rights; these offer some
examples of the dimensions of the problems we are
expected to define, analyse and resolve. We shall fail this
constituency of ours — “the peoples” of the world — if we
persist in attempting to filter out and reduce these issues to
the old and worn, the narrow and stringent formalism and
procedural amenities. Time has little patience, and the
substance of these agenda items is somewhere in the hearts
and minds of men all over the world.
60. There is no more dramatically visible evidence of this
impatience of “the peoples” than in the youth of the world
today. Their yearning to be free of wars, poverty, racism
and depersonalized lives transcends systems of economics
and social structures. Their revulsion challenges presidents
and kings, and the challenge is eloquent. I shall have more
to say about one Middle East manifestation of this
phenomenon later. But for now it may be merely noted
that the expanding resistance and liberation forces, whether
it be in the Middle East or over the world, are a revolt
against the lack of understanding of man. This revolt is in
essence one and the same as the revolt, let us say of the
American youth, and indeed of the world at large, against
the immorality, barbarism and inhuman war in Viet-Nam
against a heroic people that has decided to live in
independence and dignity.
61. This phenomenon, then, in the Middle East is symptomatic
of the youth movement everywhere. In our maturity
we would do well to read the world-wide phenomenon
carefully and correctly, unflattering as it may be to our
pre-occupation with form. In fact, our obligation to heed
what youth is saying is dictated by more than any wisdom
we may have acquired with years. That obligation comes
from the Charter itself. Its first words say that all we do
here must be designed “to save succeeding generations from
the scourge of war...” Therefore, I submit that if we are
to meet this highest obligation, this session of the General
Assembly had better turn from power-plays to humanity,
from wasteful and endless formalities to determining the
moral equities at the heart of each of the great problems we
are asked to confront. “Peoples” and “generations” are two
generic, dynamic terms inscribed in the first lines of the
Charter that have initiated throughout the history of
mankind the greatest movements of history.
62. Let me now tum to some specific items on this
agenda.
63. On the subject of colonialism, the process of decolonization
has reached stagnation. The Secretary-General has
adequately described how the flagrant and massive violation
of human rights and fundamental liberties in such regions as
southern Africa continues unabated. The problems of
Southern Rhodesia, the colonies under Portuguese domination
and Namibia, and indeed the continuing discrimination
against the masses of innocent people in South Africa and
the suppression of the rights of the people of Oman under
the presence of the Sultan’s sovereignty, are all only
manifestations of reaction against sweeping historical progress.
Far from extinguishing the liberation movements,
suppression only stimulates this noble struggle.
64. Sovereign States, particularly those adjacent to the
territories under colonial rule, rightly feel it their duty to
extend support to this struggle, Indeed, the resolutions of
the General Assembly call for such support. But the
colonial forces think it then appropriate to proceed to
aggressive encroachments on the territories of sovereign
States. The Security Council has been seized of numerous
complaints by the United Republic of Tanzania, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia against
those flagrant encroachments.
65. The urgency of sober reflection on ways and means to
arrest this deterioration is only increased by two nefarious
symptoms. On the one hand, the colonial forces are uniting
their energies to better defend their bastions of reaction.
On the other hand, they continue to receive huge military
and economic assistance from their allies, in complete
disregard of United Nations resolutions, quite apart from
the support of monopolies mercilessly exploiting the
economic and human resources of the African and Asian
continents.
66. The strengthening of the United Nations organs to
deal with the remaining problems of colonialism cannot
serve, therefore, but to make possible the achievement of
the solidarity so much to be desired among the freedom-loving
and justice-loving States. Otherwise, the defiance on
the part of the colonial forces to the collective will of the
nations will continue and will drag the world into the abyss
of war and darkness.
67. It is with these dangers in mind that we find great
merit in the proposals of the Foreign Minister of the Soviet
Union for strengthening international peace and security.
Equally important is his call for a convention banning
chemical and bacteriological weapons.
68. In the context of world order, we continue consistently
to maintain that preventing China from regaining its
legitimate seat in the United Nations negates the basic
principle of the universality of the Charter. To persist
obstinately in this course is an exercise in futility, with dire
consequences to the world at large. We also support the call
to invite the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to
participate in the debate on this question. The goals of
unifying and rehabilitating Korea are the tasks of the
Koreans themselves, who must be able to exercise their
self-determination without interference from outside
powers.
69. In this context, we support the admission of the
German Democratic Republic to the United Nations. That
country is the eighth industrial State of the world, and my
country, Syria, has so far enjoyed very fruitful co-operation
with the German Democratic Republic on the basis of
mutual respect and understanding.
70. In examining the state of world economy, we find it
equally alarming. Thus far, international efforts to accelerate
the growth of the developing countries have been
inadequate. The Preparatory Committee for the Second
United Nations Development Decade is progressing very
slowly, and, as the Secretary-General appropriately stated
in the introduction of his annual report, “there is
evidence ... of the difficulty of reaching agreements on
priorities within a relatively limited number of sectors of
the United Nations family of organizations” [A/7601/Add.1, para. 84].
We feel that efforts should be intensified
in order to agree on the targets in various economic sectors
of the international development strategy.
71. Unfortunately, the record concerning agreement on,
and implementation of, international measures to help the
developing countries is not encouraging. Progress in the
field of granting the developing countries freer access to the
markets of the developed market-economy countries has,
thus far, been very inadequate. When we examine the
record concerning the provision of development assistance,
we find that, in general and with the exception of two
countries, there is no progress towards the achievement of
the one per cent gross national product net aid target.
72. Allow me now to take up the explosive and tragic
crisis of the Arab homeland, otherwise referred to among
the agenda items of this session as the Middle East crisis. It
is quite understandable that my delegation should devote
the largest part of its attention to this matter. Let me
plunge into the heart of the problem and begin with an
intriguing phrase from the address of the Foreign Minister
of Israel. Referring to the past year in the Middle East, he
said: “Nothing has gone as rational men expected” [1757th
meeting, para. 163]. Now this is a particularly presumptuous
statement, for what the Foreign Minister really means
is that nothing has gone as Israel’s militarists expected.
73. Unfortunately for the Foreign Minister, the memories
of other parties to the conflict are as operative as those of
the Israelis, and those memories are even longer than the
Foreign Minister tries to suggest. His country’s present
complaint is that there is no respect for what he calls “the
cease-fire lines”. The Israeli Foreign Minister then seeks to
justify the continuing Israeli occupation of territory by
saying: “... representatives of diverse traditions and cultures
have raised their voices ... against the illusion that
there could be changes in the cease-fire lines except in the
context of peace.” [Ibid., para. 168.]
74. Now, I must say candidly that I do not know what
this language means, or, at least, what the Foreign Minister
of Israel thinks it ought to mean to this world body. Who
are “representatives of diverse traditions and cultures” and
what is their competence here? And what is their status in
the context of the enactments of this Assembly or those of
the Security Council?
75. The meaning of the Charter is clear. It is inadmissible
to acquire territory by conquest and war. We have here a
classic example, in the history of Palestine, of the kind of
duplicity, the effort to cover substance with form, which is
at the root of the rebellion of “the peoples” of the world.
This body has yet to hear from the Foreign Minister of
Israel the solemn pledge of that State to yield the territories
acquired by war. On the contrary, we and the peoples of
the world, are advised that because of the Israeli memory,
Israel can “never ... return to the political anarchy and the
physical and territorial vulnerability ...” [ibid., para. 165]
which, so he says, obtained until June 1967. I profoundly
regret to say that the President of the United States gave
aid and comfort to this Zionist Israeli expansionism. “We
are convinced”, President Nixon said, “that peace cannot
be achieved on the basis of substantial alterations in the
map of the Middle East” [1755th meeting, para. 65]. How
substantial and altered by what methods, if at all? Is the
virtual annexation of Arab Jerusalem “substantial”? Is the
planting of new settlements on the Golan heights and the
west bank of the Jordan “substantial”? Is the published
plan for installing military bases in Sinai “substantial”? Is
the eviction of half a million people by force, after the
Israeli aggression, “substantial”?
76. I do not wish here to indulge in mere polemics with
either the President of the United States or Israel’s Foreign
Minister, but I would be performing less than my duty if I
passed over these expositions of policy in silence. Furthermore,
this body would discharge less than its moral
obligation if it were persuaded that either or both of those
interpretations were consistent with the spirit and letter of
the Charter or with the many General Assembly and
Security Council resolutions. In the plain language of the
peoples of the world, the Israeli Foreign Minister is saying
that peace must be assured before Israel agrees to terminate
the Zionist practices which brought conflict into the area
half a century ago. That is surely putting the cart before the
horse, and this body, and the world, should see which is the
cart and which is the horse. If the way to peace is, as
Mr. Eban says, through negotiations, then it should also be
said that negotiations cannot include how much of the
inadmissibly acquired territories Israel will restore to their
rightful sovereignties. It is as simple as that.
77. It is a source more of hurt than anger and of
disillusion more than indignation, that now the President of
the United States has qualified the inadmissibility of
acquiring territory by war by saying that such acquisition 1s
acceptable if only it is not “substantial”. President Nixon,
the President of the great Power which was party to the
Tripartite Agreement in 1950, has now watered down that
commitment to read only “substantial integrity”. I am
sadly reminded that some three decades ago the sovereign
of the speaker who preceded me, the Emperor of Ethiopia,
stood as a lone and tragic figure before the League of
Nations pleading for the protection of the integrity of his
realm. The acceptance of aggression then, it is now realized,
destroyed the efficacy and the credibility of the League of
Nations.
78. There is a more technical aspect to the language used
by Israel’s Foreign Minister and I will examine it now, after
having studied the morals involved. The Israeli Foreign
Minister referred to the “cease-fire line” and, in fact, the
incessant stream of Israeli propaganda constantly employs
the term. However, the Israeli Foreign Minister, who is so
scrupulous in his selection of words, must know that by the
findings of the Security Council there is no such thing as
“a cease-fire line”.
79. On 11 June 1967, the representative of Nigeria stated
in the Security Council:
“In the course of the debate... a new phrase has
gradually come into circulation, that is the phrase
'cease-fire line'.” Lest it be accepted merely by default, let
me say ... that we do not understand that there is a
cease-fire line. There are the armistice lines. There is the
cease-fire order which means that troops should stay
where they are and that any movement, north, south, east
or west, except such movement as to return from the
scene of battle to one’s own home ground, is a violation
of the cease-fire.“
80. That definition of the technical situation existing still
today was emphasized at that same meeting by the
representative of the United Kingdom. There was no dissent
in the Security Council, which means that the Security
Council unanimously accepted that legal definition.
81. The question as to whether or not there was a
cease-fire line was more than difficult in those turbulent
days of 1967. This point was clarified in the context of a
debate over which party to the conflict persisted in
violating the cease-fire, until it reached a certain strategic
point where it had wished all the time to establish a line.
That is what is important, for it really reveals which party
in 1967 welcomed the war and was motivated by territorial
ambitions, and which party was really fighting in defence.
82. We have been lectured by Israel’s Foreign Minister on
the elementary role of negotiations in any transition from
war to peace. Israel’s insistence upon direct negotiations as
the only way to any settlement must be judged as another
of those diversions which try to substitute form for
substance. It may sound plausible, but it is not constructive.
It may sound like generosity, but it is really arbitrary
and authoritarian.
83. Once again I revert to the Charter. Article 33 expresses
the earnest will of this Organization to pursue every means
in realizing the hopes of the peoples to be free from the
scourge of war. It lists, eight recognized and accepted
methods of seeking solutions to international problems.
The authors of the Charter must have had reasons for
adding the other seven. Certainly they were aware of the
fact that they were not putting together a book of synonyms.
84. This Assembly and the peoples of the world need to
know that in rejecting direct negotiations the Arabs have
neither elected war over peace or asked for anything that is
not within the letter of the Charter. Again, form must not
be confused with substance, and rigidity regarding form
should be examined carefully so as to be sure it is not a
pretext for more fait accompli diplomacy. Is Israel to be
allowed to dictate what the Charter means, and does this
body believe that Israel is subject to that Charter, or, by
some mystique which some of us do not understand, is
Israel entitled to play the role of judge and jury at the same time?
85. Then there is the ultimate question of “in whose
interest” and for what peoples of the world are we to make
peace in the Middle East? That crucial question raises for
examination the important element of a vital interest in
peace, making it a condition that both sides will wish to
maintain. President Nixon paid deference to this indisputable
element in any meaningful peace in his statement
of 18 September 1969 [1755th meeting]. He did not, of
course, explain how the “minimal conditions” of the
cease-fire resolution represented a vital interest for the
Arab, although he said that those conditions must prevail if
any settlement is to be reached [ibid., para. 64]. Nor did he
explain how. an invasion of the territorial integrity of three
Arab States, Members of the United Nations, is a vested
Arab interest if only the invasion is something less than
“substantial”.
86. Mr. Eban is always somewhat clearer about the
“vested interests” the Arabs will realize if they would only
make peace on the basis of whatever happens to be Israel’s
latest bargaining position. He is always intoning a song
about the enormous benefits to be reaped by these poor,
backward Arabs from Israel’s progress and enlightenment.
“New stories of co-operation and progress never heard or
told before”, were his own words a fortnight ago. And we
Arabs are supposed to be intoxicated with our own rhetoric
and led to persuade ourselves to dream the impossible
dream!
87. That is what Israel’s Foreign Minister says here for
public consumption. A less informed world will not cease
to wonder how those backward and ungrateful Arabs can
refuse this generous, open and uplifting embrace. But this is
not what Mr. Eban says at home, in the privacy of the
family. In Maariv of 19 December 1968, the “do-good”
Mr. Eban is quoted as saying: “The United States of
America should acknowledge the fact that Israel is an
acquisition for it and not a burden.” A less authoritative
spokesman echoed that sentiment, plus some embellishments,
in Haaretz, another of Israel’s major newspapers:
”We must tell the United States of America, if you stop
supporting us unconditionally ... you will be the one to
suffer; you will be squeezed out of the Middle East.”
88. It is indeed too strong a temptation to resist plagiarizing
the name of a popular American TV programme and
to ask: “Will the real Mr. Eban please stand up?”
89. I can allow for inaccuracies in the Press, even in the
Press of Israel, but the evidence is rather impressive that
something more than any objective inventory of America’s
present national interests in the Middle East motivates its
unconditional support for Israel. Whatever happened to
Mr. Nixon’s “new initiatives“ we were told about in his
electoral campaign and where has Governor Scranton been
exiled, following his simple appeal for a more “even-handed”
policy in the Arab world? Under what definition
of even defensive armaments does the United States supply
Israel with offensive Phantoms except to help Israel
consolidate its latest conquests and continue to terrorize
the Arab homeland? I shall not dwell at length on this
United States-Israeli collusion. The Prime Minister and
Foreign Minister of Sudan, in his brilliant statement in this
Assembly, has given an inventory of that unconditional
United States assistance to militaristic Zionism and Israel.
But one ominous fact must, be added now. Mrs. Meir in her
visit has already “shopped”, we are told, 150 Sikorsky
helicopters, the same as those used by the United States in
Viet-Nam, for only $350 million. What for? Is it ta
transform Israel, that “bastion of democracy” into some
other “bastion” — when the Viet-Nam war is finished - known
only to President Nixon, the Pentagon, the Central
Intelligence Agency and the super spies of the United
States, whose horrid crimes from the little that has become
known in Viet-Nam and elsewhere, are now every day
filling the front pages of the Press all over the world? Do
those things agree with the moral exhortations and preachings
of international ethics that have been hypocritically
spoken from this rostrum? Or is it, I ask — and wait for an
answer - for any horrible eventuality still in store for the
Arabs and for the world at large from the loving United
States and Israel?
90. Certainly, one question which both the United States
and Israel need to answer is whether any given settlement is
really in the vested interests of “the peoples” of the Middle
East, including those Jews who have legitimate claims to
life in Palestine; or whether a settlement is to be with an
Israel which is “an acquisition” of the United States as the
Foreign Minister of Israel said. If it is the latter, then we
authentic Middle Easterners ask, what are the vested
interests of the United States for which Israel serves as an
“acquisition”? The effort for peace is not a game of poker
in which we Arabs will gamble on a blind hole card. We
state our objectives clearly; the recognition and establishment
of the already legislated rights of the Arab Palestinians.
Those are “the peoples” to whom the Israeli Foreign
Minister, in his passion for peace, makes a vague proposal
for “some regional and international responsibility” to
resolve the refugee problem in some “five-year plan”. For
this core of the Palestine problem, the basic one, the Israeli
Foreign Minister is a hearty advocate of international
involvement. However, for the formulation of over-all peace
proposals, the same Foreign Minister says that to look for
help outside the region is “anachronistic”. That again is the
kind of semantic gymnastics which casts suspicions upon
the moral intent of the one who resorts to them. Any
acceptance of such a proposal by this body will not elevate,
but will diminish its moral prestige in a restive, explosive world.
91. I am reminded here of the eloquent words of the great
French writer, Albert Camus, who once said: “There is no
compromise with breach of faith. One has to reject it and
fight it.” Again, on another occasion he wrote words which
apply pointedly to so much that the representatives of
Israel have said: “Some people progress without transition
from speeches about the principles of honour or fraternity
to adoring the fait accompli or the cruelest party.”
92. That is where the Palestine problem stands today, fifty
years after its cruel, insensitive inception and something
more than two years after Israel’s latest, most cruel an
inhumane aggression.
93. Certainly, if there is any responsibility at all in the
so-eloquently heralded “democratic” policies of Israel, then
we Arabs are faced with being asked to accept another fait
accompli which is in clear and arrogant defiance of the
legislation of this international community. The world Press
has indeed been so full of the proclamations of this fait
accompli that it is perhaps unnecessary to recite them here.
Repetition of them is more than mere rhetoric until the
world, aroused by these events, takes them at face value
and, in moral indignation and judicial impartiality, imposes
upon this robber-baron State the just punishment which is
within the lawful power of the community to impose.
94. For example, the colleague of Mr. Eban, Defence
Minister Dayan, who is said to be inspired by the Bible, is
reported in Le Monde on 9 July 1969 to have said:
“The Israeli Government should reject outright the
Security Council resolution [1242 (1967)] of 22 November
1967, which demands, whatever they may say, the
restoration of the occupied Territories, including the
former Jordanian sector of Jerusalem.”
95. That is at feast a more candid and honest stand than
that of Israel’s representatives to this body of world
opinion, where they come and throw dust in the eyes of the
world about their acceptance of the Security Council’s and
General Assembly’s decisions while each day they further
entrench themselves in the newest effort at a fait accompli,
in violation of all those decisions.
96. We Arabs wait for the world’s answer to this frankness.
Meanwhile, history justifies our tempering and such
resistance to the fait accompli as we can muster at present.
97. To submit another declaration which can hardly be
called irresponsible, on 4 August 1969, The New York
Times reported on its front page that Israel’s dominant
political party, meeting in convention, had determined “to
hold” the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and a “considerable
part of Sinai”. Israel has also, apparently, coined a new
language and a new concept of law. With respect to
Jordan’s West Bank territory, it has decided that the Jordan
river will be its “security border”. So, at least in that sector,
we are to be treated to not one but two borders if the
Israeli concept is accepted.
98. Here is another example of Israel’s concept of equality
under the law. All are to be equal, except Israel, which, as
George Orwell put it, is to be “more equal than others“. It
is to have two borders on a frontier while the rest are to be
satisfied with less than one. That is the programme of the
political party to which the silver-voiced Foreign Minister
of Israel owes his political career and distinction. If the
Press reports are to be believed, that self-confessed lineal
descendant of the Old Testament prophets offered no
substantive objection to his political patron’s platform.
99. Listen to Israel’s Prime Minister, speaking for the
record in the Sunday Times of London of 15 June 1969.
Asked if Israel admits “a measure of responsibility” for
“the Palestinians”, that grandmotherly Prime Minister said
categorically: “No, no responsibility whatsoever. ... I do
not know why the Arab refugees are a particular problem in
the world”.
100. Memories of the 1940s when the Zionists, including
Israel’s present Prime Minister, insisted not only that the
abominable treatment of Europe’s Jews by a madman
called Hitler made them a special problem, but, with a logic
never yet explained, insisted also that it was the particular
responsibility of the Arabs of Palestine to provide them and
“the Jewish people” with a State, and lands in violation
of rights which those Arab Palestinians had possessed for
centuries. Small wonder that now, from a position of
conquest and power, the once entreating Zionist, now
Prime Minister, says, in effect: “Who are the Palestinians,
and what are their rights to me?”.
101. Finally, I cannot withhold one more recorded declaration
of Israel’s hero, the Minister of Defence. In the same
edition of Le Monde, of 9 July 1969, he said:
“People abroad ought to realize that quite apart from
their strategic importance to Israel, Sinai, the Golan
Heights, the Tiran Straits and the hills west of the Jordan
lie at the heart of Jewish history. Nor has the restoration
of historical Israel ended yet. Since the return to Zion a
hundred years ago a double process of colonization and
expansion of frontiers has been going on. We have not yet
reached the end of that road: It is the people of Israel
who will determine the frontiers of their own State.”
102. That again is refreshing candour. It is not, I think,
out of order to ask the representative of Israel either to
affirm or to deny that declaration by his fellow Minister. If
he denies it, will he also say clearly so that the world and
we can understand, that his Government, including
Mr. Dayan and his Prime Minister, accept all General
Assembly and Security Council resolutions, with their
requirements of withdrawal from the occupied territories
and their insistence that any party to it has responsibility
for the refugees? If he cannot reject or deny his associate’s
clear declarations, then I submit to this body searching for
peace in the Middle East that nothing compels Israel to stay
within that association. No other Member of this body has
been found guilty of aggression as often as Israel, and those
aggressions have all been committed by Israel’s determination
to surmount the laws of this body and to compel the
world to accept its series of faits accomplis. Israel’s Defence
Minister has said, and I have quoted him as saying, that
”... it is the people of Israel who will determine the
frontiers” of that State.
103. Here I publicly confess my inability to make further
comments on the Arab tragedy. I leave the last word to the
Russian-born former American citizen, now Prime Minister
of Israel, Mrs. Meir. Only last Sunday, 28 September 1969,
she stated:
“Withdrawal is not the issue. The Arabs don’t think it’s
the issue. I think people do them an injustice when they
say that’s the issue. We’re not so fortunate that the
quarrel between us and the Arab countries is a question
of territory — it’s not true. The Arab countries are in lack
of a little more sand. That’s the problem.”
104. Rarely in the history of civilized peoples has man
witnessed such degradation of human values that millions
of people do not count; that their plight is not equal even
to sand, and that all this suffering is tolerable, as long as it
satisfies the “new civilizing mission” of Israel to the Arabs.
Thus the whole Middle Hast crisis and the whole Arab
Palestine tragedy is reduced to “a little more sand” in
Mrs. Meir’s scale of values, and to “no substantial change”
in President Nixon’s dictum. The world must ponder over
this United States-Israeli-Zionist axis.
105. There was one other observation in Mr.Eban’s
Statement which deserves careful analysis and which is
highly relevant to his stated relationship of Israel to the
United States. It is, therefore, relevant also to the relationship
of the United States to the Arab States. Mr. Eban
referred to the “odious picture of Israel’s spiritual heritage
and Jewish solidarities”. It is now time that that language,
also, be examined. In almost every place where the subject
of Palestine is debated, any critical evaluation of Israel’s
and Zionism’s policies is greeted by the slander of “anti-Semitism”
or “anti-Jewish”. It is time, too, that that hypocrisy be ended.
106. This is not a religious question. Let me quote you a
few eloquent words of a young Jew, one of Mr. Eban’s own
constituents, who sees, and publicly proclaims, the differences
between the genuine spiritual heritage of people who
are Jews and the much more recently fabricated Zionism-Israeli
nationality policies, which are exclusory, discriminating,
and therefore in direct contradiction to any spiritual
heritage worth the name. In August of this year at an
international conference in Jerusalem that young Israeli, a
philosopher and a student at the Hebrew University, spoke
these magnificently eloquent and accurate words:
“The Zionist ideologists in the nineteenth century believed
that Palestine was vacant. When they came to
realize that the promised land ... was already occupied,
they were faced with the most difficult dilemma that can
face a human being. ... The Palestinian struggle against
Israel today is not motivated by the mere historical fact
that Israel was initiated in sin, but because Israel has done
nothing to expiate and atone for her sin. Not only did
Israel refuse to admit her sinful birth and atone for it in
concrete practice, but this refusal has, as so often
happens, led her to repeat it twice. Both after the 1956
war and after the 1967 war Israel annexed territory. It is
this, and not Israel’s original sin, that has brought the
Middle East conflict to such monstrous escalation.”
107. What of Mr. Eban’s other phrase, “Jewish solidarities“?
I need not go into detail. The Status Law of 1952,
establishing the relationship between the State of Israel and
the World Zionism Organization and all the other Jewish
agencies is clear enough. What of the United States and why
does it tolerate those operations? Why does it allow
tax-deductible funds to be disbursed to the World Zionist
Organization, which, by law, is charged with serving the
national interests of Israel?
108. Surely, those who are victimized by Zionist money
and political pressures are entitled to make their judgement.
The fact is that the United States Government permits
United States citizens to support acts of belligerency
against the Arab States. Until better answers are given by
the United States, we who are the victims of this
permissiveness may be excused for accepting the explanation
of Israel’s Foreign Minister that “Israel is an acquisition
of the United States” in the heart of the Middle East.
109. I conclude by returning to the theme with which I
began and which you yourself stressed, Madam President, in
the address with which you opened this twenty-fourth
session [1753rd meeting]. Let us not yield to the delusion
that we are doing our best and that the world persists in
misjudging us. You wish us Arabs peacefully to settle the
Palestine problem. Then let us here and now come to grips
with the core-problems of that situation.
110. I have not wearied this Assembly with reminders of
Israel’s flouting of the collective will on Jerusalem. I have
not dignified by rebuttal Israel’s rationalization of that
defiance by claiming a new “white man’s burden”. I have
not supplied statistics of houses bulldozed, of villages
demolished, of holy places defiled, of the burning of the
Al Aqsa Mosque and of one-half million displaced persons. I
have not brought here the detailed indictment of Israeli
occupation now to be found in the testimony taken by the
Commission on Human Rights.
111. The list is long and the spectacle of the world
standing paralysed before this act of lawlessness, of
arrogant defiance and of reliance upon sheer power is, to us
Arabs, both electrifying and tragic. There is today in all of
our lands, the inevitable response to the Zionist stultification
of world morality and law. By the tens of thousands
our youth are disillusioned and have resorted to the only
course open to them — in the absence of any apparent will or
determination to enforce the law — the legitimate use of
force. Palestine has come full circle. The Zionist movement
in the 30s and the 40s introduced organized terrorism into
Palestine in an effort to thwart every attempt to install a
political system which would safeguard Arab rights. Now
the descendants of that Zionism have compelled the
descendants of those victims to the legitimate reaction of
self-defence against annihilation. Let it not be forgotten
that it is Israel which is in occupation of our territories. It is
Israel which says, unilaterally, that it has no intention of
withdrawing from them. It is Israel which says it wishes to
negotiate directly for peace, but which has withdrawn from
the agenda every Arab right and declared them non-negotiable.
112. You ask us to make peace, and I reply, unequivocally,
that we want peace. What we do not want, and will
never accept, is surrender. Let me remind this Assembly
that what is involved here and what has always been
involved in Palestine, is not some geopolitical advantage
which can be facilely manoeuvred. While we do not release
a news report or a blueprint on the occasion of every
tomato we grow, every dunam of land we reclaim, every
factory we build, we, too, are building our place under the
sun of human progress. We have our goals, as a people and
as a nation, and we are determined to achieve them. We
cherish our lands and we husband our resources and we
have our national self-interest. But the Palestine problem is,
above all, a matter of uncompromising and inalienable
human rights. The Zionist-Israeli answer to this core of the
Palestine problem has always been one of condescension,
given with a patronizing air.
113. When all the United Nations resolutions have been
carried out, then the way to peace can be paved, and this
body can bring the international law-breaker to the bar of
justice. It can give the victim the right, given in every
civilized court, of confronting his assailant. Let the Arab
Palestinians be heard here for they were, are and will
remain, the first party to this tragic conflict. Establish the
climate of justice, for only in justice will peace be established.
114. This is the way of peace. It is a way back, to bind the
wounds and to straighten the devious path which has
curved and twisted through thirty years of civil war and
three international wars in twenty years. When that part of
the road to peace is repaired, the design for its extension
into tomorrow will become increasingly clear. In language
which every liberal soul should be able to understand,
without subtlety, deception or sophistry, the Arab resistance
and liberation movements have suggested the broad
character of the highway to peace; a Palestine nation like
other nations, in which human rights are politically
sanctified in a law which respects all, regardless of faith or
race, as equals.
115. That is their prescription tor peace. We pray that
those in Israel who believe much the same will be heard by
that most “democratic” of all Governments. We pray that
all of you will heed their cry, for it is also our cry, as,
indeed, it must be the cry of all civilized people everywhere.
The road to peace can at least be charted by this
body if, for whatever racist or obscure reasons, Israel will
not see the road itself. Or, failing all of these, I can say only
that the Arab knows how to wait. Our patience has
sometimes been construed. as resignation, but that is a
misreading of our character.
116. Let me close, using my voice to speak the words, the
aspirations, the spirit of one of those who should be here
because he and his colleagues are one of the two principals
in the tragedy of Arab Palestine. Not many of you may
know that there is a literature of exile written by suffering
Arab Palestinians. The fact in itself is important. It
demonstrates the fallacy of those who think that the
Palestinians can be dismissed by superficial formulations of
diplomacy. There is among this people a deep, impassioned,
abiding spirit, capable of poetry and songs of tragedy and
bereavement. To them belongs the conclusion to this
statement, for the cry for justice and recognition which
these people send up from the depths of their hearts and
beings is part of the legal evidence you must weigh if you
are to legislate for peace. I quote:
“If I have to forfeit my bread,
“If I have to hawk my spirit and bed,
“If I have to work as stone cutter,
“Or porter,
“Or sweeper,
“If I have to clean your warehouses,
“Rummage in dung for food
“Or starve,
“and subside —
“Enemy of man,
“I shall not compromise!
“And to the end
“I shall fight.
“Go and filch the final strip of my land,
“Ditch my youth in prison holes,
“Plunder my legacy,
“Burn my books,
“Feed your dogs from my dishes,
“Go and spread your net of terror
“Upon the roofs of my village —
“Enemy of man,
“I shall not compromise,
“And to the end
“I shall fight!“
117. Twenty-five hundred years ago, another poet stood
in the land that so many call Holy and cried aloud to the
world:
“Let justice well up as waters
“And righteousness as a mighty stream.
118. I call upon those who now stand astride that Holy
or Land by virtue of force and conquest, and who claim
spiritual descent from that ancient poet, to heed his words.
The two poets state the inescapable choice. Forces are
at already in motion which assume, with the justification of
by history, that the older poet will be ignored.
119. We are all mature enough to know that such forces
feed on themselves as long as the basic conditions which
brought them to life exist. In the wake of those forces will
follow only more devastation, more violence, more human
misery. We must believe man is master of his destiny and
maker of his history, else we would not be here.
120. Let us seize the moment. Let us speak the truth. Let
us separate the substance of diplomacy from its form. Let
us add up the rights and the wrongs. Let us, without
ambiguity or equivocation, identify the international
brigand and as clearly identify the victim. Let us, each of
us, sincerely ask himself and the nation he represents here
how he, or it, would act in similar circumstances. Then let
us leave no stone unturned, no law we have legislated to be
dissipated in casuistry, no tool at our disposal to remain
unused to bring the fundamentally guilty party to justice.
121. That is the programme for peace that we Arabs offer,
and with the offer, our prayers that the spirit of the ancient
poet of justice and righteousness shall prevail. The transference
of the poetry of the despairing Arab freedom
fighter into still more violent action would then be
rendered unnecessary. To that task we pledge our support
and we invite men of genuine goodwill and moral integrity
to join in the fulfilment, by peaceful means, of the work of peace.