Israel, 1969

156. Madam President, the Government and people of Israel,

to whom you are well known, rejoice at your elevation to the

presidency of the General Assembly. We see your election as a

moving tribute to Africa, to its first sovereign Republic,

Liberia, and to your personal distinction. I do not doubt that

you will guide our labours with a firm and experienced hand.

157. We heard with grief of the passing of your eminent

predecessor, Mr. Emilio Arenales, the Foreign Minister of

Guatemala, whose loss will be sharply felt by his countrymen

and by the entire international community.

158. Madam President, in your opening words to the

Assembly [1753rd meeting], you expressed a constructive

disquiet. No other mood befits the realities which we have

come here to discuss. Any serious effort by the United

Nations to serve the human cause must take its starting

point from an attitude of criticism. We have lived a year of

frustration and deadlock. There has been no advance in the

solution of conflicts; and the United Nations has receded

still further towards a marginal role in world affairs.

Its resonance has diminished; and its flame is burning low. Yet

there was never an age which cried out so plainly for

institutions designed to express a planetary spirit. The

forces which draw mankind together in a single destiny

demand that we maintain a unitary framework for international

relations in addition to the normal flow of bilateral

and regional contacts. There is nothing obsolete, there is

nothing premature in the Charter’s central idea. A community

of sovereign nations united in a covenant of law and

peace is the highest vision that the political imagination

of men has been able to conceive. But there is a vast gap

between the vision and the reality; and it grows wider year

by year.

159. The truth is that the effective currents of action and

discourse amongst nations now flow mostly outside these

United Nations walls. This emerges clearly from the record

of the United Nations organ which represents us throughout

the year in the quest for peace and security. Since the

summer of 1968, peace and freedom have been convulsed

in Europe by the flagrant invasion of Czechoslovakia; in

South-East Asia by the continued fighting in Viet-Nam; in

North-East Asia by ominous lightning flashes on the

Russian-Chinese border; in the Middle East by the formal

and effective Egyptian denunciation of the cease-fire; in

Africa by the agony of millions in the Biafran region of

Nigeria.

160. Now, the Security Council was able to do nothing

about the invasion of Czechoslovakia; it has had nothing to

say about the war in Viet-Nam; it has not addressed itself to

the misery of millions of West Africans caught up in a fate

of bloodshed and starvation. It has been silent on the open

repudiation by the United Arab Republic of its own

cease-fire resolution in the Middle East. It has done nothing

yet about the growth of piracy in the air. It has been silent

about the macabre gallows on which scores of victims have

been publicly throttled in the streets of Baghdad; it has had

to listen indulgently to the effort of some Arab States to

launch an outrageous campaign of religious incitement,

reminiscent of the dark ages, in gleeful exploitation of the

deplorable Al Aqsa fire. It has been willing, it has been able,

as in previous years, to adopt resolutions about the Middle

East, and this on two conditions alone: that the texts are

acceptable to the Arab States, and that they contain no

word of specific criticism about the policies or actions of

Arab Governments which have led to the murder of our

citizens and an overt threat to assassinate our State. One

third of the Security Council’s members are States whose

diplomatic relations and sentimental predilections are

exclusively confined to one side of the Middle Eastern

dispute; yet this is the only dispute with which the Council

deals.

161. Political deadlocks and military escalation mark

many of the great conflicts of today, and the causes often

lie outside the power and will of the United Nations; but

this does not absolve us from the duty of self-appraisal. One

salient defect comes to mind, It was frankly expounded by

the late President Arenales in closing the twenty-third

session [1752nd meeting]. Resolutions are adopted in a

rhetorical spirit and by fortuitous majorities without regard

to their equity or prospect of fulfilment. It is no wonder

that they lack moral or judicial force. The difficulty can be

overcome only by resolutely and consistently seeking a

consensus including the interested parties. The United

Nations role should be to encourage agreement between the

Governments at issue, not to sharpen the differences which

separate them. The United Nations, in short, should adopt a

diplomatic rather than a parliamentary approach to its

work. It is built for the conciliation of views and interests,

not for adjudication between them —still less for enforcement.

And beyond this, it should strive to express the common

aspirations of mankind.

162. Cannot this session of the General Assembly, for

example, give dramatic form to the central interests and

yearnings of the peoples for whom we speak? I suggest that

United Nations Day, which falls on 24 October, should this

year be proclaimed as a day of universal cease-fire. On that

day armed action should be halted all over the world; in

Viet-Nam and in Nigeria; along the Soviet-Chinese border;

in all parts of Africa and across all the cease-fire lines in the

Middle East. When all the guns are silent, the leaders of

nations will be able, in that solemn and unparalleled

tranquillity, to hear the urgent voice of mankind yearning

for a world of peace. Of course, a cease-fire does not in

itself solve complex issues. But once a moment of serenity

has for the first time been lived universally across the

world, there may be a reluctance to give it up; and the hard,

long, indispensable road towards negotiated settlements can

be taken everywhere without the savage discord of bombs and shells.

163. It is especially in the Middle East during the past year

that the roar of guns has been constant and no calm

dialogue has been heard. Nothing has gone as rational men

expected. In September 1967 the Arab Governments took a

united decision to refuse negotiation, to withhold recognition,

to reject peace and to avoid the determination of

secure and agreed boundaries with Israel. This graceless

policy has since been maintained and reiterated with a

tenacity worthy of a higher end. Indeed, there has not yet

been any conceptual or political retreat by President Nasser

from his attempt in May 1967 to bring about Israel’s

destruction by strangling encirclement and sudden blockade.

164. Those dramatic events of the summer of 1967 should

not be lost from international memory. To forget them is

to renounce all understanding of the Middle Eastern reality

today. Israel will preserve an eternal and unfading image of

the peril and solitude in which it then stood. We live

intimately with that recollection. We brood upon it day and

night. For it was only by an exceptional vigilance, by

independent responsibility and cruel sacrifice that we

avoided a disaster which would have ended our people’s

historic journey and weighed forever on the conscience of

mankind. Whenever the summer months come by we shall

remember how everything that we loved and cherished

seemed likely to be swept into the flames of war and

massacre, We knew that without victory there would be no

survival. We recall the silence and apathy with which the

Security Council, between one adjournment and the next,

calmly observed the only attempts in modern history to

wipe a sovereign State off the map of the earth. We shall

not forget how the declarations, hopes, expectations,

understandings, promises, commitments on which Israel

had sometimes been advised to rely for its security proved,

in the event, fragile and illusory. We shall, of course,

remember how the conscience of free men everywhere was

roused on Israel’s behalf in deep anguish of spirit—but in

total impotence. And with the memory of the dark long

shadows there will go the recollection of how, in desperate

valour and perfect rectitude, we tore the strangling fingers

from our throats.

165. After all, a people which still remembers its revolts

against ancient tyrannies is not likely to forget the sharper

danger and the larger deliverance which it lived two and a

half years ago. It is a moment that will linger and shine in

the national memory forever—an incomparable moment

that will move all Israel to its ultimate generations; and

from that memory flows duty and resolve. It is our duty

and our resolve to ensure that such perils never recur. Never

can we return to the political anarchy and the physical and

territorial vulnerability which nearly brought about our

doom.

166. Now two years and three months ago the United

Nations, which had not been able to give Israel aid in its

predicament, did rally its moral energies in order to give

judgement on three central issues. It was a negative

judgement, but of great significance. It refused to condemn

the righteous resistance by which Israel has pulled itself

pack from the threshold of destruction. It repeatedly

dismissed by its votes the ridiculous Soviet and Arab charge

that Israel’s refusal to perish should be defined as

"aggression"; and it rejected all proposals for restoring the

situation which had led to one war and which would, if

reproduced, lead inexorably to another.

167. Thus, the discussions held here two years ago

amounted to an implied but incisive criticism of the Arab

hostility which had beset Israel for two decades—and which

has still not been renounced. World opinion rejected

solutions based on a return to the explosive situation of

early June 1967. Voices from all continents echoed that

rejection. An African statesman, the Foreign Minister of the

Ivory Coast, summarized the issue in three short sentences:

“...to advocate a political status quo in the region is

to seek escape from an ugly situation only to be brought

face to face with it once again ... the conflict between

Israel and the Arab world can be resolved only by means

of negotiation... Let but the dialogue begin, and the

solutions will follow.” [1540th meeting, paras. 47 and

49.]

168. Since then representatives of diverse traditions and

cultures have raised their voices in favour of a new and

stable regional order; against the vision that there could be

changes in the cease-fire line except in the context of

peace; in favour of establishing agreed permanent boundaries

and other arrangements ensuring security from terror

and war; against the ambiguities of an obsolete armistice; in

favour of a permanent peace to be duly agreed and

contractually confirmed.

169. This then is our position. The road back to the

explosive and fragile armistice situation is closed, but the

path leading forward to peace is wide open. Our business is

to ensure that a new story of co-operation and progress

never heard or told before, shall now be enacted in the

history of the Middle East.

170. But, unfortunately, the Arab policies in the past 12

months have been designed to close such horizons from

view. If we ask ourselves why there has been no progress

towards peace in the past year, we come back to the simple

fact that there has been no negotiation. In international

disputes the existence of negotiations does not ensure

success; but the absence of negotiations is an iron guarantee

of failure. The principle "no negotiation with Israel"

proclaimed at Khartoum in 1967, repeated ever since and

maintained with total obduracy stands out as an

insuperable barrier to peace.

171. The emphasis that any Government places on negotiation

is not an obsession with procedure. It is the heart

and centre of the problem. For a refusal to negotiate is

inherently identical with a refusal to establish peace. How

can a transition from prolonged belligerency to peaceful

co-existence be carried out on the basis of diplomatic

boycott and ostracism? Never, never in the history of our

times have two States passed from a state of war to a state

of peace on the basis of a refusal by one to meet the other.

There are apparently laws in international life, just as there

are laws in nature and in society. A refusal to negotiate

implies the lack of any common political or juridical

ground from which the parties can advance towards the

harmonization of their interests.

172. In particular, it is an error to regard the United

Nations as a substitute for direct settlement; that is the

opposite of what this Organization is meant to be. The

United Nations is an instrument for ending conflicts, not an

arena for waging them. It expresses its highest ends only

when it serves as a bridge, not as a wedge. There is no

parallel in international life for the refusal of States to

recognize another State, except for the purpose of exercising

a state of war against it, The alternative to a directly

negotiated settlement would, at best, be the formulation of

vague, ambivalent, unchecked arrangements open to contrary

interpretations—like the arrangements of 1957 which

fell down like a house of cards within a few hours in 1967.

The collapse of the 1957 arrangements had much to do

with the fact that Egyptian responsibility was never directly

affirmed or contractually engaged in 1957. We also learned

a stark and unforgettable lesson in 1967 about the fragility

of international guarantees and Security Council safeguards

in the present state of the world’s power balance. We carry

this lesson forward into our future history and policy.

173. To these considerations of principle we must add

those of effectiveness. It is only in the context of

negotiation that the parties at interest will see the augury of

a new era in their relations. It is only then that the

discussion will pass from the rhetorical and polemical phase

to the concrete, detailed formulation of specific positions

on all the matters at issue. Refusal to negotiate creates a

tense, suspicious and sceptical atmosphere. Agreement to

negotiate would open currents of thought and efforts of

imagination utterly different from anything that we have

known or that we can now conceive. I would not be

overstating the case if I were to say that the idea of passing

from war to peace without negotiation is far less realistic

than that of flying to the moon. The fact is that the moon

has once been attained by mortal man, whereas peace

without negotiation has never in all history been achieved

at all.

174. The principles formulated by the Security Council in

November 1967 [see resolution 242 (1967)] cannot have

meaning or utility unless they are interpreted and given

precision by negotiation. When the original sponsors and

supporters of that resolution commended it to us as a

framework for Ambassador Jarring’s mission, they stated to

us categorically that it was a negotiating framework. It was

drafted, as the United States representative said a year ago,

as a skeleton of principles on which peace could be erected.

It was not meant to be self-executing.

175. In November 1967 the United Kingdom representative

said that the resolution that he was presenting to the

Security Council was not a call for "a temporary truce or a

superficial accommodation". He said that it reflected a

refusal "to be associated with any so-called settlement

which was only a continuation of a false truce" [1379th

meeting]. He stated further that the "action to be taken

must be within the framework of a permanent peace, and

withdrawal must be to secure boundaries" [1381st meeting].

It was made clear in the Security Council that

secure and recognized boundaries have never existed in the

Middle East or in any of the engagements of the parties

towards each other. Therefore, they must be fixed by the

parties themselves as part of the peace-making process.

176. Experience exists in order that men may learn

something from it. Instead of arguing about theory, why

should we not look to the experience of the past 28

months? Every possible substitute for normal negotiating

procedure has been tried: special sessions of the General

Assembly, regular sessions of the General Assembly,

meetings of the Security Council, separate encounters of

the United Nations Special Representative with some

Middle Eastern Governments, talks between four permanent

members of the Security Council, consultations

between two permanent members of the Security

Council—all these techniques and devices have been tried—

and nothing has moved forward. Surely if those involved in

all this activity have not found an effective substitute for

negotiation, it is not through lack of perseverance or skill; it

is simply because no such substitute exists. So after these

28 months, I come back to repeat with increased conviction

what I said to the Arab Governments at this rostrum in

June 1967:

“You have chosen repeatedly to meet us in the arena of

battle. You cannot refuse to meet us at the negotiating

table.”

177. The absence of negotiation, of course, during the

past 12 months is only the symptom of a wider alienation.

Organized hostility towards Israel has been methodically

intensified. It has taken three forms: first, the cease-fire

concluded in pursuance of the Security Council’s resolution

of 6 June 1967 [233 (1967)] has been constantly violated

and subsequently denounced. The formal denunciation

took place in the address by President Nasser on 23 July

this year, when he said:

"The cease-fire cannot be eternal... and we now have

to fight. We are now beginning the work of liberation.

The six-day war has not ended. The two-year war, the

three-year war, the four-year war has begun."

178. Secondly, the Arab Governments which have not

denounced the cease-fire consider themselves in some cases

entitled to pursue armed conflict through the terrorist

organizations. The actions of terrorist groups are not a

consequence of the 1967 war; they were one of its main

causes. The problem has nothing essentially to do with the

fact that Israel is administering large areas under a cease-fire

arrangement. The terrorist assaults came before the June

1967 war, and they would be renewed with far more

devastating and perhaps fatal results if Israel were to move

from the cease-fire lines before and without the establishment

of peace, which, of course, it is under no obligation to

do. The nature and quality of these groups are revealed by

the methods which they employ: a bomb is thrown into a

supermarket filled with housewives doing their shopping; a

hand-grenade is diabolically placed in a university cafeteria;

a car laden with dynamite is introduced into a crowded

market place where-humble people transact the simple

business of their lives; civilian aircraft are kidnapped or

attacked on the ground in exploitation of their incomparable

vulnerability. All this activity has no durable

political effects. Israel’s existence is not affected by it. Not

a single inch of the cease-fire territory changes hands as a

result of it. Thus the murder of innocent men, women and

children becomes not a means to an end, but an end in

Itself-a dead-end leading nowhere except to bitterness and

rancour. If anything, Israel’s resolve never to change the

cease-fire lines except by permanent peace and in favour of

agreed boundaries becomes more passionate than ever.

179. What is threatened is not the existence of Israel but

the prospect of peace. The ideal and objective of these

organizations is that peace must be banished from the life

and prospect of the Middle East. What they do is consistent

what they want. Their mission is not liberation but the

destruction of the liberty which a small nation has already

won and the enslavement of the Middle East to a destiny of

hate and war.

180. Thirdly, the repudiation of the cease-fire and the

growth of terrorist activity have been crowned by a recent

innovation: hostility to Israel has burst out of the limits

which have restricted the techniques of war in all but the

most hideous and extreme conflicts. After all, war with all

its cruelty and inhumanity is unfortunately the work of

human beings. It has only in rare cases been conducted

without any inhibition. Today we find Arab organizations,

supported by Governments, destroying these civilized restraints.

They carry out revolting public hangings in

Baghdad streets. They maintain an unbridled religious

incitement worthy of the most bigoted phases of the

Middle Ages. They involve neutral States in their own

savagery and they add a new element by allotting a role to

children. When a million of our children were murdered

two and a half decades ago, that was held to be the ultimate

enormity. Today we see a new refinement: the training of

children to be murderers in a cause remote from their

understanding and judgement.

181. So at the worst moments of rancour and alienation,

we and others have hoped vainly for a future better than

the past. We now find Arab leaders projecting their

belligerency into the coming generation; a violent anti-Jewish

racialism now dominates the Arab educational

movement and it spills over into every street.

182. I stress these points because wars have their origin in

the soil of ideas. When President Nasser speaks in August

1969, a few weeks ago, of the necessity to "purify"

Palestine by armed force, he proves that his mind is still

faithful to the concepts by which he disrupted the Middle

Eastern structure in May 1967—"to purify Palestine". He

talks as though he is appointed by destiny to cleanse the

Middle East from some defilement. Where does that

language come from? Where have we heard it before?

What memories does it evoke?

183. The military and diplomatic consequences of such

virulent ideas are now evident. The military results have

been the denunciation of the cease-fire. The indulgence and

support of attacks by irregular units have resulted in the

transference of the fighting to the soil of other countries.

When Arab Governments shelter and sponsor those who

carry out or plan violent actions in the territories of Greece,

Italy, Switzerland, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, the

Philippines, and the Federal Republic of Germany, or when

those Governments fail to condemn and suppress those

actions, they show contempt not only for Israel’s sovereignty

but for the sovereignty of European and other

countries as well. They also adopt methods and arenas of

combat in which Israel, in accordance with its own

conceptions of international civility, is unwilling to make

any identical response. So much for the military story.

184. The diplomatic history can be more briefly told. In

October 1968 the United Arab Republic, followed by other

Arab States, broke off contact with Israel through the

Jarring mission in New York. In April 1969 the Arab

Governments, led by the United Arab Republic, formally

outlined their policies in written replies to Ambassador

Jarring. In its text, the United Arab Republic, while

professing to accept the Security Council’s resolution of 22

November 1967 [242 (1967)], refuses to abandon belligerency

unless the armistice lines of 1967 are totally

restored, whereas there is, of course, no resolution seeking

the restoration of those lines.

185. The United Arab Republic’s reply abstains from

specifically acknowledging Israel’s right to live in peace

within secure and recognized boundaries, free from acts or

threats of force. Cairo accepts that right for what it calls

"every State"—a phrase which in Egyptian practice and

doctrine has never included Israel.

186. It will be recalled that in October 1956, and many

times thereafter, Egypt agreed to give free passage in the

Suez Canal for every State in the world. Now, what did that

mean? "Every State in the world" has meant every State,

except for the eternal exception.

187. The Egyptian reply ignores the injunction to seek

agreement with Israel—although this is the operative part of

the resolution—and the United Arab Republic says that the

“secure and recognized boundaries” for Israel are those

which Arab violence swept away in 1947 and 1948.

188. The Egyptian reply declines to specify that the

freedom of navigation prescribed by the Security Council

resolution includes freedom of navigation for Israel. Egypt

deliberately avoids response to Mr. Jarring’s question

whether it understands the Suez Canal and the Gulf of

Aqaba to be international waterways open to Israel, and

not merely to what Cairo calls "all States".

189. Finally, the United Arab Republic declines to conclude

and sign treaties with Israel establishing peace by

reciprocal consent. It is prepared to conclude agreements

with the Security Council, with which the United Arab

Republic is not at war, with which it does not have a

common boundary, and in which Israel’s cause cannot be

defended or sustained. Nowhere is there any acknowledgement

that the relations between the Arab States and Israel

are governed not only by a Security Council text, which

Cairo interprets as compatible with the Khartoum decisions,

but also by the established norms and principles of

international law relating to the duties of States and to the

transition from war to peace.

190. Now, the suspension of the Jarring mission came in

April this year. There has been no forward movement since

then. Consultations between the permanent members of the

Security Council have, predictably, given no results. The

Soviet Union has not been willing to deviate from the Arab

positions or to accept the view advanced by the United

States that direct meetings between Israel and its neighbours

are essential at some stage, if agreement is to be reached.

191. Thus the Arab position, in our eyes, amounts to this:

that Israel should give up its security, without obtaining a

genuine, normal, stable, irrevocable binding peace. Now, we

shall do no such thing. After 21 years of siege and

thousands of years of struggle to maintain and preserve an

identity, we cannot put Israel’s existence under a mark of

interrogation which hovers over no other nation, least of all

over the Arab nation, in its 14 States and its continental

expanse.

192. The question is whether we can now break out of the

deadlock into a humane and rational order of relations. To

this problem my colleagues and I in the Israel Government

have given renewed attention in recent days. I wish to take

the General Assembly into the knowledge and understanding

of our views.

193. The first priority belongs to the renewal and reinforcement

of the cease-fire. Now, the cease-fire, as pro-posed

by the Security Council, was voluntarily accepted by

the Arab States as well as by Israel in June 1967. Its

acceptance served an Arab interest then, just as its renewal

would be in their interest as well as in ours now. The

cease-fire resolution was unconditional; it was not limited

in time or scope. No diplomatic effort can prosper without

a complete and unconditional cease-fire. United Nations

observers, for all their effort and sacrifice, cannot help to

maintain a cease-fire if the leading Arab Government

regards it as null and void.

194. I propose on Israel’s behalf that each of the

Governments which accepted the cease-fire resolution of

6 June 1967 [233 (1967)] should now pledge anew its

strict adherence to its terms. But the maintenance of the

cease-fire requires practical measures to give it effect. I

therefore propose further that authorized military representatives

of the forces facing each other across the cease-fire

lines should meet in order to work out effective arrangements

for strict and reciprocal observance. This proposal is

in full conformity with many United Nations precedents.

195. But while the prevention of war is our most urgent

task, this does not exhaust our duty. The consolidation of

the cease-fire should be followed, and indeed accompanied,

by a purposeful effort to promote a lasting peace. The

States of the Middle East should declare their readiness to

establish permanent peace, to liquidate their 21-year-old

conflict, and to negotiate detailed agreements on all the

matters at issue between them.

196. In a communication to Ambassador Jarring on

2 April 1969 Israel included all these undertakings. It also

declared that:

“...it accepts the Security Council resolution

242 (1967) calling for the promotion of agreement on the

establishment of a just and lasting peace to be reached by

negotiation and agreement between the Governments

concerned. Implementation of agreements should begin

when agreement has been concluded on all their provisions.”

197. In discussing the arrangements, the venue and the

agenda for negotiations, we could make full use of the good

offices of Ambassador Jarring. Twenty years ago Israel and

the Arab States found it possible to devise agreed arrangements

for meeting in order to negotiate and sign armistice

agreements. Is it really beyond our will and capacity to

make agreed arrangements now for meeting in order to

negotiate and sign peace treaties? Let us, the Foreign

Ministers of Israel and the Arab States take advantage of

our simultaneous presence, and that of Ambassador Jarring,

here in New York in order to begin this work here—and in

order to begin it now.

198. Let me make clear that Israel is prepared to negotiate

without prior conditions of any kind; it does not seek any

advance acceptance by Arab Governments of its own

proposals. And the word “non-negotiable” is not a part of

Israel’s vocabulary. You ask what can be discussed and

proposed in these negotiations. I answer: everything. You

ask what is excluded from discussion. I answer: nothing. In

the negotiations, we shall of course define where our vital

and indispensable interests lie. But once negotiations begin,

the participants must commit themselves to its fortunes;

and their task will be not merely to state positions, but also

to try to bring them into harmony.

199. Israel does not claim exclusive or unilateral jurisdiction

in the Holy Places of Christianity and Islam in

Jerusalem and is willing to discuss this principle with those

traditionally concerned. There is a versatile range of

possibilities for working out a status for the Holy Places in

such a manner as to promote Middle Eastern peace and

ecumenical harmony. In the meantime, our policy is that

the Moslem and Christian Holy Places should always be

under the responsibility of those who hold them sacred.

This principle has been in practical effect since 1967.

200. Instead of cease-fire lines or armistice lines, we

should establish secure, recognized and agreed boundaries

as part of the peace-making process, and dispose armed

forces in full accordance with the boundaries to be

determined in the peace treaties. It is important to break

away from the temporary territorial concepts which have

prevailed since 1948 in order to develop, for the first time,

a permanent structure of boundaries and security agreements.

201. A central weakness of Foreign Minister Gromyko’s

assertion this morning is that he totally ignored the

need—fully supported by international law—to reach agreement

between Israel and each contiguous Arab State on the

determination of secure and mutually agreed boundaries of

peace. Now, there is no need to be apologetic about the

doctrine that peace boundaries are different from armistice

lines. The Arab Governments wrote into our 1949 General

Armistice Agreements a provision stating that the armistice

lines were not to be interpreted as political or territorial

boundaries, and that those boundaries remained to be

worked out by agreement in the transition to peace. We

have now embarked on that transition. Israel in this matter

is not in a position of juridical defence. Indeed, in their

letter to Ambassador Jarring of April 1969, the United

Arab Republic and Jordan interpreted the term “secure and

recognized boundaries” as something different from the

armistice lines of 4 June 1967. If they interpret the

difference in one direction, others can interpret it in

another; and the only solution is to submit the problem to

the process of negotiation and agreement.

202. In conditions of peace, the people of Israel and the

Palestinian Arabs on both sides of the Jordan would be

living as citizens of sovereign States in accordance with the

boundary agreed to and concluded under the peace. But the

inherent geopolitical unity of this region argues in favour of

an open frontier such as that now emerging within the

European community and in other regional structures. The

freedom of movement and commerce which has evolved in

that area should be confirmed and broadened under the

peace by applying the community principle to the. peoples

who live on both sides of the Jordan and to both of the

negotiating States. It should be possible to reconcile our

separate sovereignties with our common regional interests.

203. We propose that a conference of Middle Eastern

States should be convened, together with the Governments

contributing to refugee relief and the specialized agencies of

the United Nations, in order to chart a five-year plan under

regional and international responsibility for the solution of

the refugee problem in the framework of a lasting peace,

and the integration of refugees into productive life. In view

of the humanitarian urgencies, such a conference need not

await the negotiation of any other issue.

204. Those are our positions. Those are the positions to

which Mr. Gromyko, in an unusual expression of humour,

referred this morning as Israel’s obstruction of peace.

205. Surely the States of the Middle East, by virtue of the

independence which they have sought and won, must see

the promotion of peace as their own autonomous responsibility.

It is anachronistic for them to cast their eyes

outward in the hope that a peace settlement can be

manufactured and imported ready-made from outside. The

peace must be built by Israeli and Arab hands, for it is

Israeli and Arab lives which are at stake. We expressed our

scepticism and reserve about diplomatic processes which

were undertaken early this year with the effect of removing

the initiative and responsibility of peace-making from the

Governments of the Middle East. For when the complex

national interests and rivalries of great Powers are superimposed

on a regional tension, the result is often not to

reduce the tension but to broaden its scope. Nothing has

happened to refute that prediction.

206. We particularly ask all Member States to understand

the anomaly and injustice of asking Israel to accept

proposals and ideas which have a Soviet component; for the

Soviet Union played a sinister role in the developments

leading up to the 1967 war by constantly stimulating an

arms race, by blind identification with Arab policies,

closing the Security Council to the equal and objective

examination of Israel’s interest, by giving false information

Cairo on an alleged Israeli invasion of Damascus. By

diffusing an odious picture of Israel’s spiritual heritage and

Jewish solidarities, the Soviet Union virtually became a

party to the dispute. Instead of being a disinterested source

of opinion and counsel. This one-sidedness was compounded,

after the hostilities by the rupture of relations

with Israel when Israel refused to be wiped out, by a

renewal of the arms race at an intensified pace after the

hostilities, and by an uncritical endorsement of all Arab

policies in the controversy on peace terms. Mr. Gromyko’s

speech this morning reveals no intention of departing from

these attitudes and he virtually promises us an indefinitely

continuing arms race.

207. It seems to us that the major Powers can promote

peace, if they will, by supporting the cease-fire, by

advocating peace negotiations, by refraining from all

temptation to globalize the conflict, by not substituting

their own views for the free interaction of Arab and Israeli

policies, and by separating the Arab-Israeli conflict as far as

possible from their own mutual relations.

208. Israel’s encounter with other sovereign States is, in

the deep, historical sense, a part of the unending dialogue

between the Jewish people and the rest of mankind. There

are two urgent problems here which should appeal urgently

to the universal conscience. The Secretary-General refers, in

the introduction to his annual report, to the widely-felt

concern for the plight of helpless Jewish minorities in

certain Arab States [A/7601/Add.1, para. 74]. Hopes for

an alleviation of the pitiful situation of the Jews of Iraq

after the accession of a new régime last July have been

dashed to the ground. Once again Jews as well as other Iraqi

citizens have, without public trial or evidence of any kind,

been judicially murdered on the basis of fabricated charges.

The small Jewish community there, which goes back to

centuries before the birth of Islam, lives in terror and

misery, unable to carry on a normal existence and refused

the right to leave even though several Governments of

enlightened conscience have offered them admission or

refuge. The situation is little better in Syria, and in Egypt

scores of heads of families are still in prison without charge

or hope of release. We appeal to international opinion to

intercede on behalf of these innocent and helpless people

and to enable them to secure the right to leave for lands

ready to receive them where they may hope to re-establish

their lives in conditions of human dignity.

209. Another situation, different in nature and scope but

also characterized by relentless hostility, affects the survival

of a great and ancient Jewish community in the Soviet

Union. Here the pressures exerted are not those of physical

persecution; rather there is the more subtle destruction of

the religious spiritual and cultural life of the Soviet Jewish

entity. At one time the assault was conducted against

so-called cosmopolitans, and culminated in the shocking

excesses of the “doctors’ trial". Today, virulent campaigns,

supported by the press, television and other mass media, are

directed at so-called international Zionism, as a cover to

bring about the spiritual and cultural death of three to four

million Jews. There is also, regrettably, a rampant anti-Semitic

literature in the Soviet Union which is utterly

repugnant to all who remember the Soviet role of resistance

to the Nazi plague. This campaign of distortion is not

worthy of the Soviet Union, and we appeal to that country

to accord to its Jewish minority the same rights to cultural

expression and survival that it accords to all other

minorities.

210. There are two international questions already mentioned

in this debate which engage Israel’s concern. Our

particular international vocation is to join with other States

in promoting accelerated development. We seek to share

with them the social insights and technical skills which have

contributed to our own economic and scientific growth.

This work has brought us into close and fruitful relations

with emerging societies in 70 lands with which we have

concluded agreements and arrangements on development

co-operation. It is, after all, in the creation of new

communities that men experience their highest sense of

creativity. From that vantage point I express Israel’s regret

that the United Nations has not been enabled by its

Members, especially the advanced States, to play a more

central role in the development drama. The first United

Nations Development Decade draws to an end with none of

its goals achieved or approached. The rate of economic

growth in developing countries is little more than 2.7 per

cent instead of the 5 per cent envisaged 10 years ago. In the

deadlock and frustration that have attended its political

work, the United Nations would have found an enhanced

prestige and enlargement of its universal role if it had been

given more support for its development activities. In the

appropriate Committee discussions, my delegation will

criticize all proposals for asking the United Nations to make

studies instead of enabling it to fulfil concrete projects. Let

us stop making studies. We know what the problems are;

the question is not how to investigate them, but how to

solve them.

211. The second point refers to freedom of aviation. The

historic journey to the moon was, after all, a development

of man’s earlier mastery of the air. Is it not intolerable that

the year of Apollo 11 should, on earth, have been a record

year for hijackers? In their indiscriminate warfare, Arab

terrorists have not passed over innocent civil aircraft far

from the arena of conflict. The events of Algeria and

Damascus are well known. Only a few weeks ago a foreign

aircraft on an international flight was forced at gunpoint

into Damascus, where the passengers and crew barely

managed to scramble out of the emergency chutes before a

bomb which the hijackers had placed in the flight-deck

exploded. Some passengers have been released, but two

Israeli nationals on board, one a professor of the Medical

School of the Hebrew University, and the other a citizen

suffering from chronic sickness, are still being forcibly

detained in Damascus. I wonder if any Syrian representative

could come and tell us on what possible grounds these two

people are being detained.

212. Other recent instances of political hijacking,

especially those affecting Ethiopia, are not unknown to

Members of the United Nations. Israel shares the view that

has been expressed here that these developments pose new

challenges to the United Nations and to the organizations

charged with civii aviation. The Government of Israel is a

party to the Tokyo Convention. We are following with

close attention the attempts being made, both in the

International Civil Aviation Organization and elsewhere, to

strengthen international practices so as to ensure that

whenever hijackings occur the passengers and crew are all,

without exception, enabled to continue on their journey

without delay and that the perpetrators of piratical acts are

brought to justice. I will say no more, for the Prime

Minister of New Zealand—not for the first time—has been

the voice of a disinterested conscience on that matter this

afternoon.

213. In an older and more chivalrous period pirates on the

sea were regarded as enemies of the human race: generis

humani hostis. They were given no asylum or quarter. Swift

justice struck them wherever they could be caught. The

new pirates of the air are no different; they are enemies of

all mankind and should be so treated by the international

community. But would it not be a gross paradox if a State

which is now in offence, in flagrant offence, against these

international principles were to be received in the Security

Council as a guardian of international peace and security?

214. If I close without any prediction about the prospects

of peace in the Middle East it is because so much depends

on the incalculable evolution of ideas. I fear that the it

essence of the matter is ideological.

215. The Arab view of Israel and of the Middle East is

deformed by a refusal to confront two essential attributes

of our region. The first is the depth and authenticity of the

historic forces which tie our people to the land of Israel.

Much of human history is unintelligible unless that connexion

is taken into due account. Remove Israel and all

that has flowed from Israel out of Middle Eastern history

and you evacuate that history of its central experiences.

Here we have the only State in the world which speaks the

same tongue, upholds the same faith and inhabits the same

land as it did 3,000 years ago. And our neighbours speak of

it as though it were some sudden eruption which might be

persuaded to disappear.

216. Arab political and intellectual leaders have never

tried, even in a reluctant spirit, to probe the factors which

make of Israel an integral part of the past history, the

present reality and the future destination of the Middle

East. They must ultimately come to terms, not just with a

community of Jews or Israelis, but with a sovereign Israel

of marked singularity and identity, embodying a tradition

and outlook which are separate from the Arab tradition and

the Arab outlook. For Israel can be a good neighbour of the

Arab world; it cannot be a part of it.

217. That involves the second issue, which is that of

diversity. The Middle East is a concept which cannot be

exhausted by Arab terms alone. Its genius in the past and

its vocation in the future lie in the diversity of faiths,

cultures, tongues, societies and sovereignties which compose

its life. It is a mosaic; it is not a monolith. It is the

cradle and the home of more nations than one.

218. The issue is how to bring about the peaceful

harmony of States which have different origins but common

interests and which belong in equal logic and in equal

justice to the Middle Eastern story.

219. There is room for profound disquiet, but not for

fatalistic despair. There is no such thing in history as an

irreconcilable conflict. In our own generation deeply-rooted,

traditional animosities between nations have passed

away. New forms and structures of international co-operation

have evolved. The world community should

summon the Arab Governments to abandon a hostility

which flows against the ecumenical and unifying currents of

twentieth-century life. If this is done, then the Middle East

will have a future even greater than its past, inspired by a

new and spacious vision, a continuing hope fed by

continuing achievement.