Kuwait, 1969

110. It gives me great pleasure

to congratulate the President on her unanimous election to

the presidency of the twenty-fourth session of the General

Assembly. This is a fitting tribute to the struggle for the

emancipation of women in Africa and other parts of the

third world. I should also like to congratulate her on the

manner in which she has been directing the proceedings of

this session, which is a proof of her ability and skill.

111. I should also like to pay a tribute to the memory of

the late Mr. Emilio Arenales, who presided over the

twenty-third session of the General Assembly. His untimely

death shocked us all and was a loss to his country and people.

112. Of all the international questions on the agenda of

the present session of the General Assembly, none concerns

Kuwait as intensely as what it has become customary of

late to call the “Middle East crisis”.

113. This special concern is caused not only by the fact

that issue affects the existence, survival and entire

destiny of an Arab people, the Palestinian people, as well as

the territorial integrity of three Arab States adjacent to

Palestine, some of whose lands are presently under Israeli

occupation. Besides the national bonds tying us to the

peoples and States concerned, there is another reason for

our special concern; all the elements which occur in the

persistent international problems of today may be found

together in the Middle East crisis, as interrelated and

interactive ingredients thereof.

114. In the first place, the heavy burden of colonialism,

which still weighs oppressively on some areas of the world,

is felt in the Middle East. For the Middle East crisis is, in

one of its aspects, a colonial crisis, where colonialism — clearly

reveals itself in all its classical manifestations: the

occupation of the land of others, the subjugation of its

inhabitants, the exploitation of its resources and the

introduction of foreign settlements on its soil. The only

difference between the residua of die-hard colonialism still

existing in some pockets which have thus far defied

purification and the Israeli colonial presence since 1967 in

the territories of three sovereign States, Members of the

United Nations, is this: the Israeli colonial presence was

accomplished in an era in which the conscience of the

civilized world had totally repudiated the logic of colonialism,

and the international community had established an

alternative international system on the anti-colonial foundation

of what the charter of decolonization calls “the

principles of equal rights and self-determination of all

peoples”. Nothing is worse than the colonialism which

refuses to disappear in the era of the liquidation of

colonialism, save that which comes into being in the heyday

decolonization.

115. In the second place, the influence of racism, from

which some parts of the world still suffer, is also present in

the Middle East crisis which, in one of its aspects, is a crisis

caused by the existence of a racist régime; racist in its

doctrinal presuppositions, racist in its inspiration and racist

in its programmes and actions. The quintessence of Zionism

is the call for the Jews of the world to segregate themselves

by withdrawing from the countries of their residence and

citizenship and to isolate themselves in one country which

would become “Jewish”, through the displacement of its

non-Jewish indigenous population. Accordingly, its programmes

and policies have been racist in inspiration and

their practical application has manifested all the familiar

features of racism; including racial hatred, racial self-segregation

and isolation, belief in intrinsic racial superiority,

resulting in the right for racial supremacy and the exercise

of racial discrimination in all fields.

116. In the third place, the Middle East crisis reflects

certain forms of international conduct which have come to

be considered discreditable by the civilized world. These

forms of conduct constitute in their totality an integral

behavioural pattern which, if followed by all States in their

international relations, would lead only to global chaos and

perpetual turmoil. I shall now discuss, by way of illustration,

three facets of this Israeli behavioural pattern. First,

clear and thoughtless violation of some established rules of

public international law which are also fundamental principles

of the Charter; foremost among these is the principle

of inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war or

military conquest, a principle which has been reaffirmed

four times by the Security Council in the past two years.

Nevertheless, Israel has, in fact, formally annexed a portion

of the territories it occupied by war in 1967, and has

proceeded to create in other portions new situations which,

as some Israeli leaders have candidly and clearly explained,

aim at creating new “accomplished facts”, the ultimate

effect of which would be to render annexation by Israel

inescapable and irresistible.

117. The determination of Israel to retain, under all

circumstances, its possession of at least some of the lands it

occupied by war from the territories of three Arab States,

Members of the United Nations, is no longer a secret. Nor

can sophistic reasoning and semantic acrobatics, however

skillfully practised by some of Israel’s spokesmen, succeed

in concealing the following facts: that retaining possession

of any part of territories occupied by war is an act of

annexation, whatever the pretext put forward or the name

applied; that such annexation constitutes a flagrant violation

of a basic principle of the Charter and the rule of

international law, which has been repeatedly reaffirmed by

the Security Council; and that such unlawful annexation is,

in fact, an application of the principle of territorial

expansion through violence, which is an essential ingredient

of the Zionist-Israeli programme.

118. Secondly, respect for the international conventions

and treaties to which it is a party, application of their

provisions and fulfilment of the obligations arising from

them, are elementary ingredients of the pattern of conduct

of a civilized State. Yet, in the two years and four months

which have elapsed since Israel occupied militarily territories

belonging to Arab States, the world has witnessed a

continuing, obstinate refusal by Israel to put into effect the

Geneva Convention of 1949 relative to the protection of

civilian persons in occupied territories, to which Israel and

the three Arab States immediately concerned are parties.

Even though the General Assembly, the Security Council,

the Economic and Social Council, the Commission on

Human Rights and the International Conference on Human

Rights have all reminded Israel of its obligations under that

Convention and called upon it to comply with its provisions,

in no less than 11 formal resolutions, adopted since

June 1967, Israel has persisted in its disregard of the

Convention, by its refusal to apply it to the situation at

hand, and in its flagrant violation of some of its most

important provisions.

119. Nor has this been the sole instance of Israel’s

disregard of international agreements to which it is a party.

On the contrary, the fate of the Protocol of Lausanne and

the four General Armistice Agreements of 1949 eloquently

testifies to the fact that Israel has generally displayed little

reluctance to abrogate international agreements unilaterally,

tearing them up at will as though they were worthless scraps of paper.

120. Thirdly, thoughtless violation of the fundamental

rules of international law and the habitual breaking of

international contracts are appropriately accompanied by

disdain for, and non-compliance with, the resolutions

adopted by United Nations organs. Israel has gone so far as

to wage an organized campaign against the United Nations

and its principal organs for adopting some of those

resolutions, even in cases where they were adopted by

unanimous votes.

121. Israeli leadership evinces no embarrassment at the

glaring inconsistency of official Israeli attacks on the

authority of the United Nations, and the persistent Israeli

contempt for dozens of resolutions adopted by its competent

principal organs. Their claim to legitimacy is based on

the authority of one recommendation contained in one

resolution adopted by one of those organs, even though

that single resolution was suspended by the same organ less

than six months after it was adopted.

122. There is little need here to cite individually the

provisions of all those resolutions, including many which

were adopted by unanimous or near-unanimous votes, with

which Israel has continuously refused to comply. Suffice it

to refer to those adopted since the summer of 1967, which

include the following:

(a) Ten resolutions adopted by the General Assembly,

the Security Council and other organs, calling upon Israel

to facilitate promptly the return of all inhabitants of the

occupied territories displaced since the war of June 1967;

(b) Three resolutions, adopted by the General Assembly,

the Security Council and the Commission on Human

Rights, calling upon Israel to facilitate international

investigation of the conditions of the civilian inhabitants of Arab

territories occupied by Israel;

(c) Five resolutions, two adopted by the Assembly and

three by the Security Council, enjoining Israel to rescind all

measures taken by it purporting to alter the status of the

City of Jerusalem.

Israel has complied with none of these resolutions and it

has continuously violated their respective provisions.

123. Much talk about international ethics by Israeli

leaders, and extravagant boasting about the excellence of

the moral values alleged to be inherent in Israel’s international

conduct, are powerless to disguise the truth that

Israel, colonial to the core in its reality and racist in its

ideology, system and policies, has, since its birth, followed

a course of action which desecrates those standards of

international morality enshrined in the Charter and which

civilized States aspire to achieve.

124. At the opening of my remarks on the Middle East

crisis a short while ago, I intimated that it was a

three-dimensional crisis, of which the conflict between the

Arab States and Israel is only one aspect. It is most

unfortunate that the general view of that crisis focuses

upon this conflict and is oblivious of the other aspects and

dimensions. Such distorted vision and conception would in

practice make for erroneous approaches. Efforts are exerted

to find a settlement for the conflict between the Arab

States and Israel without attempting to redress the wrongs

done to, or remedy the unjust conditions imposed upon,

the Palestinian people, prior to or since the establishment

of Israel.

125. The essence of the problem is the dispossession and

displacement of the bulk of the Palestinian people, the

subjugation and plunder of the rest, the deprivation of the

Palestinian people, as a whole, of the opportunity to;

exercise its inalienable right to self-determination on the

soil of its homeland, and the deprivation of Palestinians as

individuals of many of their other fundamental human

rights. It is this that is the cause of the conflict between the

Arab States and Israel. How then can this conflict be settled

as long as those conditions which gave rise to it remain?

126. The experience of the past 21 years, and in particular

of the past year, shows that forgetting or ignoring the

existence of the Palestinian people cannot serve to simplify

the Middle East crisis or facilitate its settlement, but, in

fact, renders it more intricate and its settlement more

remote. People do not vanish just because others prefer to

forget that they exist; nor are their rights lost simply

because they are forcibly deprived of them for some time.

127. These are truisms which the international community

can ill afford to forget or neglect, least of all the major

Powers which have endeavoured, since the beginning of the

year, to reach a settlement of the problem by way of

consultations among themselves. No formula for a settlement

which affects the fate of Palestine or its people can

have the slightest chance of working, or be just and

therefore worthy of working, if it neglects those people’s

rights or ignores their national will and legitimate aspirations.

128. At this stage, I cannot but note with much regret

that such neglect of the Palestinian people is at the root of

the policy of one of the major Powers towards the

problems of Palestine and the Middle East. I refer to the

United States of America. This is particularly sad, inasmuch

as the United States, which now views with disdain the

national right of the people of Palestine to self-determination

in its homeland, was once the foremost champion for

the principle of self-determination and played a leading role

in introducing it into the contemporary international system.

129. The faults and dangers of American policy towards

the Middle East, however, go beyond ignoring the existence

of the Palestinian people as a people and rejecting its

national rights as such, as well as many of the human rights

of its individuals.

130. How strange it is for the question of the Middle East

to be raised and discussed entirely within the context of the

analysis of American-Soviet relations, as was done in the

statement made before the present session of the Assembly

by the President of the United States [1755th meeting], as

though the situation in the Middle East had no objective

reality or character of its own, independently of the

vicissitudes of American-Soviet relations.

131. How strange it was for the statement of the

American President to raise once more the question of “the

limitation of the shipment of arms to the Middle East”

[ibid, para. 66] so soon after the United States itself had

brought the situation of armaments to a new and grave

stage by beginning to supply Israel with Phantom jets.

132. To further the military capabilities of the occupying

Power, particularly after it had made unmistakably clear its

determination to retain possession, under all circumstances,

of much of what it now occupies, can only embolden it to

maintain the occupation and indeed nourish its avaricious,

expansionist desire to annex more of the territories it now

occupies.

133. We find cause for anxiety in the failure of the

statement, made by the President of the United States, to

emphasize the obligation to withdraw, indeed, its failure to

use that word at all. Nor was that anxiety allayed — perhaps

it was aggravated — by the statement that “peace cannot be

achieved on the basis of substantial alterations in the map

of the Middle East” [ibid., para. 65] . This statement, in

reality, envisages and condones territorial alterations which

may be deemed “insubstantial”, in the course of expressing

disapproval of “substantial” alterations. By so doing, it

opens the door for acquisition of territory by military

conquest, which is precisely what the United States, on

more than one occasion, had joined other States in

declaring to be “inadmissible”.

134. This would indicate that the United States position

towards this vital aspect of the Middle East crisis has now

undergone an important change. Two years ago, the United

States position was one of the decisive factors which

prevented either the Security Council or the General

Assembly from issuing a call for complete and unconditional

Israeli withdrawal, and contributed instead to a call

for complete, though not unconditional, withdrawal. While

that position displayed disregard of the principle that

military invasion shall not be rewarded in the course of

reaching a pacific settlement, it did at the same time evince

respect for the principle of the inadmissibility of the

acquisiton of territory by military conquest. Now, however,

the doctrine of the admissibility of making “alterations in

the map of the Middle East” provided only that they are

not “substantial” — implicit in the statement [ibid.] of the

United States President—amounts to a violation of the

second principle as well as the first.

135. The world today is burdened with problems that

jeopardize the future of humanity. We must find a solution

to these problems if we are to enjoy the blessings of

stability and peace.

136. In Viet-Nam peace can only prevail when all foreign

troops are withdrawn and the people of Viet-Nam are

allowed to decide their own future.

137. In the colonized territories of Africa there can be no

stability and progress until the people there exercise their

inalienable right to freedom and independence.

138. Human conscience can only rest easy when the

apartheid practised in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia

is totally eliminated and the right of the majority to live in

freedom and dignity is respected.

139. Peace and prosperity are closely linked. The developed

countries should shoulder their responsibilities

towards the developing countries. It is a source of great

regret that the First United Nations Development Decade

has failed to achieve its main objectives. The gap between

the developing and developed countries is steadily widening.

The developed countries have been reluctant to fulfil

their obligations, particularly in the field of aid and trade.

140. We are now on the threshold of the Second United

Nations Development Decade. Poverty, hunger, disease and

ignorance have been the lot of the ordinary people in the

developing countries for centuries past. This poverty and

the craving for a better life that it engenders have now

become a source of active political discontent. It is the duty

of both developing and developed countries to agree on

concerted measures for solving this problem.

141. My Government believes that the sea-bed and the

ocean floor, and the subsoil thereof, underlying the high

seas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, should be

reserved exclusively for peaceful purposes. We have consistently

advocated establishing an international legal regime

for the area, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction

based on the concept that the area and its resources are the

common heritage of mankind. We are also in favour of

establishing an international machinery to promote the

exploration and exploitation of the resources of the area,

beyond the limits of national jurisdiction for the benefit of

mankind as a whole, taking into account the special

interests and needs of the developing countries. We believe

that only such an international machinery will be able to

exploit the resources of the area in a rational and

complementary manner, and distribute the income derived

therefrom equitably among all countries and other parties

concerned, while allocating a certain percentage to increase

United Nations resources, particularly in the field of

international development.

142. Almost a quarter of a century has elapsed since the

establishment of the United Nations as an international

Organization, entrusted with the maintenance of international

peace and security and the regulation of international

relations on an equitable and legal basis. In spite of this

lapse of time, the United Nations still does not enjoy the

unreserved and complete support of the Member States

which will enable it to discharge its duties and fulfil its

objectives. It is incumbent upon all States to respect the

provisions of the United Nations Charter, to desist from the

practice of colonialism in all its forms and to renounce the

use of aggression as a means of imposing de facto solutions

and the aquisition of territorial gains. Whenever any

Member violates the Charter and persists in a policy of

aggression and expansion, the international community

should not hesitate to act in a clear and decisive manner

against the offender. This is the only way in which the

United Nations can fulfil its mission and discharge its duties

according to the Charter.