Saudi Arabia, 1969

1. In the name of God the

merciful and compassionate, Madame President, my delegation

tenders to Your Excellency its whole-hearted congratulations

on your election as President of the twenty-fourth

session of the General Assembly. We also wish to express

our congratulations to our African brothers on this occasion.

2. The passing away of the late President of the Assembly,

Mr. Emilio Arenales, in the prime of his life and activity,

has saddened us all. We not only esteemed him for his

wisdom and dedication to the United Nations, but also

marvelled at the exemplary courage which he manifested by

resuming his duties when all the odds were against him in

the mortal disease that snatched him from amongst us. May

God in His mercy let his soul rest in peace.

3. Before embarking on the substance of my statement I

should like to take this opportunity of applauding our

indefatigable Secretary-General U Thant for the tireless

efforts he has exerted for world peace ever since his

election to the post.

4. It would be banal for me to repeat what has time and

again been mentioned by others, namely, that there is no

alternative for the United Nations as the best international

organ for establishing world peace and security. On the

other hand, I would be failing in my duty if I were to

ignore the fact that the United Nations has not, so far,

succeeded in averting wars from which small nations have

principally suffered; nor has the United Nations been able

to eradicate racial discrimination and some forms of

classical colonialism in Africa. We do hope that it will not

be long before South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal realize

that it is in their own interest to liberate the peoples that

are still unjustifiably under their control.

5. We also regret that the policy of spheres of influence

still prevails, especially among the great Powers. The great

Powers which had a major role in drawing up the United

Nations Charter are still more or less acting in the same way

as the erstwhile great Powers did during the days of the

League of Nations, whose Covenant was ignored whenever

it did not serve their narrow national interests. Likewise

today we find that the principles set forth in the Charter,

instead of transcending the national interests of States, are

subjected to all kinds of dialectical interpretations and

rationalizations. It is for these reasons that we have hardly

made any significant progress towards paving the way to

world peace, and it becomes evident that some world

leaders have learned very little from the harsh lessons of

two world wars.

6. The Treaty of Versailles, no doubt, sowed the seeds of

the Second World War by flagrantly flouting the principles

of the self-determination of peoples and nations. The

leaders of the victorious nations which, to a large extent,

imposed the terms of peace on the defeated nations and

dictated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, gerrymandered

certain parts of Europe without due regard to

ethnological origin or the rudiments of justice. The spoils of

the First World War were also divided among the victors in

both Asia and Africa.

7. A mere glimpse at the world map after the Second

World War reveals that the same gross mistakes were

committed by the leaders who won the war for themselves

but left a legacy of perpetual conflict for small nations and

peoples. Motivated strictly by national interests, they may

blindly have sown the seeds of a third global conflict, even

before the Charter of the United Nations was signed. What

did these leaders do? They bisected countries and partitioned

lands without due regard to the wishes of the

people. They even went as far as dividing the capital of one

of the defeated nations into four zones, which they

garrisoned with their own troops. They drew an imaginary

line dividing the people of a South-East Asian country. All

this and similar arbitrary arrangements were made shortly

before and immediately after the United Nations Charter

came into being. All this was done by these leaders since

they thought this was the best way of establishing

international security. In fact, what was done simply

duplicated what had happened at Versailles — new spheres of

influence were created.

8. This is not all. In spite of the fact that the principle of

self-determination was enshrined in the Charter and later

elaborated into a well-defined fundamental human right, we

find that the great Powers and their clients learned nothing

from the blunders of recent history because the right of

self-determination was entirely forgotten. Palestine was

partitioned in 1947; and in 1953 a South-East Asian

country, inhabited by one people, was divided into two

separate States that are at war with each other — all this in

the name of international security and democracy.

9. All that has happened in the post Second World War era

in Europe and South-East Asia is nothing compared with

what has befallen the indigenous people of Palestine. While

colonies were emerging as free countries in the continents

of Asia and Africa following the fall of empires, an alien

people from Central and Eastern Europe, most of whom

had embraced Judaism in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D.,

and were far from being Semites, usurped the

homeland of the indigenous people of Palestine. In 1947,

the year of the perfidious Balfour Declaration, the indigenous

people of Palestine constituted 94 per cent of the

whole population of that country. It is superfluous to

mention that neither Balfour personally nor his Government

had any right whatsoever to promise an alien people

from Europe a homeland in Palestine on the grounds of

their religion. Nevertheless, we must state that the dictators

at the Versailles Conference endorsed the treacherous

Balfour Declaration at the expense of the Palestinian people

when President Wilson clamoured for the principle of

self-determination.

10. In 1939, the Jewish population of Palestine, which

had been placed under a British Mandate, grew by massive

immigration, mostly illegal, to one third of the whole

population. When the British mandatory Power tried to

regulate the immigration that had swollen in the thirties

and immediately after the Second World War on account of

the resistance of the indigenous people of the land, the

Zionists organized several terrorist gangs who literally got

away with murder by hanging British Tommies, killing Lord

Moyne, as well as massacring Palestinians who persistently

resisted this new invasion from Europe under the banner of

Zionism. This invasion was not dissimilar to the religious

wars of the Middle Ages which were motivated by religion

for political and economic ends. The Zionists have claimed

Palestine on false and baseless grounds. Time and again our

delegation has asked that the usurping State of Israel

produce the title deed to Palestine which, it is claimed, the

Creator gave to the Jews. By the same token, we ask, did

Balfour and those who implemented his foul promise have a

power of attorney from God to transfer Palestine to these

usurping Zionists? It is indeed ludicrous to put up such

claims on the grounds of which these alien Zionists, mainly

of Khazar origin, have been granted the right to rob the

Palestinians of their land and patrimony.

11. The usurping State of Israel, abetted as it has been by

the great Powers and their clients who voted for the

partition of Palestine and the ultimate introduction of a

foreign element in the body politic and body social of the

Middle East, will remain an abscess in the area causing a

high fever of tension and perpetual conflict which may,

God forbid, plunge the world into another world war. If the

Jews, as a persecuted people in Europe, had taken refuge in

Palestine and the Middle East, motivated by religious

sentiments and not by false political claims, they would

have lived at peace with the Semitic indigenous people of

Palestine. Instead, they invaded the land with false claims

and intimidated the whole population by crimes such as

those perpetrated in Deir Yassin and other localities. When

these usurping Zionists suspected that Count Bernadotte

might level some criticism at them for their dastardly acts,

they shot him with impunity.

12. Over a million Palestinian refugees who fled in terror

and now live in camps on six or seven cents a day per

person, together with compatriots of theirs scattered in

many countries, have finally awakened to the fact that all

the United Nations resolutions concerning the Palestine

question have been futile, having had no impact whatsoever

on the usurpers.

13. Consequently they have organized themselves to

regain their homeland, as it has dawned upon them that the

whole United Nations family is not willing to or capable of

rendering them justice and redressing the grievous harm

done unto them. These freedom fighters are called terrorists

by the Zionists and their cohorts. On the other hand, the

forces of resistance that went underground against the

Nazis in occupied Europe have been dubbed heroes; so were

the Irgun, Zvai Lumi, Stern, Haganah and other gangs who

massacred the indigenous people of Palestine, destroyed

their homes, killed their cattle and cut down their trees.

The Arab people have been galvanized into action by the

sacrificial resolve of the people of Palestine to regain their

homeland.

14. Neither the late Mr. Churchill nor the late Mr. Roosevelt,

nor the late Mr. Stalin for that matter, considered the

nazi conquest of European territories as a fait accompli.

can assure the General Assembly that the occupation of

Palestine by these alien people, the non-Semitic Khazars of

Central and Eastern Europe, will never be considered a fait

accompli by the whole Arab people — a hundred million of

them who are steadfast in their faith that, as in the past,

usurpers come and usurpers go but ultimately the Palestinian

people will regain their homeland.

15. As far as Jerusalem is concerned, let me be explicit

once more about our position, which has repeatedly been

made clear since the desecration of that Holy City by the

invader. This is not the first time that Jerusalem has fallen

into the hands of alien conquerors. Where are these

conquerors now? They are but names in the annals of

history. Jerusalem is as holy to Islam as it is to the other

monotheistic religions. If the Christian nations, whose

populations number about a billion, do not care about

Jerusalem falling into the hands of Zionists, who, incidentally,

are a mere fraction of world Jewry estimated at about

17 million, let me make it patently clear that over 600

million Moslems will not continue to remain with their

arms folded and accept the spurious claims of those

Zionists who are unwittingly creating a world problem

which may very well make a scapegoat of innocent Jews,

especially in the Western world, where Zionist activists have

wormed themselves into the policy-making machinery of

governments, including legislative bodies, quite apart from

controlling the mass media of information.

16. The Islamic Summit Conference held from 22 to 25

September 1969 in Rabat has shown the whole world that

the Islamic world has been jolted into a consciousness of

the danger that threatens its first kiblah. The sincere

solidarity and the fervent fraternal spirit manifested at

Rabat is only the beginning. It is the dawn of Islamic unity

all over the world. The millstones of Islam may grind slowly

but they will grind and grind and grind until, God willing,

Jerusalem and the whole land of Palestine is restituted to its

legitimate owners, who have been denied their right of

self-determination by pressures and conspiracies inside and

outside the United Nations.

17. While we are aware of the multifarious problems

facing this Assembly, my Government wishes to reiterate its

unequivocal position regarding Jerusalem and Palestine

because of its deep concern with this question, which, as

you may have noticed, constitutes the theme of my

statement before this Assembly. If peace with justice is to

bypass the peoples of Palestine, we predict a continuous

state of conflict and turmoil in the Middle East. Should this

be the case, we also fear that a third world war may be

inevitable. The turn of events in the Middle East will,

therefore, determine the fate of the United Nations. Either

this Organization will follow the same pattern as that of the

League of Nations, which led to its disintegration, or it will

muster enough courage to rise above petty national

interests and the policy of spheres of influence pursued by

the super-Powers irrespective of the aspirations of peoples

struggling for their independence and the redemption of

their sovereignty.

18. In conclusion, I should like to state that His Majesty

King Faisal and my Government still hope that, before it is

too late, the better part of wisdom will prevail, especially

among the great Powers, which, if they wish, can pave the

way for peace in the Middle East by having real justice done

unto the indigenous people of Palestine.

19. I cannot bring this statement to an end without

invoking God’s guidance to us all.