1967th Meeting
Held in New York on Thursday, 4 November 1976, at 3.30 p.m.
CONTENTS
Provisional agenda (S/Agenda/1967)
Adoption of the agenda
The situation in the occupied Arab territories:
Letter dated 20 October 1976 from the Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/12218)
President: Mr. Jorge Enrique ILLUECA (Panama).
present: The representatives of the following States: Benin, China, France, Guyana, Italy, Japan, Libyan Arab Republic, Pakistan, Panama, Romania, Sweden, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United Kingdom Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United Republic, of Tanzania and United States of America.
Provisional agenda (S/Agenda/1967)
Adoption of the agenda
The situation in the occupied Arab territories: Letter dated 20 October 1976 from the Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/12218)
The meeting was called to order at 4.30 p.m.
Adoption of the agenda
The agenda was adopted.
The Situation in the occupied Arab territories:
Letter dated 20 October 1976 from the Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/12218)
1. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish):
In accordance with the decision adopted at the 1966th meeting, I invite the representatives of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Syrian Arab Republic, as well as the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), to participate in the debate without the right to vote.
At the invitation of the President, Mr. Herzog (Israel) and Mr. Terzi (Palestine Liberation Organization) took places at the Security Council table, and Mr. Ahdel Meguid Egypt), Mr. Nuxeiheh (Jordan) and Mr. Allaf (Syrian Arab Republic) took the places reserved for them at the side of the Council chamber.
2. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish):
I should like to inform the Council that I have received letters from the representatives of Bangladesh and Mauritania in which they ask that, under rule 37 of the provisional rules of procedure, they be invited to participate in the debate. In accordance with the Council's practice, the relevant provisions of the Charter and the provisional rules of procedure, if I hear no objection I propose to invite those representatives to participate in the debate without the right to vote.
3. I invite the representatives of .Bangladesh and Mauritania to take the places reserved for them at the side of the Council chamber, on the usual understanding that they will be invited to take-a place at the Council table when it is their turn to address the Council.
At the invitation of the President, Mr. Kaiser (Bangladesh) and Mr. El Hassen (Mauritania) took the places reserved for them at the side of the Council chamber.
4. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish): The Council will now continue its consideration of the item on its agenda. The first speaker is the representative of Israel, on whom I now call.
5. Mr. HERZOG (Israel): In opening, may I express to you, Mr. President, my congratulations on your election to the important post to which you have been elevated. I have no doubt that you will acquit yourself well in it not only as the representative of your country but also because of your important personal attributes which make you so very qualified to hold this post. On this occasion, may I also pay tribute to your country, with which Israel has enjoyed such cordial relations over the years.
6. This is the second time in six months that Egypt has seen fit to call the Security Council into session in order to discuss the situation in the administered territories. I put it to the Council that in fact Egypt could not care less about religious freedoms or the well-being of the population of the territories administered by Israel. As each and every representative here knows, this meeting, like many other meetings of the Council, has not been prompted by any particular Egyptian interest in the subject under review. It is merely a function of the internecine inter-Arab struggle for position which characterizes the daily Middle East scene with which we in the region are only too familiar and with which by now, I believe, representatives here are both familiar and probably somewhat bored.
7. It is, I submit, an insult to each and every one of us and to the Council that every time Egypt has problems in the Middle East with its Arab colleagues the Council is called upon to provide a machinery for their inter-Arab political purposes. Every time that President Sadat feels it necessary to assert himself in the Arab world or to demonstrate what you, Mr. President, would perhaps characterize as his machismo to the other Arab States, you, Mr. President, and the other representatives are the convenient vehicle chosen by him.
8. Gone are the lofty principles on which the Organization was established. Gone are the purposes for which the Security Council was created. One might as well admit it whether or not he likes it: this body has been turned into nothing more than a vehicle for a game of one-upmanship by one Arab State over another in pursuance of their puerile and immature political approach. It is a disgrace, it is an insult to all those here, it is unbelievable that this body allows itself, without protest, to be used in this manner.
9. We were called into session on the basis of, a letter dated 20 October 1976 addressed to the President of the Council by my Egyptian colleague, Mr. Abdel Meguid. The letter asked this body to discuss "the dangerous and explosive situation" in the territories. He referred in his letter to the events in Hebron—a subject which was taken up by the other Arab speakers. I shall revert to this matter later on in my remarks. But let me make one point quite clear, in the light of the "dangerous and explosive situation" for which we have been called here. Not one person was killed in those events, and the distinguished representative of Jordan lied to this body when he said that an Israeli civilian with a machine-gun in a moving car killed in cold blood seven innocent Palestinian Arab bystanders in nearby Halhoul. Nobody was killed, because, had anybody been killed, representatives surely do not suspect that their Egyptian colleague would have omitted such a piece the resistance from his note or his remarks. One person was injured as a result of that incident, which is a matter of a police investigation at the moment. But to say that seven people were killed is untrue and it serves to underline the kind of credulity with which, I regret to say, we have to regard the statements of our new Jordanian colleague.
10. Can anyone imagine our Arab colleagues and the media ignoring such an event if perpetrated by Israel? No, there was no bloodshed in Israel or in the territories administered by Israel, because the Government of Israel has been and is determined not to allow a second Lebanon to develop in the areas under Israeli control—and it will not develop.
11. Was that indeed the explosive situation in the Middle East which warranted convening the Council? Let us recall the fact that that meeting was requested at a time when the most horrible bloodshed was taking place in Lebanon, where almost 50,000 people had been killed, 100,000 wounded and over 1 million refugees created—to quote my Lebanese colleague And what did the Council do all the time that this was happening? They know as well as I do: nothing.
12. This sombre and disgraceful behaviour remain for ever a reproach against the Council and Organization. Instead members have allowed themselves to be used in barren deliberations to sat" the whims of this or that ruler in the Arab world.
13. Is this the explosive situation in the Middle or is the situation in Lebanon the explosive situation in the Middle East, the resolutions adopted at on 18 October notwithstanding? Even after those resolutions the death toll in Lebanon continues at rate of almost 50 a day.
14. Is the situation in Israel the explosive situation or are the results of the terrible slaughter in Lebanon the explosive situation? If members want to find explosive situations in the Middle East and in the Arab world, they should just take a look at that world at Arab armies poised against Arab armies on the Iraqi-Syrian border, on the Libyan-Egyptian border on the Moroccan-Algerian border; at the internecine Arab slaughter going on to such a degree that it has become commonplace and is not even reported.
15. My Egyptian colleague was driven to call for a meeting of the Council to discuss the explosive situation and to draw attention to the acts of desecration of the Holy Places in Hebron. I shall refer later to Hebron. But the events that he and his Arab colleagues here refer to took place over a month ago. Since then the damage has been repaired and today Jews and Moslems pray peacefully side by side in the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Not one life was lost.
16. Why were my Egyptian colleague and indeed the Council not moved for over one and a half years by the shameful desecration of Holy Places which took place in Lebanon? Either the places are holy or they are not holy. Either their holiness has to be respected or it has not. Are you, my Egyptian colleague, being selective in this matter too-^in the matter of Holy Places?
17. Am I to understand that if a mosque is allegedly desecrated in Hebron the Security Council is convened, but if hundreds of churches and mosques are burned and razed to the ground and desecrated in Lebanon the Council remains silent?
18. Why was not the Council convened when the Maronite Patriarch in Lebanon pleaded with the world about the desecration of churches and the defiling of Holy Places, the shelling of and firing at monasteries, hospitals and ambulances, attacks on religious leaders including the Mutran Yussuf Khoury, the Archbishop of Tyre, and Bishop Yochana, not to mention countless monks and nuns? Why was the looting and burning and defiling of holy places in Tripoli, about which the Maronite Patriarch issued an appeal, ignored? When the world press reported the slaughter of three old monks in the Monastery of Deir Ashasha, with anti-Christian slogans painted on the doors of the monastery, an event the publication of which was forbidden by the then Prime Minister Karame, where were all the member of the Council?
19. Why was nobody moved to call a meeting of the Security Council when the Christian town Damur was ransacked and 6,000 refugees fled; when, according to The Washington Post, boats carrying refugee women and children from Damur to Junieh were fired at and sunk; when according Le Monde more than 200 bodies were mutilated and burned?
20. As Mr. Abdel Meguid's letter was being distributed here at the United Nations in righteous indignation on 20 October, less than two weeks ago, on that very day a terrifying massacre was carried out in the village of Achiyeh by the PLO. First word of the horrible massacre at Achiyeh appeared in the international press on 21 October. The Washington Post carried the following dispatch: "The Maronite Catholic Bishop of Tyre charged that Lebanese leftists and Palestinians broke into Achiyeh today [20 October] and about 300 Christians were massacred." A Lebanese reporter for the Associated Press, Mohammed Salam, is reported by The New York Times on 21 October to have said that virtually all the houses of the village had been destroyed. The full dimensions of this outrage became known only when several wounded refugees crossed the Israeli-Lebanon border and recounted the full story. One of the refugees told the following story:
"They massacred us mercilessly and with amazing cruelty as if we were sheep. They crushed the skulls of children and raped girls and women… Even the village priest was butchered in cold blood after having been bound to the altar of the local church."
Another eyewitness reported how, when the attackers reached the village they were met by women and children pleading for their lives. The attackers answered by slaughtering them using knives, bayonets and axes in an unbelievable show of cruelty. Even those who surrendered were not spared.
21. That happened less than two weeks ago in a church in Lebanon. The survivors who managed to escape are in Israeli hospitals. Where was the world conscience then? Were was the Security Council?
22. Was that not a case of religious desecration? That was hardly a matter apparently to exercise the conscience of the Egyptian representative and his colleagues here. Instead we have to be regaled with stories about a situation which, in contradistinction to events in Lebanon, was handled by Israeli authorities in such a way that after the incidents in Hebron, no bloodshed developed and that today Jews and Moslems are again worshipping peacefully side by side in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
23. The question that faces us here today is not any matter of substance raised by the Egyptian representative. The question is not the fact that my sympathies go out to the members of the Council who have to listen to the interminable tirades of the Arab representatives which reflect more than anything else the problems facing Israel in the Middle East and which illustrate in a most revealing manner the difficulties that face us in trying to achieve an accommodation in the area. The issue, in my view, is for how long is the Council going to allow itself to be turned into an instrument to solve the internal problems of any given Arab regime at any given time. If it has to be, because nobody can bring this mockery to an end, then why not institute a procedure whereby that standard Arab speech which we all know here by heart is issued in record form to all representatives so that we are relieved of the obligation to sit and waste our time listening to it here.
24. The Council dares not allow itself to become a tool of Arab expediency and it must resist this dangerous process of becoming an accomplice in this shameful and fruitless exercise.
25. Since the subject has been raised by the three Arab representatives who addressed the Council before me, namely, those of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, I am left with no option but to deal with the events. My delegation distributed this week [5/12223] a complete history of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the city of Hebron, known to the Jewish people as the Cave of Machpela and to the Moslem people as the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque or Abraham's Mosque.
26. I shall not go into any great detail, referring representatives instead to the documents issued by my delegation to which I previously referred. I would direct the attention of members to the map of the Cave of Machpela which we attached to the letter and additional copies of which we are now making available here.
27. The Cave of Machpela is a Jewish Holy Place, housing as it does the tombs of the Jewish Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their respective wives, Sahara, Rebecca and Leah—a fact conveniently ignored by my Arab colleagues. For the benefit of representatives who may not be particularly familiar with the Bible, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were Jewish, and were the early Jewish Patriarchs. The story of the acquisition of the land and the tomb of Abraham is told in Chapter 23 of the Book of Genesis.
28. I have here a copy of the Bible, in which the principles of human brotherhood which inspired the creation of this Organization were first enunciated and given to the world by the Jewish people. This is the Bible in which the immortal words of Isaiah which grace the wall facing this building were first recorded. This is the Bible which includes the Five Books of Moses enunciating the greatest principles of humanity, of social justice, of moral law and of brotherly love. It was the Holy Scrolls of the Law, or the Torah, in which these Five Books of Moses are recorded and which are sacred to the Jewish people, that were torn, defiled and desecrated by a mob of Arab youths in the Tomb of the Patriarchs on 3 October last—an act of desecration that was condemned by the Moslem religious leaders in Hebron, Jerusalem and everywhere else.
29. In chapter 23 of the Book of Genesis we read that, when Sarah died in Kiryat Arba, or Hebron, Abraham negotiated for a burial place and purchased a piece of land paying 400 shekels of silver. And so, as the Bible recounts, "the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of burying-place by the Children of Health".
30. This contract was entered into by the Father of the Jewish people during the period of the Sumerian culture in Babylon, during the era of the Pharaohs in the Middle Kingdom of Thebes in Egypt. Indeed, it might interest my Chinese colleagues to know that it was a contract entered into a couple of hundred years before the advent of the Shang Dynasty. This was a contract entered into during what my Chinese colleagues must consider to have been a happier period than today when the two super-Powers which exercise them so much did not exist in the world. What a boring world it must have been without those two super-Powers. While my forebears were signing contracts in Hebron and the ancestors of my Chinese colleagues were producing the most beautiful works of art and of the skills of writing, out of which came the present Chinese system, the inhabitants of what are today the territories of the super-Powers were engaged in a daily primitive struggle for life, with no greater ambition than that their hunt for a bear or a bison would bring them the sustenance they required.
31. While we can but look back, with or without nostalgia, to such a period, the fact remains that for well-nigh 4,000 years that Tomb in Hebron housing the remains of the Jewish Patriarchs and their wives has remained a Jewish Holy Place, and Jews have prayed there for most of the period.
32. How ironical it is that Israel should be condemned on this issue. For a long time, when the tombs were under exclusive Moslem jurisdiction, Jews were not allowed access to them. During the period of the British Mandate Jews were allowed to walk up only seven steps leading to the tombs; they were not allowed inside to pray by the Arab custodians. I can recall as a child being threatened by a sword when I tried to put my foot on the eighth step. In August 1929, most of the Jewish population of Hebron was brutally massacred by an Arab mob. My great-grandmother, an old lady of 80, was one of those who were cut down by an Arab dagger on that occasion.
33. Once again the Jordanian representative has the brazen effrontery to raise the issue of the Holy Places. The Jordanian Government's record in respect of Holy Places under its control surely denies it any moral standing in such issues.
34. For 19 years, from 1948 to 1967, Jews were denied access for prayer to the holiest of Jewish shrines, the Wailing Wall, by the Jordanian occupation authorities in Jerusalem, in contravention o their international obligations. Their troops set fire and destroyed Jewish synagogues and centres of worship in Jerusalem. The ancient Jewish cemetery IS on the Mount of Olives, hallowed by thousands of years of history and dating back to Biblical times was desecrated by the Jordanian authorities, who defiled the graves and tombs, uprooted the tombstones for use in constructing army camps and bulldozed roads across the historic Mount sanctified in Jewish and Christian traditions. As I mentioned before, Jewish access to the Cave of Machpela, or the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in Hebron was forbidden by the Jordanian authorities from 1948 to 1967 during their occupation of that area.
35. Since the administration of Hebron devolved on Israel after the 1967 war, brought on by the unprovoked Arab attack on Israel at that time, Israel has given complete freedom of access to all religions concerned to the holy sites in the Holy Land. I refer the Council in this respect to the official statements in this regard issued by the representatives of the various Christian sects and by the heads of the Moslem religion.
36. The overriding principles guiding Israel's policy regarding all the Holy Places have been and are to guarantee free access to members of all faiths and to ensure orderly conditions of worship to members of every religion. This principle also applies to the Cave of Machpela, and the sanctity of this Holy Shrine is strictly observed.
37. Israel is proud of its record in respect of the Holy Places of all faiths. Israel's policy will continue to adhere strictly to the fundamental principle of free access for prayer and worship by all believers of all faiths to all Holy Places.
38. This allegation about a shrine which is visited daily by hundreds and sometimes thousands of people from all over the world is patently untrue; it is so obviously a repetition of the "big lie" and yet is so sinister in its horrible implications, designed as it is to incite millions of people who are ignorant of the facts. It is but another example of the level to which we have been dragged down in this Organization by those who are rapidly taking control of it and turning it into a centre of uncontrollable hate and irreconcilable division.
39. The recent events in the Cave of Machpela, or the Tomb of the Patriarchs, have been completely distorted and misrepresented by the Arab representatives here, and I therefore wish to set the record straight. As usual, it falls to my lot to set out the events as they occurred following the hysterical diatribe to which we are regularly subjected by our Arab colleagues.
40. The facts are as follows. On the evening of 1 October, Jewish worshippers arriving at their place of prayer in the Cave found that one of the ceremonial mantles in the chamber had been torn and cut and that another was missing. Early the following morning it was alleged by the Moslem employees in the Tomb that several Jewish youths, allegedly four in number, slipped into the prayer room used by the Moslems and overturned a bookstand containing copies of the Koran, scattering them on the floor.
41. The Israeli Military Commander of the area met the local Arab religious and political leaders, expressed his regret for what had happened and promised that the police would institute an immediate investigation. At his request the Moslem leaders undertook to use their influence to calm the populace so as to prevent any further outbreaks of violence. The two Chief Rabbis of Israel issued a similar appeal to the Jewish public.
42. On Sunday, 3 October—the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—several hundred Arab youths, led by a few adults, broke into the Cave of Machpela during the Moslem prayer hours and the mob began to tear up Torah scrolls and prayer-books, and vandalized the Holy Ark and other sacred objects.
43. A nearby Israeli unit entered the building and evicted the rioters from the premises. In the course of this action some 61 rioters were arrested. Nine of these, being under 14 years of age, were released on their parents' bond. Seven adults were arrested later on suspicion of incitement to riot. A police investigation team was promptly appointed to identify those responsible for the violations of law and order, both Arabs and Jews, and to bring them to justice speedily and impartially. In the meantime, legal proceedings have been instituted against those suspected of breaking the law in Hebron, both Arabs and Jews, including, incidentally, Rabbi Levinger, concerning whom my Arab colleagues seem to have a peculiar obsession.
44. Israel's two Chief Rabbis called for restraint and moderation. The Mayor of Hebron and Moslem religious leaders expressed their shock at the incidents, and apologized publicly for the desecration of the Torah scrolls.
45. The former Mayor of Hebron, Sheikh Ali Al-Ja'abari, appealed to Arab Government to desist from incitement. Obviously his appeal did not reach this far. These appeals came against the background of repeated efforts by Arab Governments to inflame Moslem religious feeling. Radio . Damascus, for example, warned of Moslem wrath, threatening, in a broadcast on 3 October, to repeat the massacres of 1929 and 1948 in Hebron and the vicinity.
46. Faced with such gross incitement, the Israel Defence Forces adopted measures to maintain law and order in Hebron. Israel's Defence Minister, Mr. Shimon Peres, announced in the Knesset on 6 October:
"The Government will ensure that its policy, whether in relation to the coexistence of the two settlements, or to Jewish and Moslem worship under a single roof, shall be honoured and carried out, preferably through the goodwill of the people involved but, if not, by virtue of the law and those entrusted with its preservation."
47. On 10 October the Government of Israel adopted the following resolutions, at a special Cabinet session, concerning the Cave of Machpela: "The Government once again calls upon the Jewish and Arab citizens of Kiryat Arba and Hebron and their spiritual leaders to ensure the preservation of law and order, to take measures to permit the return of calm and to denounce any act of damage to the ritual objects of all faiths. The Government calls upon all public figures and religious leaders to foster relations of tolerance and mutual respect among all the inhabitants of the area.
"An all-out effort will be made to identify those responsible for defiling both Jewish and Moslem holy books and to bring them impartially and speedily to trial."
Since then the curfew in Hebron has been lifted and, the damage in the Cave having been repaired, the Cave has been reopened for worship by Moslems and by Jews.
48. There have been too many tragic events caused by religious fanaticism both in the past and in the present. Those who try to fan religious fires and animosity should beware of what they are doing. The danger is too great, the risks too high to make this a subject for irresponsible political manoeuvres.
49. One should ponder and appreciate how the use of religious hatred and incitement by Arab Governments has claimed the lives of some 50,000 men, women and children in Lebanon.
50. Perhaps nothing can better illustrate the unbelievable distance between what goes on in the territories administered by Israel and the portrayal regularly presented to the Security Council by the Arab representatives at this table and in the halls of the Organization. Compare the unbridled incitement to religious and racial strife which we regularly hear in this chamber to the following statements made by Moslem leaders in Israel in respect of the incident about which the Egyptian and Jordanian representatives have complained.
51. Thus, in the Jerusalem Arabic daily Al-Quds dated 15 October, the Qadi of Hebron, Sheikh Rajab Bayudh AI-Tamini, reported that he had visited the Tomb of the Patriarchs together with other Moslem dignitaries and that they were all satisfied that no changes had taken place within the mosque. No damage had been caused and the renovations had not incorporated any partitioning or alterations. Accompanying the Sheikh were the head of the Moslem Council of Jerusalem, Sheikh Hilmi Al-Muhtasib; the Qadi of Jerusalem, Sheikh Saad Aldin AI-Alami; the Administrator of the Hebron Waqf Midhat Tahbub; and the Mayor of Hebron, Fahd Qawasma.
52. Earlier, following the outrage committed against Jewish Torah scrolls in the tomb building, Sheikh Al-Muhtasib issued a statement, quoted in Al-Quds on 3 October, denouncing the act. It read:
"I have read the news about the desecration of the Torah yesterday. I cannot accept the desecration of anything holy, certainly not the Holy Scriptures. I share the views of the Mayor of Hebron, who has expressed his regrets. It does not befit Moslems or Arabs to destroy holy books, whatever the reason. I had the same feelings about the Torah desecration as I had when the Koran was harmed."
53. In an interview on Israeli television the same day, Sheikh Al-Ja'abari, former Mayor of Hebron, denounced the sacrilege and called upon the leaders of the Arab States to desist from provocation.
54. And finally, let me quote two editorial comments in the Arabic press in Jerusalem. Both newspapers from which I quote are Arab-owned, Arab-administered and Arab-edited and espouse a very strong anti-Israel policy.
I quote from the 5 October issue of Al-Quds:
"Two wrongs do not make a right. We are against retaliation for what was done. The Torah is the Holy Book of the Jews. To attack a Torah is to attack our own heritage and belief and this must be condemned. Sheikh Al-Muhtasib has spoken for us all."
And I quote from the 6 October issue of Al-Shaab:
"We support Sheikh Al-Muhtasib and the Mayors of Nablus and Hebron, who have expressed Moslem respect for all holy books. We call for every effort to be made to calm down passions and curb provocateurs in Hebron."
Here you had the voice of reason of the Moslem leadership which lives with us and which knows the truth. Compare these statements with the spurious specious and time-consuming discussion which we are forced to engage in at this Council table for reasons not connected to the situation in Hebron at all.
55. Let me sound a word of warning. The history of religious incitement is long and dates back in our country to the beginning of the century. For over 55 years, violence, terrorism and endless indoctrination of hate have been cardinal principles of Arab policy by some of the Arab leaders against Jews and Israel. The price paid has been a very high one in both lives and property.
56. Let us not allow Arab extremists another opportunity to exploit the Security Council for the purpose of fomenting hatred between Arab and Jew. Let there be no illusions: Israel will not permit another Lebanon to develop in the territories administered by the Government of Israel.
57. As President Franjieh of Lebanon said in his farewell speech as President: "Assad has woken up; Kuwait has awakened; and Jordan awoke before them. We woke up too late, and others are still asleep". We are not asleep and do not intend to fall asleep.
58. How can the representative of Egypt dare even to utter the word "Gaza"? Does he really believe that everyone has forgotten the 19 years of Egyptian rule over Gaza? Does he believe the inhabitants of Gaza have forgotten the 19 years they were kept as prisoners within that narrow strip of land? Does he believe the Gazans have forgotten that the first decree announced by the Egyptian Military Governor of Gaza was the imposition of a 9 p.m.-to-dawn curfew? That curfew lasted for 19 years and violators were put to death. Highways were closed to all but military traffic after dusk. Does he believe that the world has forgotten how fellow Arabs described Egyptian oppression in Gaza? The Syrians complained that "Egypt was exercising tyranny in the Strip". The Saudi Arabians attacked Egypt in the following words: "Let us now examine the Cairo rulers' attitude to the Palestinians… These are the very methods which the dictator Hitler used in the countries he occupied during the world war".
59. The list of quotations is long. I have cited some of them before, and I will not tire you by recalling them. But my Egyptian colleague should know full well that the last person with any moral right even to mention the word Gaza here or anywhere else is an Egyptian. The inhabitants of Gaza, like the inhabitants of the West Bank, have varying views as to their fate in a future settlement. They are free to express their opinions and to conduct open debates on the Subject, but it is significant that not once has an Egyptian solution for Gaza ever been proposed in Gaza.
60. If ever a regime was hated it was the Egyptian regime in Gaza.
61. One of the more entertaining points raised by my Egyptian colleague concerned alleged Israeli economic pressure and blackmail in the administered territories. what utter nonsense. One has only to look at the figures on economic trends in the territories administered by Israel to note the radical economic revolution which has occurred and is occurring in them.
62. A few months ago Israel followed the example of many other countries and introduced the system of value added tax called VAT. Since Israel and the 'territories administered by Israel today comprise one customs union, obviously the same tax which applies to goods in Israel applies in all territories within that customs union. Mr. Abdel Meguid [1966th meeting] mentioned the Arab opposition to the application of that tax. He omitted to mention an equally considerable opposition by the Jewish population to the imposition of the tax. Strangely enough, believe it or not, the two populations, the Jewish and the Arab, do have at least one thing in common. They are not especially enthusiastic . about new taxes. I have a suspicion that this characteristic is not exclusive to our two peoples and that many here will appreciate the feelings of those who do not enjoy paying taxes.
63. If Mr. Abdel Meguid feels very strongly about it, and President Sadat's internal or external problems require a further meeting of the Council, this might be as good a subject as any on which to convene the Council. We could, for instance, jointly vent our displeasure with the British tax authorities, who, I regret to say, are the mentors of Israel's tax authorities — tradition and previous association die hard — because they seem to have a knack of devising the most diabolical tax laws imaginable, as my British colleague will doubtless confirm. For the British tax ideas are invariably adopted by Israeli tax people and dutifully applied. Or perhaps we ought to complain to our French and Swedish colleagues. I am open to correction, but I believe that this particular tax was the product of the imagination of the French and Swedish tax authorities and a device ultimately adopted by many other countries including, I regret to say, my own.
64. But, seriously, if the Egyptian representative wishes to complain about taxation, then let him present the Council with. the entire economic picture of the territories administered by Israel, because the facts are that in the period from 1968 to 1975 the gross national product in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip has risen by an annual average of 14 per cent. In that period the national product per capita has risen in the West Bank by 11 per cent and in Gaza by 12 per cent, and private consumption has risen by 9 per cent in both territories. The total exports of goods and services in 1974 prices has risen annually for the West Bank by 24 per cent and for the Gaza Strip by 30 per cent. The net daily wage in the West Bank has risen annually by 35 per cent and in the Gaza Strip by 39 per cent.
65. The education budget which we discovered in the Gaza Strip and northern Sinai area in 1967-1968 was a total of approximately $2 million, believe it or not, for a population of some 400,000. In the West Bank, for a population of some 650,000, it was a total of some $7 million. The education budget this year in the Gaza Strip and northern Sinai is 10 times as big as it was nine years ago, and in the West Bank nine times what it was nine years ago.
66. The health budget in Gaza and northern Sinai, which in 1967-1968 we found to be $800,000 for a population of 400,000, believe it or not, or $2 per head, has increased 30-fold, and the health budget we found in the West Bank has increased some 20-fold. The international financial statistics which have been published reveal that the West Bank and Gaza were the leaders in economic growth measured in gross national product per head when compared with Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
67. So much for economic oppression, my distinguished Egyptian colleague.
68. The Egyptian representative mentioned the fact that there are 3,200 Arab prisoners in Israeli gaols. As the representatives may be aware, over 500,000 Arab citizens live in Israel, and over a million in the territories administered by Israel. Now, I believe you will find it extremely interesting if you will compare the number of Arabs held in gaol in Israel, where the prisons are open for all to investigate, and where prisoners are sentenced by due process of law, with the number of Arabs in gaol in the surrounding Arab countries. What are of more relevance are the conditions in which they are held in those gaols. Indeed, they defy description.
69. I am not revealing anything new to the Council when I say that acts of terrorism have been carried out against innocent people in Israel and that terrorists have been apprehended after perpetrating the most brutal murders and acts of violence. Does the representative of Egypt really want us to emulate the Arab Governments in the treatment even of the PLO terrorists? In 1970 well over 100 members of the PLO came over voluntarily to Israel rather than experience Jordanian gaols.
70. In the last year two tourist hotels have been attacked by PLO terrorists. In both, innocent tourists were killed. One was the Savoy Hotel, in Tel-Aviv, and the other the Semiramis Hotel, in Damascus. What would the distinguished Egyptian representative suggest as our mode of behaviour? To give them a fair trial and sentence them to prison terms, even though they murdered people, as occurred in Israel, or to arrest them, conduct a token trial of 12 minutes duration in which the presiding judge announces there will not be time for coffee, and hang them immediately thereafter publicly in a square in Damascus for the enlightenment of the population which gathers to see the spectacle, as occurred in Syria? Which norm of behaviour would my distinguished Egyptian colleague suggest?
71. The terrorists who were accused of sabotage in Al-Tahrir Square in Cairo were sentenced a few weeks ago—one to death by hanging and another to life imprisonment. Less than two weeks ago the two terrorists accused of sabotaging a train in Alexandria were sentenced to death. The three PLO terrorists who hijacked an Egyptian plane in August were sentenced to life with hard labour. Should we emulate the standards of our Arab neighbours?
72. Despite the intense provocation under which we live, despite the massacres, the shootings, the acts of terrorism that have been directed against our population, in many cases against innocent women and children, I am proud to sit here and state that not in one single case has Israel carried out a death sentence. Yet you, the distinguished Arab representatives, pontificate to us about civilized behaviour?
73. We have been regaled with the newly discovered bonanza, the so-called Koenig report. All my Arab colleagues are having a field day—including my Jordanian colleague, whose racist Constitution and laws forbid a Jew to be a citizen of Jordan because he is a member of the Jewish religion and forbid Christians to own land in Jerusalem, and my Syrian colleague, whose regime keeps 4,500 Syrian Jews virtually in prison in Syria, denying them the elementary rights of freedom, of expression and of movement.
74. Despite the fact that this is a purely internal matter, and as such is outside the competence of the Organization, Israel has nothing to hide, and I therefore wish to refer to it briefly.
75. The position of my Government on this question was expressed by Prime Minister Rabin in a speech on 16 September. In his statement the Prime Minister stated that the Koenig letter is nothing but an internal memorandum from an employee of the Ministry of the Interior to his superiors in which he expressed his own personal opinion. This memorandum does not reflect the policy of the Government of Israel and, moreover, it does not determine the Government's policy towards the Arab citizens of Israel.
76. The representative of Egypt, as usual, distorts the facts—not only by naming Mr. Koenig as the official "responsible for the treatment of Arabs in Israel" [ibid., para. 69], but also by characterizing the Koenig report as an "official plan". Since the representative of Egypt is so fond of quoting the Israeli press—I know that the functioning of a lively democracy is something beyond his comprehension why does he not quote the statement I have just cited, made by Prime Minister Rabin on 16 September which is the one most relevant to the issue?
77. Suffice it to say that the so-called proposal by Mr. Koenig did not even warrant discussion at any of the superior levels of the Government of Israel, and had in fact been shelved for over six months before anybody heard about it.
78. Finally, I really do not wish to involve myself in any further useless polemics and to engage in the time-consuming exercise of refuting my Arab colleagues. It will not bring us any closer to peace. That is what should interest us, and not this Useless monthly exercise in name-calling.
79. But I do wish to make a number of comments addressed primarily to the representative of Jordan. In discussing the Palestine Arab people, he conveniently ignored the Palestinian inhabitants of Jordan.
80. The fact is that, of 2.8 million Palestinian Arabs, over 1.7 million, including some 650,000 in the West Bank, are citizens of the Kingdom of Jordan and hold Jordanian passports, while half a million are citizens of Israel and hold Israeli passports. Therefore, approximately 80 per cent of all Palestinian Arabs are citizens of both countries, Jordan and Israel.
81. Furthermore, 80 per cent of the territory of Palestine under the Mandate is the present Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. These facts only bring us to reiterate the belief of the Government of Israel that the ultimate solution of the Palestine Arab problem must lie within the context of a peace agreement —and I emphasize: peace agreement—between Israel and Jordan. But we are not going to achieve that agreement if Mr. Nuseibeh already sets out preconditions to such negotiations as might take place: namely, prompt Israeli withdrawal, and thereafter the restoration of what he calls
"the legitimate national rights and… aspirations of the Palestinians, it being understood that Jordan recognizes the PLO… as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" [ibid., para. 144].
82. Now, he should please make up his mind. The Government of Jordan and the Government of Israel have agreed on resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) as a basis for negotiation between free and equal parties to the negotiations. All the elements in resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) are part of a package deal, and it must be obvious to Jordan, as it is to the international community by now, that we will not be browbeaten into solutions which prejudice the negotiations in advance and which set out preconditions.
83. I was very interested to note the Jordanian statement about that country's recognition of the position of the PLO. Frankly, I had not noticed it.
84. Fifty per cent of the Jordanian Parliament is still, to this day, composed of representatives of the West Bank. The Mayors of the West Bank pay homage to King Hussein and receive loans for development from his Government, in addition, of course, to receiving loans from the Government of Israel. The Jordanian civil service still, in effect, administers the West Bank on a day-to-day basis.
85. It is more than the life of a member of the PLO is worth for him to show his face in Jordan. Whom do they think they are fooling? Why all this make-believe? Does Mr. Nuseibeh really mean to say that he, a Palestinian Arab, the distinguished son of a distinguished Palestinian Arab family, representing the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, or that the West Bank representatives to the Jordanian Parliament, or the freely elected Mayors in the West Bank, in the only free elections in the Arab world, or a good percentage of the Jordanian Cabinet—does he really wish to tell us that they all represent the Palestinian Arabs less well than do the Cairo-born Yasser Arafat or the emigre leadership in Beirut?
86. He asked us the other day:
"Should we miss a precious opportunity, which seems to exist and which may not exist in the future,… or should we continue a blind and inexorable drift towards an inevitable cataclysm? [ibid., para. 131].
87. Then, to my utter amazement, his answer was that it depended largely on what we do or fail to do in the Council today. He surely cannot be serious. Does he really believe that this type of barren, useless, time-consuming debate is the right way to solve the problem in the Middle East?
88. The Jordanian delegation surely cannot believe this in the case of a discussion sprung on them and on the other Arab delegations by their Egyptian colleague without any advance notice, and about which they learnt only four hours after the Egyptians presented their request to the President of the Security Council. They surely cannot believe that this meeting, which is a function of inter-Arab one-upmanship, is the forum in which we can solve such problems.
89. The Jordanian representative knows Israel: he has been there; he has talked to Israelis. I do not for a moment suggest that he likes them or that he approves of their policies. But at least he and the members of his family—with some of whom I have not only studied together in Jerusalem but have met in dialogue—are aware of the fact that in Israel they have a free and open society which can be talked to, where they can meet, and which is open to influence in the normal democratic process. Incidentally, I must ask him and his Arab colleagues: what would they all do for speeches if they did not have the free, unfettered Israeli press as a source?
90. I personally presided in Tel Aviv over a meeting addressed by his distinguished brother, in which he openly castigated Israeli policy.
91. What I am trying to say is that Council resolution 338 (1973) calls for the States parties to the conflict to sit down and to negotiate. Only a few days ago, our Prime Minister reiterated our willingness to go to Geneva for the resumption of the Conference as originally constituted.
92. How are we going to arrive at any solution? Why should they complain when life refuses to stand still because they can do nothing but convene meetings of the Security Council in order to call us: names?
93. Why can we not start the negotiating process? Why can we not sit down even here and talk like civilized human beings? How are we ever going to make any advance if we do not sit down and talk? How has any other conflict ever been solved without the parties talking? Why can they not overcome this inherent fear of talking to us, here and elsewhere? How do they ever expect us to make progress, here or anywhere else?
94. In addressing myself to the Jordanian representative, I happened to be referring to a paragraph of his speech, but I was not particularly addressing myself only to him: this appeal applies equally to all representatives of countries with which we have common borders.
95. Let me spell it out and make it quite clear: as long as they refuse to talk to us, it means that they do not recognize our right to exist. If they do not recognize our right to exist, then we are not disposed to accommodate them in this or any other respect. That being the case, why blame us when we do not sit still in the territories and await their pleasure?
96. They said here that the PLO represents the Palestine Arabs. They know the PLO Covenant as well as I do, and that in article 19 it declares that the existence of the State of Israel is null and void, and that in article 20 it denies any historical links between the Jewish people and the Holy Land, and in article 21 rejects any form of solution to the problem, apart, in effect, from the destruction of Israel.
97. Do they really think that they are going to find anybody in his right mind in Israel or elsewhere to accept this nonsense? I join Mr. Nuseibeh in his prayer that we should not miss a precious opportunity. We must not miss such an opportunity. For that reason let us sit down like civilized human beings and begin to talk and understand each other and together seize this precious opportunity. Let us abandon this horrible, useless and interminable rhetoric, which we shall hear again as soon as I have concluded, and let us join together, representing as we do two great faiths, two great cultures, which have given so much to humanity, to seize that opportunity.
98. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish): I wish to inform the Council that I have received a letter from the representative of Saudi Arabia requesting that he be invited, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Charter, to participate in our debate without the right to vote. In accordance, therefore, with the usual practice and with the provisions of rule 37 of the provisional rules of procedure of the Security Council and if there are no objections, I propose that the representative of Saudi Arabia be invited to participate in the debate without the right to vote.
99. I invite the representative of Saudi Arabia to take the place reserved for him at the side of the Council chamber, on the usual understanding that he will be invited to take a place at the Council table when it is his turn to address the Council.
At the invitation of the President, Mr. Baroody, representative of Saudi Arabia, took the place reserved for him at the side of the Council chamber.
100. Mr. OVINNIKOV (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) (interpretation from Russian): The Soviet delegation reserves its right to speak on the item under discussion at a subsequent meeting of the Security Council. If we are forced to speak today, it is because of the statement of the representative of Israel, Mr. Herzog. Not for the first time when we are discussing the question of the Arab territories occupied by Israel in 1967, he is using the same device. He prefers to talk about all kinds of things, but above all—as I have no doubt members of the Council have noticed—about the situation in Lebanon.
101. If we are to believe the words of the representative of Israel, there is no country that is more concerned about the sovereignty of Lebanon, about its future and the integrity of its frontiers than Israel. Mr. Herzog is nodding his agreement. But is it really so? It is well known that in reality one of the major reasons for the tragic events in Lebanon is Israel's policy of flagrant interference in the affairs of that Arab country. The representative of Israel hastened to explain all this as being communist propaganda.
102. However, I would venture to draw the attention of members of the Council to a document of the Council, a routine report on the status of the ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon sector. This is the report by the Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization [S/11663/Add.32]. These facts were compiled by impartial United Nations observers. What do they have to report, since the representative of Israel raised the question of Lebanon? They make the following points: first, in October 1976 six cases occurred of Israeli occupation of positions on Lebanese territory; secondly, in October there were 14 cases of firing across the truce demarcation line involving not only small-arms fire but mortar and artillery fire by the Israelis; thirdly, in the month of October there were six cases of violation of the territorial waters of Lebanon by Israeli warships; fourthly, in the same month there were 26 cases of violation by Israeli aircraft of Lebanese airspace.
103. These are the facts of the real situation and the true role of Israel in Lebanon. These are facts gathered by United Nations observers. Accordingly, we can draw the conclusion that Israel does not confine itself to its continuing occupation of Arab lands which it seized in 1967 but is also attempting, by means of creeping aggression and occupation, to violate the sovereignty of another Arab country, Lebanon. This is what every member of the Council should think about since the representative of Israel has referred to this problem.
104. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish): I call on the representative of Israel on a point of clarification.
105. Mr. HERZOG (Israel): I would appreciate it if the Soviet representative would clarify whether there was any loss of life in the various incidents referred to by him and whether at that time the Israeli forces which he alleges were in southern Lebanon were the only foreign forces in Lebanon.
106. Mr. OVINNIKOV (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) (interpretation from Russian): I note that the representative of Israel does not deny the fact of the violation of the airspace of Lebanon by Israeli aircraft, of the territorial waters of Lebanon by Israeli naval warships or of the occupation of positions on Lebanese territory by Israeli troops.
107. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish): The next speaker is the representative of Mauritania whom I request to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.
108. Mr. EL HASSEN (Mauritania) (interpretation from French): The task before the Security Council is once again a difficult and important one; difficult and important by reason of its essentially political character; difficult and important, also, by reason of the explosive nature of the situation prevailing in the Middle East. Mr. President, cognizant as we are of your outstanding qualities as a diplomat and the commitment of your country, Panama, to the struggle of peoples fighting for the recognition of their inalienable rights, we are convinced that under your presidency the Council will be able to face up to the important and difficult tasks to which 1 have referred. Permit me to extend our congratulations to you.
109. For the third or fourth time in the course of this year, the Council is concerned with the situation prevailing in the occupied Arab territories. If the Council has been seized of this question on repeated occasions, it is not because rhetoric in the Council is an end in itself for the Arab countries as was implied by the representative of Tel Aviv; nor is it because the Arab countries are not in a position to respond to violence with violence. If the Council has been seized of this question, it is because the Council has been vested by the Charter of the United Nations with primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Israel's practices in the occupied Arab territories, the blind repression which characterizes its policy in those territories, its policy of looting the Arab territories, all constitute, to say the least, a threat to peace in the region and beyond that a direct threat to international peace.
110. It is obvious that the duty of the Council is to deal with this situation itself and take the measures laid down in the Charter for such circumstances, in order to remove this threat to peace and avoid a situation that could explode at any time. It seems to me that the Council should be grateful to the representative of Egypt for drawing its attention once again to the gravity of the situation.
111. We know that the Council has already considered the situation in the Middle East and that it has studied its various aspects. We know too that it has adopted a number of resolutions dealing with that situation, but neither this consideration by the Council nor the resolutions it has adopted have so far prevented a recurrence of violence in the form of repression or in the form of a large-scale war. This is something that no country questions, and if this is the case it is because the decisions of the Security Council have not been implemented, because of two fundamental elements, the first of which is the arrogance and intransigence of Israel, and the second is the fact that these resolutions of the Council suffer from a fundamental omission.
112. The intransigence and arrogance of Israel prevented any of the peace efforts preceding the 1973 war from succeeding. Israel has refused to withdraw from the Arab territories it occupied in 1967 following its aggression against the Arab countries bordering Palestine. Not only has it flouted all efforts at mediation but it has embarked on a systematic policy of settlement and establishment of colonies in those territories, while at the same time proceeding with the displacement of the Arab populations and their despoliation. Undoubtedly this attitude on the part of Israel was at the very root of the 1973 war.
113. Today the situation has not changed fundamentally as compared with that prevailing in 1973 and, the same causes engendering the same effects, it is probable, if not certain, that Israel's practices in the occupied Arab territories and its refusal to bow to the will of the international community will lead once again to a war, the consequences of which, both for the region and for international peace, no one can foresee. Israel now and in the past, thanks to perfected propaganda, has made others believe the idea that its neighbours wish to cast it into the sea. Today no country can in any way believe so grotesque and simplistic an idea. What we fear is the opposite situation. The Arab territories have been occupied and annexed by force. Their populations have been uprooted and looted, and the policy of genocide against the Palestinian people undertaken over a quarter of a century ago continues today, blindly and mercilessly.
114. This is the policy of the Zionist authorities in Tel Aviv, which has consisted so far of disregarding the resolutions of the Council calling on Israel to withdraw from the occupied Arab territories. As I said earlier, there is a second element which so far has caused the Council's action to remain without practical effect, because there is a fundamental omission in its resolutions and this has greatly contributed to their ineffectiveness. It is essentially the fact that we put in parenthesis the principle cause, if not the primary cause, of the situation prevailing in the Middle East, namely, the question of the Palestinian people. It is obvious that no just and durable peace can be established in the region without the recognition of the national inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. This is the reality that has become clear to the international community in these past years.
115. The General Assembly itself has adopted a large number of resolutions that are unequivocal on the subject. The participation of representatives of the PLO in the debates in the Security Council since the beginning of this year constitutes another illustration of this general trend. The Council, if it is to live up to its responsibilities and to fill the gap that so far has appeared in its resolutions on the Middle East, must take this trend into account. We believe in fact that the Council cannot continue to avoid recognizing an increasingly evident reality, namely, the Palestinian reality. It cannot remain impassive with regard to the Israeli practices in the occupied Arab territories. Nor can it remain indifferent to the threat to international peace and security constituted by the Israeli policy of occupation and annexation by force. The Council, the guardian of world peace, must express to Israel its most vigorous reprobation by saying that its policy may well lead to a new confrontation, with unforeseeable consequences. For our part, we place our hopes in the Council and we trust that it will live up to our expectations.
116. The representative of Israel has resorted to the wornout record that he customarily makes us listen to in the Council when he has to face up to his immediate and very serious responsibilities. He has resorted to this old record to divert the attention of the members of the Council. Thus he has spoken of a schism in the Arab world, he has spoken of Lebanon and he has spoken of differences here and there in the Arab world. We have had occasion in the past to tell the representative of Tel Aviv that the Arab countries may have differences of view and perhaps profound divergences, but I can assure him that he is making a bad bet if he bets on that division. I believe that what happened in 1973 should already have served as a lesson to the Israeli representatives.
117. If we listen to the representative of Israel, we gather the impression that everyone is wrong and only the representative of Tel Aviv is right. The world is presented topsyturvy: occupation becomes the cause of prosperity and of freedom, and slavery becomes a desired objective. If we listen to the representative of Israel, we honestly believe that we are living in a world that is upsidedown.
118. Everybody—the international community, which has condemned Israel for its practices, which has demanded that Israel cease its practices in the occupied Arab territories and withdraw from those territories, which has demanded that Israel conform to the law and to the decisions of the Security Council and the General Assembly—everybody is wrong. And the representative of Israel now comes before the Council and tries to moralize. I think that is an insult to the Council and to the conscience of each and every one of us.
119. The Arab countries have come before the Council. They are in a position to respond to violence with violence. They are in a position not to seize the Council of the matter, but the Council has a fundamental responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It is the duty of the Council, without having been seized of the matter by any Arab country, to deal with the situation on its own initiative and to show its gratitude to those who have drawn its attention to the situation.
120. I believe that the representative of Israel will see the world as it is—not as he would like it to be—if he turns himself upside-down.
121. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish): The next speaker is the representative of Bangladesh. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.
122. Mr. KAISER (Bangladesh): Mr. President, I should like to thank you and the other members of the Security Council for allowing my delegation to participate in the present debate on the situation in the occupied Arab territories. While doing so, we also want to extend our congratulations to you and your country on your assumption of the office of President of the Security Council. We are confident that under your able and skilful guidance the Council's deliberations will be fruitful.
123. The Middle East dispute and the situation in the Arab territories occupied by Israel have engaged the attention of the Security Council, as well as other organs of the United Nations, frequently and for a long time. The last time that the Council debated the deteriorating situation in the occupied Arab territories was in May of this year. At that time [1922th meeting the President of the Council expressed, on behalf of the majority, grave anxiety over the present situation in the Arab territories and the well-being of the population of those territories. He also deplored the measures taken by Israel to alter the demographic composition or the geographical nature of those territories and declared them to be illegal and an obstacle to peaces. Similar opinions have been repeatedly expressed before by the Council, other United Nations organs and Member States, and in strong terms.
124. Looking over the few intervening months since then, we find that Israel, in total disregard of the international community and of its close friends and allies—of everyone—has continued the same policy of insidious annexation. If anything has changed, it has changed for the worse. With each passing day Israel's policy has become more blatant, more flagrant and more arrogant.
125. The representative of Egypt, in opening this debate on 1 November [1966th meeting], described in detail how Israel was engaged in an organized and open plan of annexation of the Arab territories: occupied by it and the progressive elimination of every vestige of Palestinian presence in the area. Those longterm, systematic and cynical plans have been set out in Israeli official documents. Those programmes and actions of the Israeli Government clearly demonstrate its objective of wiping out the name of Palestine and the existence of the Palestinian people and pushing its floating boundary further and further in ever-expanding drives of colonization.
126. Both those developments hold ominous consequences for the prospect of peace in the Middle East. We have always believed and continue to believe that full recognition of the national rights of the Palestinian people and the evacuation of all the Arab territories occupied by Israel are two essential conditions of a just and permanent settlement in the Middle; East. Israel's policy is clearly designed to thwart the satisfaction of those two conditions of a settlement. One is therefore left with no choice but to conclude that Israel is not interested in peace.
127. It is also my duty to bring to the notice of the Council another aspect of the situation in the Arab territories which arises from Israel's policy towards the Palestinian people and which affects us directly: it is the status of the religious shrines of Islam. Territories now occupied by Israel contain some of the holiest shrines of Islam, to which our attachment is deep and abiding. First among them is, of course, the Holy City of Jerusalem. My delegation has had occasion to express the grave concern that Moslems all over the world feel at attempts by Israel to desecrate the holy shrines of Islam situated in that city. That situation has not changed. In addition, we now find that Israel is pursuing the same policy in other parts of the occupied territories. Israel must clearly understand that the Moslem world will never accept the policy that it is pursuing. To allow Israel to perpetrate the law of the jungle would be to condone sacrilege against religious sentiments of a large segment of mankind—the adherents to one of the major religions of the world, Islam, successor to the religion of Ibrahim Al-Khalil. It would also be tantamount to denying to the Palestinians their legitimate right to their country. The world community must act decisively now or face consequences the dimensions of which none of us can predict.
128. The representative of Israel has given us what we must consider to be a dissertation on both history and religion. We are here neither to discuss the history of our forefathers nor to compare the glorious history of the great religions and ancient civilizations. Our concern is with the ugly realities of the Middle East and its agonies, for which Israel is responsible and of which it is the sole architect.
129. Mr. NYAKYI (United Republic of Tanzania): Mr. President, permit me at the outset to congratulate you on your assumption of the presidency of the Council for the month of November. I am confident that your high qualities and experience as a diplomat will ensure positive achievements by the Council under your wise guidance. May I also pay tribute to your predecessor, Mr. Akhund of Pakistan, for the wise and able manner in which he presided over the Council during the month of October.
130. Once again the Security Council is meeting to consider the situation in the occupied Arab territories. As was the case in the Council meetings in March and May, we have before us a specific complaint against the occupying Power, whose repressive measures against Palestinian inhabitants are making the situation in the occupied Arab territories increasingly explosive. The seriousness of the situation was explained to the Council on 1 November [Ibid.} by the representatives of the PLO, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. I shall not, therefore, dwell on the harrowing details of the acts perpetrated by Israel against the people of Palestine in those occupied territories. Instead, what I wish to do is stress the underlying causes of incidents such as those at Hebron.
131. As we stated in March, the incidents which are occurring in Jerusalem and other towns of the West Bank are a result of the occupation of Arab territories by Israel. This was aptly stated by the representative of the PLO at the opening of this debate when he stressed that the root cause of the problems in the occupied territories was the occupation itself. That is to say that as long as Israel continues to occupy Arab territories and continues to deny the people of Palestine their inalienable rights, there will never be peace in the Middle East. It is therefore incumbent upon Israel to take steps to implement the relevant Council resolutions in order to facilitate the achievement of peace in the area.
132. The Hebron incidents are a warning, and Israel must realize that if it continues to ignore the repeated appeals of the Council, resistance in the occupied Arab territories will continue in the form of strikes and demonstrations and in other ways until victory is achieved, for one cannot defeat the determination of the human spirit to struggle for a just cause. The Palestinian people, who are at the centre of the Arab-Israeli conflict, will continue to fight until they triumph. They cannot remain homeless refugees living in poverty and misery.
133. For this reason, the international community has recognized the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to establish an independent State of their own. In this regard my delegation, along with others, condemned in June this year [1938th meeting] the abuse of the veto by one permanent member which blocked passage of the report of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian Peopled By failing to affirm the right of the people of Palestine to independent nationhood, the Council failed in its duty to help in the attainment of peace in the Middle East.
134. One would have expected that Israel, which came into existence through the partition of Palestine, would have been the first to redress the injustice committed against the Palestinian people. Instead, Israel continues to take measures which are contrary to United Nations resolutions. For example, in the report of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population of the Occupied Territories,1 there are reports of serious violations of human rights by the occupying Power. Israel continues to expel Arabs from the occupied territories. In occupied Jerusalem and Gaza, it has transferred thousands of persons from their homes in one part to another. It denies the right of return to their homes of those persons who fled the occupied territories. It demolishes houses and expropriates property. Worse still is Israel's policy of annexation by establishing permanent settlements. By establishing Jewish settlements in occupied Arab lands Israel presumably wants-to present the world with a fait accompli. My delegation deplores this state of affairs and calls upon Israel to desist from further acts aimed at annexation and changing the demographic pattern of the occupied lands.
135. It is now up to the Council to take positive action to force Israel to implement the Council's resolutions. For too long now the Council has been frustrated by inaction because of vetoes. The Palestinian people cannot be prevented for ever from achieving their aim of an independent homeland. Throughout human history no people has acquiesced for ever in such a situation without struggle. For the Israeli authorities, therefore, to believe that their repressive actions will break the will and the capacity of the Palestinian people to resist is self-delusion. It is to ignore the lessons of history—particularly relevant among which is that of the Jewish people itself. The present oppressors of the Palestinian people in occupied Arab territories will be no more successful then were those of the Jewish people nearly four decades ago. Therefore, it is not a question of whether the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people will be fulfilled; it is a question of when and how. Whether this aim is achieved peacefully or through more violence will depend on Israel's attitude and that of its comforters. My delegation believes that, if those comforters were to be evenhanded with respect to the rights of Palestinian people, it would be possible to make Israel fulfil its obligations. But so long as Israel knows it has the assured support of those comforters, it will continue its impudent flouting of United Nations resolutions.
136. The time has therefore come for the Council to exert its collective will and to tell Israel in no uncertain terms that the highest organ responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security will not tolerate indifference to its decisions. The Council should now give teeth to its decisions calling upon Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab territories. The Council should demand that Israel carry out decisions of the United Nations which are designed to restore to the Palestinian people their birthright of self-determination. If Israel fails to act in accordance with the collective will of the Council, then it will be proper for the Council to apply the appropriate measures under the Charter.
137. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish): The next speaker is the representative of Egypt. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.
138. Mr. ABDEL MEGUID (Egypt): As usual, the Council has again been subjected to a barrage of lies, distortions and allegations by the representative of Israel. He tried to belittle the intelligence of the members of the Council, in the hope that, by repeating again and again the old Israeli story, he might lead some people to swallow it.
139. He even argued in his statement that, when the Council decides to meet, it is an insult. Again he tried to distract the Council's attention from the subject of its debate by referring to the situation in Lebanon. Everyone now knows that Israel fears that peace will return to Lebanon and that its interests lie in continuation of the fighting in that country. But it ^ no use shedding crocodile tears with regard to ^ situation in Lebanon while Israel is continuing it crimes in the occupied Arab territories.
140. I need hardly remind the members of the Council that the Council is meeting to consider Israel illegal measures in the occupied Arab territories and that conditions in those territories are the concern and responsibility of the Council.
141. The Israeli representative resorted to his usual and oft-repeated tactic of confusing the issues anil diverting attention by invoking various unrelated arguments. The crux of the problem before us is the Israeli military occupation and its obnoxious ramifications and not — I repeat, not — the internal situation in Lebanon. What occurred in Lebanon is deeply regretted, but it can provide no justification whatsoever for Israel's persistent implementation of its expansionist designs in the occupied Arab territories.
142. I do not intend to dwell on the events in Lebanon, and I shall only say that whatever happened there is being rectified within the context of the Arab nations, following the Riyadh and Cairo summit meetings in October of this year.
143. Israel is never reluctant to meddle in and to attempt to exacerbate internal Arab problems, believing that the next best thing to dead Arabs is disunited Arabs. But, to Israel's dismay, Arab unity is restored, and, as The Washington Post noted on 28 October:
"There is growing apprehension in Israel that her vacation may fast be drawing to a close. The Arab summit meeting conference in Cairo has done much to restore Arab unity and Arab solidarity has been strengthened as a result of this Cairo meeting and the smaller six-party meeting in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Syrian and Egyptian rapprochement is now a reality."
144. The Israeli representative also saw fit to make his allegations first outside the Council. He contends, in the press release issued by his Mission on 1 November, that the contents of my letter to the President of the Council and the debate are totally unrelated to the true situation in the area. That letter is before every member of the Council.
145. Does he dare to challenge any of the points I mentioned in my letter? Did or did not his Government arbitrarily arrest many people in the West Bank and Gaza? Did or did not his Government impose curfews on many cities in the West Bank? Did or did not his Government condone the acts of desecration by extremist groups? Did or did not his Government establish, and is it or is it not continuing to establish, settlements in the occupied Arab territories? The answers to these questions are well known and they are even to be found the statements of leaders of the Israeli Government themselves. I can only hope that the Israeli representative will read the article in this connexion published in The New York Times, a newspaper which is friendly to Israel and which he quoted. This article on the treatment of Arabs by his Government appeared on 2 November, two days ago. I should like to quote only a few words from it:
"[they are] second-class citizens. The problems of the Israeli Arabs… have taken on new urgency in recent months as a result of protests by once-placid Israeli Arabs and of a controversial report by an Israeli official that has inflamed many members of the minority group."
The article was written by Mr. William E. Farrell and is datelined Jerusalem, 1 November. I shall come back to this later in my statement.
146. The Israeli representative then accused Egypt of abusing the Security Council, an organ which, in ,his words, is devoted to the maintenance of international peace and security. If the Israeli representative Believes that, does he consider that the actions and measures of his Government in the occupied areas compatible with peace and security? I do not think that he genuinely believes that.
147. It is a fact that we have asked for these meetings for the very reason that these acts are endangering peace and security in the area and that if they continue they can only lead to an explosion of the situation.
148. The Israeli representative also accused Egypt and the rest of the Arab world of having asked for a debate in the Council after the Riyadh meeting. I answer him by saying, yes; we, the Arabs, presented our case to the Security Council after the Riyadh meeting and before the Riyadh meeting.
149. Does he expect that Egypt or any other Arab country will stand idly by when they see that their brothers in the territories occupied by Israel are being killed, arrested, tortured, deported, their houses demolished, their land expropriated and alien elements brought among them to dwell on their own land?
150. If we did not inform the Council, the highest organ responsible for peace and security in the world, about these repressive and shameful measures, we should not be fulfilling our obligations under the Charter.
151. I understand the embarrassment and shame of his Government at being exposed in the Council and other United Nations organs, but what does he expect? Does he expect the same embarrassment as his Government felt because of the Koenig report and not because of its content but merely because it came to the knowledge of world public opinion?
As the Jewish Observer of September 1976 rightly put it in describing those Israeli leaders who approved of the report: "They accepted the findings in principle but saw in its leaking to the press an act little short of national treason".
152. Where is Mr. Koenig now? He is most certainly still occupying his post, and he will probably be promoted soon. In fact, the Israeli Government is starting to implement his suggestions, especially by establishing new Israeli settlements where Arabs are located.
153. The Israeli representative did not deny a word of the Koenig report. Instead, he tried to use the very timid statement of his Prime Minister on that report, forgetting that the Minister of the Interior under whom Mr. Koenig works declared his complete faith in Mr. Koenig.
154. I should like at this point to quote another excerpt from the article in The New York Times of 2 November dealing with the Koenig report, to which I have just referred:
"The reaction to [the situation in occupied Arab territories] was intensified by Mr. Koenig's position as the Ministry of the Interior's chief official in Galilee, with a good deal of say about allocation of funds to municipalities."
And the article goes on:
"But the failure to dismiss Mr. Koenig is still a sore point with many Israeli Arabs, and his memorandum has provided a good deal of grist for anti-Israeli propaganda mills."
155. The Israeli representative tries to sell the Council the story that Moslem leaders in the occupied West Bank are content with Israeli rule and Israel's behaviour in recent weeks. But I refer him to the letter sent a few days ago to the Israeli Military Governor by Moslem leaders. The letter was published on 27 October in the newspaper Al-Shaab. It contained the following demands: first, to release the detained students, whose actions were motivated by their religious zeal and resulted from the provocative behaviour of the Kiryat Arba residents who tore up the Koran without regard for the religious laws, which do not permit the desecration of the sacred books of any religion; secondly, to abolish the military arrangements at the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque which allow substantial numbers of Israeli soldiers into the Mosque during Moslem prayers—a fact that contradicts the freedom of worship at the holy site; thirdly, to keep the Ibrahimi Mosque purely a Moslem site, as has been the case since the Moslems entered these lands; and fourthly, to ensure that the two religions do not hold prayers at the same time, since this causes sorrow and constitutes imperfection in regard to Moslem law and contradicts religion. Never in recorded history has a place served as a mosque and a synagogue at the same time.
156. We know who is making false allegations, who has the temerity to speak of benevolent occupation by Israel of Arab lands and Gaza, to speak of how happy the people there are—when we know that every week there are more arrests, more houses are demolished, there are more fake trials, and so forth. The representative of Israel is the last to speak about Gaza.
157. The representative of Israel puts his case as though Israel can do no wrong; Israel is not to be blamed; Israel has nothing to be ashamed of; it is we the Arabs and our friends who are the aggressors. That is very strange logic.
158. The Israeli representative and his Government must understand that as long as Israel continues to occupy Arab land, as long as it continues to persecute and repress the Palestinian people and deny them their inalienable national rights, including the right to an independent State, the whole Arab world will be united. The Arab world will be united until the occupied territories are liberated and justice and peace prevail in the area. And we shall continue to expose in the Security Council and all other international forums the true picture of this dangerous Israeli policy.
159. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish): The next speaker is the representative of Saudi Arabia. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.
160. Mr. BAROODY (Saudi Arabia): 1 congratulate you, Mr. President, on the way in which you have been guiding the deliberations of the Security Council on the item of which it is seized. It is appropriate for me to say that you hail from the country where the Panama Canal, which connects two great oceans, has been a waterway of peace between the peoples of the northern and southern hemispheres in the new world. We hope that Panama, which you represent, will remain a symbol of peace among the various nations of the world, not only in regard to trade but also because it is a highway of culture and of the civilization which your people brought with them from Spain and with which we Arabs have been associated in our history.
161. I am not surprised that Mr. Herzog has left the Council chamber. Indeed, I would rather have him out of the room than reading a newspaper, which he was doing while my colleague from Egypt was trying to refute his allegations. But I promise that I shall not use Mr. Herzog's kind of language. Mr. Herzog is intransigent. And sometimes he does not seem to know what he is saying. In his statement today he referred to our colleague from Egypt as "the distinguished representative of Egypt". Mr. Nuseibeh was first referred to merely as "the representative of Jordan". But then Mr. Herzog called him a sort of liar, and after that he referred to him as "the distinguished representative of Jordan".
162. How can one be distinguished and a liar at the same time? Mr. Herzog contradicts himself. He does not know what he is saying. He is so arrogant that thinks anything he says should be accepted on its face value.
163. I do not happen to be a Jew, but I think that Freud, who was a distinguished Jew, could have analysed Mr. Herzog and found that he suffers from schizophrenic attitudes towards the Arab representatives.
164. Mr. Herzog brought a Bible here. I did not think that he should have a monopoly on the Bible, so I have brought a Bible too. He did not quote any thing from the Bible, but let me say forthwith that his Bible was incomplete: being a Zionist, he would not have the New Testament. I have both the Old Testament and the New Testament. I happen to be a humble student of the Bible. From the time we were seven or eight years old we were told to read the Bible. But I have not confined my reading to the Old Testament although I have always marvelled at the wisdom embodied in the Old Testament. Mr. Herzog's Bible is, I repeat, incomplete. But never mind; he did not even take the trouble to bolster his arguments about the legality of the Zionists' carving up of Palestine to make a State. I was present at Lake Success when the partition of Palestine took place. I do not know where Mr. Herzog was. Perhaps he was in high school in Ireland at the time; he does not seem to be an old man. I know that the partition was the result of pressure.
165. But of course he has to make a case for his spurious State, and that is understandable. I am not saying this with any malice or any sort of irony.
166. If the hour were not late I would read chapter and verse from this Holy Bible to refute the argument that God gave Palestine to the Zionists—leave aside our Jews, who are Semites, like we are.
167. It so happens that Zionism is a European ideology based on a monotheistic religion. At one time Christianity, also, used religion as a motivation for political ends. That was during the days of the Crusades. And in fairness to Christianity and Judaism, Islam once tried to use religion through the Caliphate. We, the Arabs, thought that through the Caliphate we could rule over our Iranian neighbours, who at that time were called Persians. We failed. And not only in our area but in many other regions of the world religion has time and again been used as a motivation for political and economic ends. When religion lost its grip on the people after the French revolution, people began to use ideology as a motivation—and ideology is a new sort of religion which Started with Voltaire and Rousseau and ended up with Marx and Lenin. Ideologies are a kind of religion, though they are not exactly religions. And they were used as motivations for political and economic ends. Man has to have motivation.
168. Now, those Zionists who politicized Judaism were Europeans. You know the protagonist was Theodor Herzl, who got fed up with the Christians, and perhaps rightly so, when he was delegated by his paper to represent them in Paris as a correspondent to report on the Dreyfus affair, when a Jew who happened to be innocent was victimized because at that time France had a resurgence of religious sentiment.
169. Therefore, when the Israeli representative says, Why do not the Palestinians make peace with us?" one must answer, "How can one make peace if you do not allow the Palestinian to return to his home?" This is a simple matter. How can you expect to eject somebody from his home and then tell him, "You come and make peace with us." Let him return to his home, and then we shall see, then there may be an opportunity to talk peace.
170. Therefore, assuming the motivation was just and fair, Palestine happens to be holy land to the two other monotheistic religions. That is why I say that to us the Holy Bible also embodies the New Testament. It so happens that I could not get hold of a copy of the Holy Koran to brandish it, as Mr. Herzog did the Old Testament, and to say that Palestine is holy to the Moslems of the world.
171. Starting with the premise that Zionism is a European political movement that used Judaism—a noble religion, for that matter, and one of the three monotheistic religions—as a motivation for a political end, I must say that there are only about 16 million Jews in the world. It so happens that Christianity and Islam, the two other monotheistic religions, can, I think, be estimated to have 1,700 million or 1,800 million adherents.
172. So, to use the hackneyed democratic "yardstick", by what yardstick do the Zionists who hail from Europe and happen to be Jews—forget that they are Jews, they just happen to be Jews—lay claim to a land that was populated by its own indigenous people and claim that they have a right to that land, and say the other two religions, which number 1,700 million or 1,800 million adherents, should not refute their claim?
173. "Ah," they say, "but God gave us Palestine." That is their interpretation. They say God gave them Palestine.
174. Time and again I have mentioned that these Books, including the New Testament, are written in parables. I happen to come from the region of the
Middle East, and I am a humble student. Do not go by the letter. They are written in flowery language. They were written to be intelligible to the tribal people who lived in the area from 4,000 years ago to 2,000 years ago. Time and again I have mentioned the story of Noah. He took male and female and he put them in the Ark. I have asked whether he had a microscope to see which of the smallest creatures were male and which were female. These are parables; this is symbolism.
175. And through his representatives I must tell Mr. Herzog that the Bible is a compendium of many books. Its greatness is in its ethics, not the fundamentalism that finds expression in literary pictures and figures of speech and metaphors. Furthermore, Jewish scholars as well as Gentile scholars have done a great deal of research and have found that many things in the Bible were not written by those that the fundamentalist men of religion claim were their authors.
176. For example, any wise saying of those days was later attributed to King Solomon. We know that many proverbs pre-date King Solomon. We know of the Songs of Solomon—Nashid EI-Ahsluul in Arabic or the Aramaic, which, incidentally, was the language spoken by Christ and by the Jews in the days of Christ: they did not speak Hebrew. This gentleman comes from Europe, from Ireland. This gentleman, Mr. Herzog—I call him "gentleman"; I do not like to call him a liar, as he called one of my colleagues, because we respect his rights as a human being, regardless of his being a Zionist—thinks that everyone here should take every word of the Bible as the supreme truth. It is allegorical; there are many allegories in the Bible. That does not detract from its moral impact on man. "The letter killeth", but it is the ethics and the morality of the Bible that count.
177. Therefore, how do they claim that Palestine should be theirs? Incidentally, I am so glad that finally a book has come out, written by a Jew, a prominent englishman who happens to be Jewish—because nationality is not predicated on religion—by the name of Arthur Koestler, and entitled The Thirteenth Tribe,in which he proves that the ancestors of the Jews of central Europe had never seen the Holy Land. They were Khazars, from the northern tier of Asia, who moved westward and settled between the Caspian Sea and what was Bessarabia—southern Russia—and who were converted to Judaism in the eighth century A.D. Having been converted, they became adherents of a Semitic religion, but that did not make them Semites.
178. But why did the Zionists want to pick on Palestine? Because it provided them with a motivation to say "This was given to us by God". And who gave it to them? God? Lord Balfour and Mr. Truman gave them Palestine. God had nothing to do with the business. The Balfour Declaration2 was written because the Zionists in England had got in touch with the Zionists in the United States when England was being beaten by the German armies in the First World War. And they told them: "We will bring the United States into the war against Germany." In other words, they railroaded the United States into the First World War, although Mr. Wilson, the President of the United States, was as isolationist as was the leader of the Republican Party, Mr. Cabot Lodge. The United States wanted to disentangle itself from Europe, It was the man brandishing the big stick, Mr. Roosevelt—"Speak softly and carry a big stick"—and Mr. Hanna of Cleveland, who earlier had begun to interfere in territories that were outside the hemisphere: the Philippines, Cuba, Hawaii. They forgot that there was a Monroe Doctrine.
179. It was in 1947 when the State Department experts told Mr. Truman, "Let us delay any action". I was here at the United Nations, at Lake Success, where I spoke to Mr. Warren Austin, the Senator from Vermont who was the United States representative to the United Nations, to see whether we could find a solution that would be fair to those Jews who had suffered at the hands of Hitler, without antagonizing the indigenous people of Palestine; and some of the State Department experts, speaking through Mr. Wadsworth at that time, told the President of the United States that they would alienate not only the Palestinians, but all the Arab world. Mr. Truman said in reply—and I am paraphrasing a quotation from Mr. Truman's memoirs; "Tell me, gentlemen: how many Americans of Arab origin do I have in my constituency?"
180. That is how Israel was created—by Mr. Balfour and Mr. Truman. And the Zionist representatives come and call us Arabs names.
181. Is that fair? I do not call the Zionists names; I respect their human dignity, because they are human beings. But they cannot get along with us as long as they are arrogant and think they are superior. In fairness to them, I will not name names, but many times many European peoples have thought they were a superior race; they carried the white man's burden. Where are they now? It is pathetic. Look at the inflation of their currencies—and we too are suffering because of it. The great empires flourished, matured, fell and went down the drain. And these people—I feel sorry for them—hailing from Eastern Europe, using Judaism as a motivation for a political end, what to lord it over us; yet they number only two or three million people out of 16 million Jews who want to live in peace in the countries of their birth or adoption.
182. Many Jews come and tell me: "Why are these Zionists doing this for us? We are Americans", or "we are Brazilians", or "we are Australians". I said:
"Go and argue with them." They do not want to be part of Israel, but the Zionists keep playing on their sentiments. I would cite the Arabic proverb: He hit me and began to weep". And they are still We should be the people to weep. But we are not weeping: the Palestinians are fighting for their homeland.
183. Mr. Herzog, for perhaps the tenth time, says "Let the Arabs come and negotiate with us." How can they negotiate with the Zionists when they have been robbed of their homes?
184. And then I must draw your attention to the fact that those European Zionists do not want only political peace: they want an economic peace, because they cannot survive, unless they become a viable State, without their finances always being fuelled by the United States, whose taxpayers, whether Jew Gentile, are sweating to give them billions to survive. They want to trade with the Arabs. If they had been wise and not so complacent, they could perhaps have achieved their goal and even had a State, because, at the beginning, without a State, they could have traded with the Arabs and established an enclave for themselves there. Why not? As I have said time and again, we would eventually have assimilated them by the process of osmosis.
185. Now I want to show members of the Council what extra data they took from this Bible. I refer to chapter 34 of Genesis.
186. We know that Dinah was the daughter of Jacob and that Jacob had 12 brothers. We know that Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery and finally ended up in Egypt where he became prominent in the court of the Pharaoh. We know all this. Where did they come from? From western Iraq. Our Jews, not the Khazars who came from outside our region. They came from western Iraq, where Abraham was born, from Ur of the Chaldees. "Ur" in the ancient Semitic language means "city". They were not near the water in Iraq, Mesopotamia as it was then called, which had been inhabited by Sumerians, who were non-Semites, 4,000 years before Christ. But our Jews started about 2,000 years before Christ and were later called "Hebrews". Many think this came from the word hubara, the Semitic word for "crossed". It is not, it is from the word habiru, meaning donkeys. They were of the tribes which had donkeys on which they depended for transportation. They did not use camels because the terrain was too rugged and did not lend itself to the pads of the camel's feet. Later they acquired camels when they went south and lived in Sinai. So, there was a dearth of rain, a drought, as ; happens everywhere, and they moved southward to the land of Canaan, which was inhabited by Semites like our Jews. I am trying to instruct those Zionists 5 that they have no claim. Even our Jews never laid any claim to the land.
187. "And Dinah, the daughter of Leah… went out to see the daughters of the land". The Canaanites were urban. Our Jews—incidentally, the word "Jew" comes from the name of the fourth son of Jacob which was Judah. Really they are "habirus", Hebrews. Never mind, what is in a name? "And Dinah, the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land". "And when Shechem the son of Hamor…" Hamor was the king of the Canaanite city. There were city-states in those days-"••• the Hivite, the prince of the country, saw " her, he took her, and lay with her, arid defiled her." They said "defiled" because in those days there was intermarriage only. Anyone who was not married to her cousin was considered to be defiled. "And his soul clave unto Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel, and spake kindly unto the damsel".
188. And now I will paraphrase about a column or two. When her brothers knew she had fallen in love with the son of a Canaanite, they were outraged. So they went to the king and asked him, "Are these the traditions of hospitality? We came as outsiders and Dinah has been defiled." He said, "No, no, wait a minute", as we say in this country. "Wait a minute". "And Shechem spake unto his father Hamor, saying, Get me this damsel to wife." He was a man of noble intentions. "And Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter; now his sons were with his cattle in the field; and Jacob held his peace until they were come. "And Hamor the father of Shechem went unto Jacob to commune with him. "And the sons of Jacob came out…" They did not like their father being on good terms with the king, "when they heard it: and the men were grieved, and they were very wroth…" To make a long story short, the king said, "Come and live here amongst us. We will marry your daughters and will give our daughters to you in marriage. Be part of us. In other words, we need labour, so come and live here." The others were sturdy farmers and tribesmen, but they did not want to go. Without their father's knowledge they deceitfully told Hamor, the king, "We cannot give our daughters in marriage until every male is circumcised". So the king sent his criers out, saying, "I am going to be circumcised with my son. What about you men here?" And the people loved their king and their prince. They were all circumcised, and on the third day when they could not move—since they were adults; in Judaism and in Islam, circumcision is at a very tender age— they were put to the sword. The Jews slew them. And when Jacob knew this, he was outraged. He said, "Let us get out of here. Tomorrow, their cousins and relatives will come and slay us".
189. Later Joshua came on the scene and took Jerusalem which had been inhabited by Semites from the Arabian peninsula for about 1,000 years before Joshua, one of our Jews, came. And they say, "God gave us Palestine and gave us Jerusalem". These were inhabited by Semites, as the Jews were Semites.
But they had no right.
190. And now who comes? Those Khazars. And from where? From Europe. Converts to Judaism, using Judaism for their own ends. Now they present us with a fait accompli, "We are there, we are Europeans". So did the imperialists say not so long ago, "We are there". Where are they now?
191. So why will not the Zionists see reason? The United States will not be able to go on channelling funds. I do not know what the new President will do, but there will be another President. We Arabs cannot wait.
192. When, following the 1973 war, a certain gentleman by the name of Evans was speaking in the Special Political Committee about the Palestinian refugees, he said, "We gave $500 million over 25 years to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East"; everybody looked at me to reply. I said, "Only last week your. President gave $2.5 billion with a stroke of his pen to sustain Israel against us. We would rather you had not given a cent to the Arabs and not created this trouble for us in Palestine." This is the situation.
193. We do not hate this people, far be it from us. Our tradition, the Arab tradition, is that if an enemy should come to you for protection, you would not let any one of your tribe or relatives touch him. And if one does, he stands to be killed. Why should we treat those Zionists as badly as they think we would, even if they are Europeans?
194. The Israeli representative spoke about Lebanon. The trouble in Lebanon was caused by the creation of Israel. The Zionists caused trouble in Lebanon, in Jordan and in Egypt, and they roused the whole Arab world, stirring up the youth; and the youth will never keep quiet, generation after generation, until the indigenous people of Palestine are given the right to return to their land. If they return to their land, there might be a political peace, which the Zionists do not want; they want an economic peace in order to be able to survive. But they survive now on tension only. If there is no tension, what will happen? The process of osmosis and assimilation will take place.
195. You might not believe this. I have mentioned it 10 times, but because you are new here, Mr. President, I will repeat it. We have an Arab tribe in the northern part of our peninsula. They are remnants of the Crusade. The women have golden hair. We assimilated them. Let us assimilate each other. According to the Bible, Hamor, the Canaanite, told the sons of Jacob, "Come, we shall take your daughters in marriage and give you our daughters in marriage. Live among us peacefully." No. They want to set themselves apart. They say they are the chosen people of God. How many times have I said that God is not a discriminator? Those European Khazars, those people who are highly educated, still believe in the serpent speaking to Eve—I have never heard of any serpent speaking to anyone—and trying to tempt our great-great grandfather Adam and involve him in sin. Then Moses put down his staff and it became a serpent. Then God spoke from behind a bush. It is all in the Bible, but this is allegorical. If they bring me the Bible, I can give chapter and verse.
196. Mr. Herzog mentioned Isaiah, one of the noblest prophets of the Old Testament. Allow me to read three lines from Micah. He is not very well known, but he is full of wisdom and compassion: "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?" These were sacrificial—before the Jews of our period. Sacrifices were burned to propitiate God, because people did not know how they came into this world and why they should go, and of course the men of religion had to give them solace until they died, but this is only a transitory period of life. Do you want to propitiate God with burnt offerings, with rams and calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with tens of thousands of rivers of oil burned as an offering to God? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions—as Abraham, incidentally, tried to do, you will remember, with Isaac? This is allegorical. The fruit of my body for the sins of my soul. Abraham wanted to sacrifice his first-born to propitiate God. Micah, the prophet, came years after Abraham. Is this the way? "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
197. Are the Zionists doing anything justly to the indigenous people, who originally were Jews and later were converted to Judaism, and many of them to Islam, with the Khazars coming from abroad saying, "This is our land." Do they love mercy? They talk of terrorism. They taught the people of Palestine terrorism. Who blew up the King David Hotel? Who hanged those British Tommies from the trees? The British thought that they had made a mistake by letting them come in droves and that it was not the right thing to do and hence they sent one royal commission after another. I remember that that happened between 1922 and 1939, until they gave up when the Second World War came. What happened when they wiped out Deir Yassin? The indigenous people of Palestine, including the Jews of Palestine, were a peaceful people, because they depended on the pilgrimage. The pilgrims wanted peace and they came to Palestine to visit Jerusalem, whether they were Jews or Gentiles.
198. They talk of the Bible; they should study the Bible. They have no place there, but we will accept them if they adapt themselves and adjust themselves and seek acceptance by the indigenous people of Palestine. They cannot be accepted by the whole Arab world, the Moslem world, because Palestine is also holy to them, from Morocco to the confines of China. How can they survive? Can the representative of the United States or I guarantee that in 10 or 15 years the United States will still be in a position to send them aid? Perhaps the whole configuration of international politics will change. Why should they bring suffering upon others and even upon themselves? They are human beings. They should be brothers under the skin. When Mr. Abdel Meguid was speaking, I happened to be there, and Mr Herzog was reading a paper. Who is he? He calls him "my distinguished colleague" and he reads a paper. It is hypocritical, although perhaps I should not use such a harsh word. He is using the current language that has lost its meaning.
199. This is by way of introduction. The hour is late. I shall speak whenever I see fit, not to harangue anybody but, I hope, to persuade those misguided people who have repeated things so often that they finally end up by believing them themselves. What have the members of the Council—not as persons but as members of the Council—done since 1947? They did what our British friends tried to do without success gain time. This step-by-step diplomacy of Mr. Kissinger, the Peel Commission and other royal commissions was to gain time, but for what? For more suffering and tribulation for Jew and Gentile. The Security Council—especially the five permanent members—is supposed to preserve the peace and to bring peace where there is contention. What is it doing? Nothing. Why? Because, unfortunately, we do not have a new approach to international affairs.
200. What about spheres of influence? From Morocco to the Persian Gulf, we are supposed to be in the Western sphere of influence. The Balkan States-are in the Soviet sphere of influence. As I have said time and again, it is a matter of "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." We cannot afford this policy any more. It has plunged us into two world wars, and I lived through those two world wars. We cannot afford it. But for the deterrence of terror, we would have had a third world war, and we do not have to have nuclear weapons to have dire devastation all over the world.
201. Therefore, Mr. President, although you hail from a small country like mine, through your instrumentality the members of the Council may perhaps be told to bring this matter to their leaders; because, after all, they are held in the straitjacket of instructions. They have to get instructions from their capitals. Coming from a small country like mine, perhaps you can play a role in telling our brothers around this table to make sure that their leaders take Micah's advice and do not engage in ritual in the Council—which is equivalent to the burning of rams and oil—but do justice, love mercy and walk humbly before the truth, which is the embodiment of the Creator of the universe.
202. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish): Some representatives have asked to be allowed to speak in exercise of the right of reply. I call first on the representative of Jordan, whom I invite to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.
203. Mr. NUSEIBEH (Jordan): I wish to express my thanks to the representative of Israel for focusing his venom upon my humble self. That, apparently, is his way of saying welcome to a newcomer to the United Nations. I can only assume that it must have hurt him most, because my theme was one revolving around the achievement of an equitable and just peace before it is too late.
204. I have committed many sins during my lifetime but I would like to assure representatives that lying is not one of them. I will not degrade myself by answering in kind the ill-mannered and abusive reference made to me by the representative of Israel. But, at the same time, it is not surprising, because he seems to be suffering from a hangover from the time when he was an exalted military governor ruling over 1.5 million innocent Palestinian Arabs, thousands of whom, young boys and girls, he must have put into gaols with instructions that they be interrogated.
205. I have seen some of those people; they were maimed, perhaps for life. But I need go no further on this particular issue, because, if Mr. Herzog has succeeded in anything, it is in his attempt to divert the attention of the Council from the purpose for which my colleagues from Egypt and Syria and I had requested that the Security Council be convened.
205. He said that calling a meeting of the Security Council—although I know that we are imposing on the precious time of representatives—is an insult to the Security Council. I think the greater insult is that Israel has been adamantly and without reservation refusing to implement Council resolutions which would have solved this problem. Which is the greater insult?
206. In my statement before the Council at its first meeting on this subject [1966th meeting] I pointed out that there were two basic aspects: one was transcending and tragic; it contained the events in Hebron. Of course, similar events have been occurring in the occupied territories ever since the occupation started, and I am sure that the Council is very familiar with what has been happening. If Mr. Herzog wants me to quote the number of young and old people—people of all ages—killed and tortured over the years, I think that I would be able to do so. But I shall not waste the Council's time today by giving those figures.
207. I pointed out, in my first statement, that the reason why we have requested a meeting of the Council—and we thank the Council for acceding to our call—was that there are indeed very fateful, very crucial, very pivotal issues pertaining intimately to the prospects of an equitable peace in the Middle East. 1 asked specific questions and respectfully requested the Security Council in turn, to request the representative of Israel to reply to those specific questions. In a nutshell, I said that many people in the world think that the situation in the Middle East has reached a stalemate because Secretary of State Kissinger is no longer carrying on his shuttle diplomacy and that, therefore, they can wait for a later period. To our people in the occupied territories, however, it is for from having reached a stalemate, because the occupied territories are being systematically and deliberately devoured, so much so that if we should ever sit around to hold a dialogue over a peaceful solution to the twin problem of the Middle East and the Palestinians we would find very little left over to talk about.
208. Mr. Herzog has referred to a private visit, after I had quit the Government two years ago, to my ailing mother. She is 75 years old and had suffered a heart attack. Formerly, when she was able to do so, she would come to Amman. It was an agony for me to see my country under occupation and emasculated; but I felt in duty bound, since my mother was unable to come to Amman, to suffer that agony and visit her.
209. I suppose that most of the things about which I am talking today were inspired not by what I have read in the papers—although I regularly read the papers—but by what I have seen with my own eyes.
210. Of course, all the electronic devices were used to make sure that I was not carrying a bomb. I happened to have carried two pencils and they seemed to have had some metal in them; so I suppose I was suspected of carrying those things and they searched me thoroughly. What an irony that a son of Jerusalem whose family has lived there for 1,400 years should only be able to go to Jerusalem to visit his ailing mother at the sufferance of the military governors who today are occupying our territories.
211. Not surprisingly, the representative of Israel resorted here, as we have witnessed in other committees, to his weird, diversionary tactics, to evade facing the real and crucial issue of the future of 3 million Palestinians, who, I have said, have no hope, no future and no abode. Do you want to send them to outer space? We have not advanced sufficiently technologically to send them there.
212. They must have a land in which to live, and their land is the land which has been their ancestral homeland for thousands and thousands of year, long before a few Israeli tribes infiltrated into Jerusalem and found the Jebusites there who had built the city a thousand years earlier.
213. The representative of Israel has, of course, shed crocodile tears over the events in Lebanon. I regard Lebanon as my second country. I had my undergraduate education at the American University of Beirut. I love Lebanon and I have relatives there. Every time I think of its prolonged agony it literally gives me nightmares. But who is the culprit for what is happening in Lebanon? It is not the Lebanese and it is not the Palestinians. I do not intend to digress into discussing the Lebanese problem, which I hope will be resolved very shortly as a result of Arab intervention. The real culprit is Israel for allowing those hapless half a million Palestinian refugees to remain in their squalor in their camps for 25 years. Where do those refugees hail from? Mr. Herzog, of course, knows where they hail from—from Galilee and from other parts of Palestine, or what is now Israel. They are human beings. They want to go back to their homes. Nobody carries a gun for the fun of it, except the criminal. Anybody who carries a gun and kills also gets killed. The Palestinians and the Lebanese, without distinction as to creed or party affiliation, have paid the terrible price of almost 150,000 in dead and wounded. The guilt for that terrible ordeal and terrible toll must weigh heavily upon the conscience of Israel for perpetuating the helplessness and the despair of the refugees in Lebanon and for the attacks which have been carried out against their camps over the past eight years, as the Security Council is well aware.
214. The Lebanese are victims and so are the Palestinians. Let us mourn the tens of thousands of our people, whether they be Palestinians or Lebanese, who lost their lives because of the selfishness of Israel and its refusal to redeem those Palestinians.
215. The representative of Israel referred to Abraham as Jewish. We claim that he was also our forefather, and that is one of the reasons why we revere him. One of the reasons why the Ministry of Charitable Organizations in Jordan sent our delegation its cable on the Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi events was not simply because a few people quarrelled. It was because they felt so strongly about seeing a Holy Place which is sacred to both Moslems and Jews being desecrated by the kind of people that I described in my statement when I first spoke at the previous meeting of the Council. I believe that that place deserves more reverence than is being accorded to it under the occupation.
216. The representative of Israel made many references to Jordan. He accused Jordan of preventing access to the Holy Places. I happen to belong to that generation which witnessed the almost daily events of those times. I should like to explain what happened between 1948 and 1967. As I have said, the Israelis have never ceased to attack Jordan with this, as we believe, unjust and monstrous accusation. They have done so in the Security Council and in the General Assembly. The Jordan delegation has consistently refuted that fabrication and distortion of facts. The truth of the matter is that in response to an appeal by the Conciliation Commission for Palestine—the Commission that was brought into being again two or three years ago—the Arab Governments of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria pledged themselves to the following declaration on 15 November 1949:
"The Governments of Egypt, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria undertake to guarantee freedom of access to the Holy Places, to religious buildings and sites situated in the i territory placed under their authority by the final settlement of the Palestine problem, or, pending that settlement, in the territory at present occupied by them under armistice agreements; and, pursuant to this undertaking, will guarantee rights of entry and of transit to ministers of religion, pilgrims and visitors, without distinction as to nationality or faith, subject only to considerations of national security, all the above in conformity with the status quo prior to 14 May 1948."3
217. At the same time, a similar request was made to Israel by the Conciliation Commission for Palestine. In a letter of 8 November 1949 from Mr. Arthur Lourie, representative of Israel to the Chairman of the Conciliation Commission, it was stated that Israel was of the opinion that it would, in the circumstances be in the interests of a constructive and final settlement if the matter of formulation were dealt with after more far-reaching considerations of these problems by the General Assembly".3 Members know what the reason was. The Israelis had a choice as to whether or not to return the Arab civilians to two thirds of western Jerusalem which they had built with their own sweat and toil between 1920 and 1948, to open the conventional short road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, to restore the normal water supply of RaselEin in the plains of Palestine to supply Jerusalem, and to restore the electricity. They were faced with one of two choices—either to do this in exchange for having full access to their Holy Places, or not to do it and not to have that access. The Israelis apparently put their sequestration of Arab homes and Arab property and all the rest above their concern for access to the Holy Places. That was not our fault.
218. I remember those days very well. There were 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 Jerusalemites who had built and normally inhabited the modern city of Jerusalem. All those people became refugees, living in overcrowded conditions, in old houses and monasteries in the Old City of Jerusalem, watching their houses being taken over by conquest. How could we have allowed anybody to cross into the Old City when there were 40,000 or 50,000 displaced persons living, 8 or 10 people to a room, seeing their houses just, across the line, a mere 200 or 300 metres away? I leave the decision to the members of the Council.
219. It is therefore distinctly clear that Israel itself refused to make a declaration on visiting the Holy Places similar to the one made by the Arab-Governments.
220. Another point was raised by the representative of Israel pertaining to the desecration of the Jewish cemetery and the destruction of synagogues. I should like to read out a few notes on this subject which if I found in my office.
221. The alleged desecration of a Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives is again a subject which Israel should not raise because of the invidious comparisons which reference to it would necessarily ,evoke. To start with, that Jewish cemetery is only ,,100 years old and is located on a piece of land ,which belongs to the Moslem Wtiqf, the charitable foundation which leased it for a Jewish cemetery for a period of 100 years, which period expired a few years ago. As a matter of fact, we were so well-intentioned towards Jews per se before we knew what Zionism was aiming at that even the famous and coldest Jewish quarter in Jerusalem—the Montefiore— was given as a grant by one of the Jerusalem families -for Jews to settle and live there. That was, of course, in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
222. However, the damage to this cemetery on Mount Scopus was done when the Israeli gangs and forces barricaded themselves in it and bombarded the Old City in their attempt to occupy it at the end of 1947 and the beginning of 1948.
223. As a matter of fact, the Israelis also complained about the destruction of 48 synagogues in the Old City. I enquired into this and asked many of the elderly people—because my knowledge is limited on this matter—and they all assured me that as far as they were concerned there were only four major synagogues. Now, what happened? Why were they destroyed? We as Moslems believe that Judaism and Christianity are the foundations of our Islamic religion. All one has to do is to read the Holy Koran to find this out. We could never, if we are true Moslems, allow ourselves to desecrate a Jewish synagogue or Holy Book, because that is part of our faith. We would become non-Moslems if we did that.
224. As soon as the Jordan civil administration was established in the city, the municipality undertook the task of its maintenance and protection by assigning special watchmen and caretakers to it.
225. What do we find on the other side of the score-board? Without exaggeration, we find one of the most massive and sinful programmes of desecration that the world has ever known. One of the most hallowed Moslem cemeteries, the Ma'manallah, which, during the British Mandate, was shortened to Mamilla, in the western section of Jerusalem, is at least 1,000 years old. It contains the remains of men great by any standard, in all fields of achievement—saints, warriers, leaders of men and historical figures. What is its present fate? I should like one of the Americans residing in the American Consulate in Jerusalem, because that consulate is contiguous to the cemetery, to tell us what is now the fate of the Mamilla cemetery, which is over 1,000 years old. It is a public park for humans and animals to trample over as any visitor to Jerusalem can see for himself.
226. As for the shrine of a great religious leader in Jaffa, which dates back several hundred years, if anyone happened to visit Jaffa and felt like having a drink in exotic surroundings he could go there, walk down a few steps and see for himself.
227. The mosques of Safad and Tiberius have been converted into art galleries, and I need hardly remind the Council of the attempt to burn down the AI-Aqsa Mosque, which was of course attributed to a deranged Australian citizen. But, from all I have read, I wonder what the Israelis plan for the future for this sacred area.
228. Mr. Evan M. Wilson, whom I quoted previously, had this to say in his book, Jerusalem, Key to Peace:
"After the war of 1967, Christian authorities who had been unable for many years to visit certain Christian properties on Mount Zion… because they were… closed off by the Israeli military, found that some of these institutions had suffered severely" —that is on the Mount of Olives—"The tombs of the Armenian Patriarchs, in the courtyard of the Armenian Church of St. Saviour, had been broken into and the bones scattered about."
As all the members of the Council know, similar acts were perpetrated at the Holy Sepulchre.
"A famous mosaic floor had been removed from the church during or just after the war, and the church itself was in a deplorable state of disrepair. Several Christian cemeteries in the vicinity were in bad condition, with thick vegetation and opened graves… There is reason to believe, moreover, that this vandalism… is continuing. It was found in the spring of 1968, after the war, that the crosses on 83 tombs in the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion had been shattered. It was in this area also that the tower of the Dormition Basilica was used for many years as an Israeli machine-gun nest."
229. The question then arises: did the Jordanians wilfully destroy the two main synagogues in the Old City? The gentleman here talks.about two synagogues; my information is that there were four. But that does not matter. The truth of the matter is that some months before the end of the British Mandate, the Jewish leadership had decided to plant close to 1,000 of their troops representing the Haganah and the Irgun in the Jewish quarter of the Old City as a springboard to be used from within, simultaneously with an onslaught from without, to occupy the Old City when the appropriate time arrived.
230. And that is precisely what they did. I can never forget those days between 15 and 18 May 1948 when the Israelis went all out in the Al-Khalil area to occupy the City from without while fighting was going on within. Our civilian population, who had been abandoned without arms and without any preparation whatsoever except for 300 rifles which had been given by the disintegrating British authorities to 300 policemen, and who had had no military training, had valiantly to man the walls of the city and fight it out. It was only on 18 May, when they had exhausted their ammunition and had nothing left to fight with except stones and, fortunately, a few sticks of dynamite, that they were able to repulse the ultimate attack.
231. It was on that day that they made appeals to Jordan to send its 4,000 or 5,000 troops to Palestine to rescue the population from being slaughtered.
232. On many occasions Israeli representatives have used the term "Jordanian conquerors" or "Jordanian invaders". If we are to be told that the Jordanian army was an invader, I must remind the Council that the Jordanian army was a part of the allied armies; it was affiliated with the British army. The Jordanian army was actually in occupation of most of the key posts in Palestine. However, because the Jordanian troops were disciplined and respected the United Nations resolutions, they withdrew a day before the end of the Mandate. They were already in occupation, but they left Palestine and the key positions there because they were part of the allied armies. The United Nations had decided on the partitioning of Palestine, and so they withdrew to the East Bank.
233. The people of Jerusalem, having used up all their arms and ammunition—and they had little enough—implored the late King Abdullah to send help. And what did he send? A batallion—600 riflemen. Fortunately, they were able to save the day.
234. I believe that Mr. Herzog has succeeded in diverting the discussion to issues which have nothing to do with the issue which we respectfully asked the Council to examine. He has asked today why the Arabs do not behave rationally, why they do not come round and talk about an equitable peace, and so on. What can we do but repeat in every statement we make that that is precisely our goal. We do not want the situation to continue to fester. We are ready and willing to have a dialogue on the solution of the Middle East problem and the Palestinian problem. For there are two separate things involved here. One question is the withdrawal from the occupied territories. And I must state that if withdrawal is delayed much longer, there will not be very much left of the West Bank or Gaza to talk about. I have said that before and I want to repeat it again and again and again. The second question is the restoration of the inalienable right of the Palestinians to their homeland. The Palestinians have rights there. That fact is reiterated every year in resolutions of the United Nations.
235. Finally, Mr. Herzog asked why we state that the PLO is the representative of the Palestinian people rather than the Palestinians in, let us say, the East Bank or the West Bank. Apart from the fact that he Conference of Heads of State or Government of the Arab Countries held at Rabat from 26 to 29 October 1974 unanimously decided that the PLO is the representative of the Palestinian people, apart from formalities, apart from everything else, the situation now is that we are dealing with and discussing the overall Palestinian problem, and not merely, as was true in 1967, the occupied territories.
236. Which Arab ruler could agree that Palestinian territory should be given up? If the Israelis were wise they would insist that there should be Palestinian participation. The Palestinians are the only ones who can say, "We accept this and we refuse that". If we were to agree that Palestinian territory should be given up, we would all be repudiated as not representing the Palestinians.
237. I am a Palestinian myself, but I am the representative of Jordan. I should like to remind the Council that in 1950, when the East Bank and the West Bank were unified, it was specifically stated in the Constitution of the unified State of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan that all arrangements were valid until such time as the Palestinian problem became ready for solution. In other words, our unity was without prejudice to the ultimate equitable and just solution of the Palestinian problem.
238. I know that the people in the East Bank and the people in the West Bank are brethren. They belong to the same families. This is a family affair which can best be settled by dialogue and amity between the PLO and Jordan, rather than by the attempts of the representative of Israel to sow the seeds of conflict between two brothers—as Israel has succeeded in doing in other parts of the world.
239. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish): I invite the representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.
240. Mr. ALLAF (Syrian Arab Republic): The hour is very late indeed. I shall therefore confine myself to some very brief comments about the statement of the Israeli representative, reserving my delegation's right to make a more detailed statement to the Council at one of its future meetings.
241. I shall not repeat all the brilliant refutations made by the previous speakers. I shall not say that the real insult was not the convening of the Security Council to discuss a very serious situation; the real insult was to permit a representative of a racist regime an aggressive regime, to sit here in the Council. The proper place for representatives of such regimes, which violate the principles of the United Nations and its Charter, is not only outside the Council but outside the United Nations. If it were not for certain powers that protect that regime and its representatives, the Zionist representatives would be waiting outside the United Nations alongside the representatives of South Africa, for instance.
242. I shall not refer, either, to the many other distortions and fabrications indulged in, as usual, by the Zionist representative. As the previous speakers said, he spoke about everything except the main issue, the real issue—the explosive situation in the occupied Arab territories. This is the tenth year of the occupation of those territories, and Israel continues to defy world public opinion, the United Nations itself and all the principles of international and humanitarian law. Israel carries out a policy of repression, oppression and expansion in the occupied territories. It really wants to swallow up all the occupied territories.
243. Because the representative of the Zionists did not want to speak about the real issue, he referred to irrelevant issues, and he repeated the usual lies. I would advise him not to rejoice very much about the "Arab differences, because, as we have time and again repeated, those differences are a sign of the name of ,the Arab nation and we are not afraid of them because many other great nations have passed through similar phases in their history, and from those differences and difficulties they emerged great nations. I do not have to name all of them. The one in which we are now guests, the great nation of the United States, is one of them. It had a very terrible internal war, and it emerged a great nation. Many other nations, the Soviet Union and the European nations among them have passed through similar differences and emerged great nations. We are confident that such is the future of the Arab nation.
244. Also, the main reason for the differences between the Arab nations is in fact the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and the Arab countries. We differ not on the ultimate aim, which is to get the Israeli aggressors out of our land; we differ on priorities and the best means of reaching that noble and ultimate aim, which is the aim of every nation and every people wanting to live in freedom without aggression and alien domination.
245. Because he did not want to speak about the real issue, the Israeli representative referred to what are called the Syrian Jews. I need not repeat that these are lies concerning the Syrian citizens of Jewish faith, because if we Syrians wanted to discriminate against people of Jewish faith, or people of Christian faith, we would not have objected to the Zionists. We would not have objected to the idea of a Jewish State being based only and exclusively on religion. That is what the Zionists do not understand. They do not understand that we do not consider religion a reason for discriminating or differentiating between people. Even if we wanted to, in our country we cannot discriminate against our own brothers of Jewish faith or our own brothers of Christian faith. As a matter of fact, a lot of our troubles during the recent crisis in Lebanon arose precisely because we did not want to discriminate against any brother because of his faith or religion. That is what the Zionists do not understand. We believe we are all brothers, whether we are Moslems, Christians or Jews, and our enemy, our only enemy, is Zionism and imperialism. So, we cannot have discrimination against Jews, and anyway, this lie will not deceive anyone anymore.
246. I do not have to quote many persons or sources; I shall simply refer to an important and respected magazine, The National Geographic, which published a report on our Jewish community, and other reports such as that of none other than Mr. Mike Wallace, who happens to be a Jew himself, and who three times insisted, despite the threats of the Zionists here in the United States, that he had been to Syria and had seen that the Jews were treated like any other members of the Syrian citizenry. He came back with documentary films and testimonies from those Jews. I need not, then, dwell on the matter.
247. And I need not say anything about the old imperialist theory that the aggressors are in a territory in order to raise the standard of living of the people of that territory. As members are aware, that is the excuse and pretext used by all colonialists and imperialists, but unfortunately, the Zionists have not learnt that the era of those lies and the era of classic colonialism is over. Even the neo-colonialists do not dare use that pretext any more.
248. Our people want to live in freedom, even if they are in poverty. They do not care about prosperity if it is to come to them under the yoke of alien occupation, under the feet of the soldiers of their aggressor. They want to live free, to be free. And, thereafter, they can look after their development and prosperity.
249. At this late hour I wish to make just three important points.
250. First, the Zionist representative said that the Koenig report is not important because it does not reflect the policy of the Government. But whenever such a thing has happened we have been told that it does not represent the policy of the occupier, that it does not represent the policy of the Government.
251. 1 need only quote from The Jerusalem Post of 9 September 1976. It says:
"Koenig's proposals amount to wholesale discrimination, but they are nothing new. Judaization is Israel's official policy for solving the demographic problem in Galilee. Arab lands have long been expropriated for Jewish settlement in what is called the Northern District."
252. There have been others, who have differed from Mr. Herzog. They have even gone as far as to say, as did Mr. Baruch Wagner, the Jewish Mayor of Carmel, "Let us not be ashamed to state publicly that we want a Jewish majority in Galilee." And Moshe Kohn, the Israeli writer, has said, "The document's detractors largely forget that Zionism's primary aim was not to establish the world's first model liberal or socialist democracy. It was to restore sovereign Jewish life." That is all I have to say as far as the Koenig report is concerned.
253. The second important point is Lebanon, and time and again we have seen the Zionist representative shedding crocodile tears about what is happening in Lebanon or what was happening there, because, happily, the Arab countries are, with their united efforts, beginning to be able to bring peace back to Lebanon, despite all the plots and conspiracies of the Zionists and the colonialists.
254. Everybody knows the Israelis were at the root of all that happened in Lebanon. They caused it, and if real peace comes to Lebanon, they will be the first to be angry and sad about real peace returning to Lebanon. And for two reasons alone.
255. Because in Lebanon if the Arabs, Christians, Moslems and others succeeded in continuing to live in peace and harmony, as they have done for many centuries, then the idea of a democratic kind of State, which is the dream of our brothers the Palestinians, would be proved to be very possible and viable. The Zionists wanted to destroy that idea and that ideal, that example of coexistence between different faiths in Lebanon. That is why, since 1969 and before that, they have through their aggression been at the root of all the events in Lebanon. They have attacked the Beirut airport many times; they have carried out terrorist raids against Beirut and they have repeatedly bombarded the villages and towns of the Lebanese territory and the refugee camps in Lebanon.
256. So their first aim is to destroy the dream of the Palestinian people who appeal and call for a democratic State in which everybody can live side by side.
257. The second thing is this. If, God forbid, they had succeeded in their conspiracy in Lebanon, Lebanon would have been partitioned as Palestine was partitioned, and there would have been a Moslem State of Lebanon and a Christian State of Lebanon. If that had happened, it would have been justification for the racist idea of having an exclusively Jewish State. They have wanted Lebanon to be partitioned; they still want it to be partitioned, and they are still conspiring against Lebanon. So the Israeli representative should not mention Lebanon.
258. The last comment I would like to make concerns the reference by the Zionist representative to peace negotiations and resolutions, particularly resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). The Zionist representative referred to resolution 338 (1973) There mentioning the paragraphs of that resolution. There are three paragraphs only. The first calls for an immediate cease-fire; the second paragraph calls for the immediate implementation of resolution 242 (1967); the third refers to negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations in order to establish a just and lasting peace in the region.
259. Resolution 242 (1967), in spite of all its short-comings, required Israel to withdraw immediately from all occupied Arab territories, because in the preamble to that resolution the principle of the non-acquisition of territory by force was recognized and affirmed.
260. Later, in the operative portion, Israel was requested to withdraw from the territories which were occupied in 1967; and there were other conditions, because it was known that after withdrawal, a situation of peace could be established in the region.
261. Resolution 338 (1973) acknowledged that resolution 242 (1967) was not sufficient for real peace but only for partial peace. Therefore, we had in resolution 338 (1973) the decision that, after the immediate implementation of resolution 242 (1967), there should be negotiations for a just and lasting peace. That was because in resolution 242 (1967) the Palestinian element was lacking. Resolution 242 (1967) referred to the Palestinians as mere refugees, whereas resolution 338 (1973) attempted to remedy that by calling for negotiations aimed at a just and durable peace.
262. Thus Israel, if it sincerely wants peace, is requested to withdraw from the occupied territories; that is the first condition. There cannot be any negotiations under the weight of aggression. As long as the occupation lasts, however temporary, it is an act of aggression. As long as the soldiers of Israel are occupying Arab territory, Israel is lying when it says it wants peace.
263. If Israel wants peace, it has to implement the United Nations resolutions, withdraw its troops from the occupied Arab territories and recognize the rights of the Palestinian people. Only then can real peace come to the region.
264. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from Spanish): I call on the representative of the PLO in exercise of his right of reply.
265. Mr. TERZI (Palestine Liberation Organization): If members are being held in deliberations for a few hours, my people has been enduring dispersion and misery for 30 long years; but thanks to our perseverance and struggle, and thanks to the support we receive from the peace-loving nations and peoples, this state of misery and dispersion will not be perpetuated. The day of our return to our homes, where we shall exercise our inalienable right to self-determination, is drawing near. We sincerely hope that these hours of deliberation here will help bring us closer to our target and aims for the sake and benefit of world peace and security.
266. Reference was made in the Council to our presence in Lebanon. The presence of the Palestinians in Lebanon is not a voluntary act; it is not an act of their own choosing. In order to create an exclusive, racist homeland of their own, the Zionists forcibly expelled and evicted the Palestinian people from their country 28 years ago. Some of them were driven by force of arms across the Palestinian-Lebanese frontiers, to be reduced to the status of refugees in Lebanon, living in appalling misery and wretchedness.
267. The President of the Council of Ministers of Lebanon, Mr. Rashid Karame, stated that
"[The] Palestinians came to Lebanon after being evicted by Israel in 1948, and they settled in camps. But since then they have been exposed to all kinds of fear, misery and aggression by Israel. The wanton attacks by the Israelis against the refugee camps caused thousands of victims, and the numerous complaints of Lebanon against Israel to the Security Council are probably still fresh in the minds of Members of the United Nations. And as a result of these attacks, the Palestinians, in self-defence, felt the need to arm, and this led to the conclusion of agreements between them and the Lebanese authorities.
"The Agreement between the Lebanese authorities and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1969 regulates the Palestinian armed presence on Lebanese soil, and this was also approved by the Lebanese Parliament."4
268. When we cited Hebron during the course of this debate, it was only as an example. It is not the reason for which the Council is meeting,. We are meeting here to consider the situation in the occupied territories, and the situation in the Palestinian territories under Zionist occupation is a direct result of occupation, per se, and also of the behaviour of the Zionists towards the Palestinian people.
269. We were told that the Mayor of Hebron and Sheikh Al-Muhtasib had appealed to the people to calm down, and that the Moslem leaders had condemned the desecration of the Tomb of Abraham, who is the Patriarch of the Christians, of the Jews and of the Moslems.
270. We have not been shown such big advertisements calling for religious incitement as this: "Can your Jewish conscience remain quiet?" We have not seen any such publication in any Arab or Moslem paper. The agents provocateurs referred to by the representative of the Zionist entity are the people who publish these advertisements. May this, with your permission, Mr. President, be included among the documents now under consideration.
271. What is happening in the occupied territories is that the Zionist authorities are still applying that the British left for us: something called the Defence Emergency Regulations of 1945, a most arbitrary type of regulation. Even some Jews, and quite a number of them, have condemned those so-called Defence Emergency Regulations of 1945.
272. Mr. Ya'acov Shimshon Shapiro, who later became an Israeli Attorney-Getieral and a Minister of Justice, made the following remarks about that law:
"The system established in Palestine since the issue of the Defence Laws is unparalleled in any civilized country. There were no such laws even in Nazi Germany. It is our duty to tell the whole world that the Defence Laws passed by British Mandatory Government of Palestine destroyed the very foundation of justice in this land."
So long as such laws and the occupation persist in Palestine, we in the Security Council will be seized of an explosive situation.
The meeting rose at 8.10 p.m.
Notes
1 Official Records of the General Assembly. Thirty-first Session, agenda item 55, document A/31/218.
2 Ibid., Second Session, Supplement No. II, vol. II, annex 19.
3 Ibid., Fourth Session, agenda item 18 (b), document A/I 113.
4 Ibid., Thirty-first Session, agenda item 29, document A/31/184.
Document Type: Meeting record, Provisional verbatim record
Document Sources: Security Council
Subject: Agenda Item, Middle East situation, Occupation, Palestine question, Situation in the OPT including Jerusalem
Publication Date: 04/11/1976