Situation in the OPT – Letter from Israel

Letter dated 20 July 1984 from the Permanent Representative of Israel

To the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

I should like briefly to comment on the letter dated 6 July 1984 from the Permanent Representative of Jordan (A/39/347-E/1984/132) regarding the report entitled “Judea-Samaria and the Gaza District – A sixteen year survey”, submitted to you by the Permanent Representative of Israel on 8 June 1984.

1. The Jordanian letter, while replete with intemperate language and accusations, singularly fails to relate to the substance of the sixteen-year survey; not surprisingly, the Jordanian Permanent Representative stops short of any comparison between the Israel survey, which he attacks and the record of 19 years of Jordanian rule, which wilfully relegated Judea and Samaria, as well as East Jerusalem, to the status of a stagnant provincial backwater of the Hashemite Kingdom.

2. Israel does not “pursue a policy based on falsification… in an effort to change the shape of the reality…” Rather, Israel has indeed changed the reality of squalor and neglect that it found in Judea and Samaria upon the retreat of the Jordanian army after its unprovoked attack on Israel on 5 June 1967.

3. Israel's sixteen-year survey is not based on “hypothesis”: its authority stems from objective statistics that speak for themselves.  It is their veracity that seems to have so unsettled the Permanent Representative of Jordan.  Would deny that, between 1967 and 1982, the gross national product in Judea-Samaria and the Gaza District increased therefold (with the average annual rate of 8 to 9 per cent in fixed prices); that there was a dramatic decrease in infant mortality; that there has been a tremendous boom in housing; that there has been a sevenfold rise in the use of motor vehicles, a substantial widening of the electrical network, of telecommunications, of the road system?  Would it be denied that there were no universities in Judea-Semaria before 1967, where there are four today; that there has been an increase of 96 per cent in the number of students and a 93 per cent increase in classrooms; that the educational system in the Gaza District has almost doubled in its scope since 1968, and that there has been a remarkable development of vocational training since 1968 with some 50,000 graduates by the end of March 1983?

4. Israel's sixteen-year survey dwells on the foregoing and on many more subjects which we urge the Jordanian delegation to peruse with greater attention.  These are achievements reached in the face of truculence and hostility from the Arab States that have assiduously promoted sabotage and terrorism in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District but done little to enhance the welfare of the Palestinian Arabs between 1948 and 1967.

5. As to “ethics and civilized intercourse” which the Jordanian letter raises, the Permanent Representative of Jordan would do well to ponder the draconian record of his own government in its relations with the population of Judea and Samaria between the years 1949 and 1967.  At the thirty-eighth session of the General Assembly Israel's delegation to the Special Political Committee presented a few of the “highlights” of Jordanian rule.  At present there is no need to recall that dismal past but to assure the Permanent Representative of Jordan that things have evolved for the better in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district between the years 1967 and 1984.

I have the honour to request that this letter be circulated as an official document of the General Assembly, under items 12 and 80 (j) of the provisional agenda, and of the Economic and Social Council under agenda item 8.

*   A/39/150