CONTENTS
Provisional agenda (S/Agenda/1917)
Adoption of the agenda
The situation in the occupied Arab territories:
Letter dated 3 May 1976 from the Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/12066)
president: Mr. Louis de GUIRINGAUD (France).
present: The representatives of the following States: Benin, China, France, Guyana, Italy, Japan, Libyan Arab Republic, Pakistan, Panama, Romania, Sweden, Jnion of Soviet Socialist Republics, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United Republic of Tanzania, United States of America.
Provisional agenda (S/Agenda/1917)
1. Adoption of the agenda
2. The situation in the occupied Arab territories: Letter dated 3 May 1976 from the Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/12066)
The meeting was called to order at 3.30 p.m.
Adoption of the agenda
The agenda was adopted.
The situation in the occupied Arab territories: Letter dated 3 May 1976 from the Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/12066)
1. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French):
In accordance with the decisions we took yesterday at the 1916th meeting, I shall now invite the representatives of Egypt, Israel, Jordan, the Syrian Arab Republic and 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 Council table and Mr. Abdel Meguid (Egypt), Mr. Sharaf (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 French):
I The first speaker is the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, on whom I now call.
3. Mr. TERZI (Palestine Liberation Organization): At the outset I should like to underline the significance °f this meeting in the month of May, since it was in May 1948 that the British Mandate in Palestine was terminated and the people of Palestine was subjected to a holocaust inflicted by Zionist troops on our people.
4. On 22 March 1976, the Council convened to consider the question of "the serious situation arising from recent developments in the occupied Arab territories", and the Palestine Liberation Organization was invited to participate in the debate. I stated then:
"My organization is confident that the Council, in fulfilling its responsibility as the organ entrusted with the maintenance of international peace and security, will not satisfy itself with the expression of grave concern but will utilize the powers conferred upon it by the Charter, powers to deal with such a situation. The Council, we are certain, will deal with the roots, with the cause of the incidents, and not only with the existing situation and its consequences." [1893rd meeting, para. 57.]
5. May I reiterate our view now and assert our belief that the debate in the Council can and will achieve its purpose. It is not and can never be described as barren and futile. To those who believe in the futility of such debates we make this recommendation: Keep out. You had better save your time and ours. Anyway, you have never heeded the will of the international community. Consequently, you find yourselves more and more isolated, an outcast.
6. In March, in its debate on the situation in occupied Palestine, the Council achieved a great deal. In their statements, the representatives who participated without exception spelled out unequivocally their views on a number of issues arising from the prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory, the barbarous treatment of the population and the practices of the racist forces of occupation—practices that constitute violations of the principles of the Charter and of resolutions of the United Nations and violations of the Geneva Conventions and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the March debate there was unanimous condemnation of such practices. The draft resolution [S/12022] was almost unanimously adopted, but for the arbitrary negative vote cast by the representative of the Government of the United States. That Government has made the following almost axiomatic: veto any draft condemning the practices, behaviour and persistent policy of the racist Zionist regime, and, naturally, veto any draft reaffirming the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.
7. As this present debate could be considered a continuation of the debate in March, let us review the events that have taken place in my country under alien, racist occupation and domination.
8. The heroic uprising of my people continues; it has intensified. Mr. President, you represent a country that fell and remained for quite some time under alien, racist occupation and domination. You personally belong to the age group of those who were unfortunate enough to live in those circumstances. You did not sit on the fence to watch and philosophically to record the events. I know that you fulfilled your duty—to defend your country and its honour and your people.
You were militantly involved in the anti-Nazi resistance. Likewise, my people are militantly involved in a struggle against the racist Zionist forces of occupation.
9. In April municipal elections were held in the territories under occupation. Despite the absurdity and illegality of holding elections, be it for administrative posts or any other posts, given the circumstances under which our people live in occupied Palestine, and in spite of the campaign of terror which preceded the elections and the arbitrary expulsion of prospective candidates—to which I referred in our letter dated 30 March [S/12029, annex] to you, Mr. President—the patriotism and determination of our people shattered the plans and hopes of the Zionists. In April our people pronounced their judgement: "We are—all of us and everywhere—the Palestine Liberation Organization".
10. Concerning the elections, suffice it to say that the press in occupied Palestine carried the news about the elections under titles such as "Pro-Palestine Liberation Organization, Communist Sweep in West Bank". The results must have proved distressing to the Zionists. In its issue No. 74 of April—Passover—the Jewish Telegraphic Agency daily news bulletin reported:
"Defence Minister Shimon Peres said last night that the sweeping victory of Palestinian nationalists and radicals in the West Bank municipal elections Monday (April 12, 1976) should not be viewed as a day of mourning for Israel but rather as a challenge which the nation could successfully face. He said that as an Israeli, he was proud that free democratic elections had been conducted in an orderly manner."
We should remind Minister Peres that, to a racist regime, democracy is tantamount to suicide, for democracy and racism, be it nazism, apartheid or Zionism, are contradictory; one negates the other. The victory of the Palestinian patriots and freedom fighters is a cause for concern and mourning to the racist Zionists.
11. Minister Peres viewed the victory of the patriots as a challenge, and what was the reply? No time was wasted. On 18 April more than 20,000 Zionists began a 20-mile two-day march, the aim of which, as declared by the Zionist leader, was "to proclaim the inalienable right of Jews to settle anywhere in the land of Israel". The Zionist leader who led the march told reporters: "The whole of the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and I think we should continue to build settlements here".
12. The reaction of the Palestinians is best gauged by the barbaric reaction of the forces of occupation their troops used tear gas to break up protest demonstrations. Palestinian Arabs in Ramallah, Nablus, Al-Bireh and other towns staged a silent counter-march in protest. To us Palestinians, the recent advance of the Zionists to Jericho is a continuation of the Zionist invasion that started a few decades back.
13. What was the reaction of the racist Zionist regime to this invasion? It has been reported that Minister Peres supported this provocation. It has also been reported that "Israeli soldiers cordoned off the route of march to protect the marchers". But is it only Peres who supported the march and the new colonial settlements? In its bulletin of 23 April the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported:
"Premier Yitzhak Rabin assured settlers in the-Jordan valley that they were there to stay and could count on the Government to strengthen and extend Israeli settlements in that area of the West Bank adjacent to the Jordan River. He gave his assurances to representatives from 17 Jordan valley settlements who met with him at moshav Bikot this week as Arabs were demonstrating in other parts of the West Bank against Jewish settlement.
"Rabin said the Government did not establish settlements with the idea of abandoning them and that he considered the Jordan River to be Israel's permanent security boundary in the east. The Premier conceded that it would require sizeable funds to put the Jordan valley settlements on a firm basis and that other settlement projects on the Golan Heights, the Rafah salient and the Judaean hills were competing for funds. But the Government will make the maximum effort to advance settlement in the Jordan valley, Rabin told the settlers.
"He sought to banish their apprehensions over, the future. When asked if they should plant olive trees which take 7-8 years to bear fruit, Rabin replied, keep planting.
"A representative of the Housing Ministry who accompanied him on the tour told the settlers plans for five more settlements to be established in the Jordan valley this year at a cost of 150 million Israel pounds."
To Mr. Rabin the question of settlements, the question of violation of rights, the question of human rights, is, a question of whence to secure the funds and nothing else.
14. This expansionist colonial-settler move is Jmotivated by an objective. It was Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, who wrote:
"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border… the process must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
The Zionists are designing and implementing their designs to empty Palestine of its people. On 25 December 1975 an ex-commander of Zionist paratroopers, Dr. Davidi Aharon, was lecturing at Arie Ben Eliezer National College in Tel Aviv. Among other things, he said:
" If we really want to spare Jewish and Arab blood, then the final solution that we must strive for is that of transfer, i.e., the removal of all Arabs from here to the Arab countries, which should of course be achieved by reasonable ways and means."
15. What is really important here is the method of "purifying" their State—subtle and discreet. This applies to all the Arabs, including, I dare say, the Mayor of Nazareth and the Arab members of the Knesset. Another expression in that statement catches the eye: "final solution". Does it ring a bell? Have we not heard Goebbels and Adolf Hitler spelling out final solutions to the Jewish question which, when translated, meant the gas chambers and genocide? But I must assure you that the Palestinians will not oblige; they will resist, and like the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto uprising and the heroes in Europe, the Palestinians have risen to confront and foil the Zionist designs. We have learnt, and it will not happen to us. We shall not permit the Zionists to capitalize on the Nazi mass murders of Jews in order to perpetrate the genocide of the Palestinians. It is with this in mind and in memory that the Palestinians are manifesting their resistance to foreign occupation by militant and armed means. The route of armed struggle is a legitimate route, and the Palestinians will apply the armed struggle method as well.
16. Another historic event took place in the interim between the debate in March and this meeting, namely, the consolidation of the Pretoria-Tel Aviv axis. Relations between the racist regime of South Africa and the Zionist movement are nothing new. Was not the establishment of the Zionist State described as a victory of the whites over the Arabs? Do we have to recall the common purpose of Herzl and Cecil Rhodes, the friendship between Smuts and Weizmann? But what is really significant is the role of the United States Government. While it calls for the eradication of the deplorable racist system in South Africa, it is financing and arming and otherwise buttressing the other tip of the axis.
17. No appraisal of the events I have described can be adequate unless it takes into account the following fundamentals of the situation. First, the root of the problems in the occupied territories is the occupation itself. Secondly aggravating the fact of occupation is the nature of the occupying regime—its racist character and its expansionist aims. Thirdly, the occupation strives to perpetuate itself by the establishment of settlements in the occupied territories and by the eviction of the settled indigenous population—in other words, by the creation of physical and demographic changes accompanied by consequential purported politico-juridical changes whose aim and import is to entrench and perpetuate the occupation. Fourthly, in the process of subjugating the inhabitants of the occupied territories, the occupation forces perpetrate gross violations of their fundamental human rights. Fifthly, the population of the occupied territories is not the sole victim of the occupation and its practices. The very purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, as well as the principle of the sanctity of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions, are also principal casualties of the occupation and of the policies and practices of the occupying authorities.
18. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French): The next speaker is the representative of Jordan. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.
19. Mr. SHARAF (Jordan): Mr. President, it is a source of satisfaction to my delegation to see you presiding over the Council. You are eminently qualified for this office, and with your intellect, your elegance and your horizon and sense of objectivity, you represent a great tradition in France. Your nation has contributed to international affairs—let alone to civilization—a sense of objectivity which qualifies it to examine the Middle East problem with the necessary attitude and makes it deserving of the presidency of this body.
20. May I also on this occasion, and with your permission, address a word of welcome to your colleague—to our colleague—the representative of the Soviet Union, Mr. Malik, who is making his first appearance after an accident which kept him away from us for some time. We are happy that he looks in good health and hope that he is able to resume his activities with the same vigour, energy and dynamism that he has displayed throughout his career and in the Security Council.
21. Also with your permission, and without being presumptuous, I wish to address a word of welcome to our new colleague from Japan, Mr. Abe, who replaces another prominent figure, his predecessor Mr. Saito, and who will represent his great country around this table.
22. When questions of the Middle East come before the Security Council, some of its members—perhaps quite a few—feel, I am sure, tense and restless. To these members there is something discomforting about these questions. They evoke the fear of acrimonious exchanges, of an angry atmosphere and of an inconclusive result. Their fear is perhaps justified. But there is also another source of discomfort for some members. Consideration of questions of the Middle East evokes a sense of guilt that is unpleasant and inevitably haunting. For if the Council, the organ charged by the Charter with primary responsibility for the preservation of international peace and security, had acted earlier and in a timely and decisive fashion, the Middle East questions would not have haunted it so frequently or weighed on it so heavily. The Council had many chances to act, but it did not. Some of its more privileged members have always used their power and their prerogatives on those occasions to thwart timely and decisive action by the Council. This is the story of the Middle East question. This is the story of the Palestine question.
23. What alternative is there for the aggrieved party, or parties, but to keep prodding the Council to take action? Inaction for many years on the part of the Council with regard to Middle East problems and agonies does not mean that these problems and agonies have disappeared. Council inaction regarding nearly a decade of Israeli occupation does not mean that the occupation has ended. Inaction on the part of the Council regarding major violations by the occupying Power of the human rights of the inhabitants of the occupied territories does not mean that these violations have stopped. The Council's inaction so far regarding the restoration of Palestinian rights in the Palestinians' own homeland does not mean that the Palestinian tragedy has been erased and that the problem has disappeared. So the aggrieved parties have the right and the duty to come again and again to the Council to remind it of the problems that remain unresolved, to prod it to take corrective action, even if the prospect of another Middle East debate evokes concern and restlessness in some circles of the Council.
24. Are we likely to have an inconclusive outcome? It depends on how one defines a conclusive outcome. A Security Council draft resolution killed by a privileged member's veto is not necessarily a failure for the cause of the aggrieved party who comes to the Council. In November 1967 a resolution was adopted unanimously—resolution 242 (1967)—but it remains unimplemented. Last January we had a Council debate on the Middle East problem, including the Palestinian question, which resulted in a veto by the United States. But that debate witnessed an important step forward, despite the veto. Palestinian rights came to the forefront and were recognized as the obvious core of the Middle East conflict. The framework of a future just settlement was outlined and crystallized. The Arab parties defined their common position concretely and definitely. Israel's bankrupt approach to Palestinian rights and to the question of peace in the Middle East became obvious. The Closest supporters of Israel became aware of how untenable Israel's position is and how isolated they would be if they continued to tie themselves to Israel's non-policy.
25. The present debate on the evolving and grave situation in the occupied territories is therefore necessary and useful. The situation there is the responsibility of the Council. The plight of the people who have been under ruthless and repressive occupation for the last nine years is the Council's concern. The occupation must be ended, and the human rights of the people now under that occupation must be preserved until it ends. The integrity of these areas, particularly of its very heart, Jerusalem, must be protected from mutilation. The uprising by the people who are protesting the occupation of their homeland must be understood and properly assessed by the Council, and the message it sends to the international community must be absorbed. That is the Council's role.
26. A few weeks ago, when the Council met to discuss the uprising in the West Bank and the other occupied territories, I said:
"… the people under occupation have risen in anger and protest against the oppressive and" intolerable situation, sending the Council the message of urgency it failed to grasp in January. An oppressive status quo must not be mistaken for stability. A situation controlled by force is not a situation of normalcy. A state of armed occupation cannot be treated by a section of the international community as an acceptable condition with no explosive implications. The explosion has occurred." [1894th meeting, para. 7.]
27. Now the uprising has lasted for nearly three months. The people of the occupied West Bank—the people of Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Tulkarm, Jericho, Jenin—have been in a state of active protest and resistance for many weeks. Without arms or defences, they have been protesting and resisting the ruthless military machine of the force of occupation. You have all seen—despite the iron curtain erected around the truth by the media friendly to Israel—the dramatic pictures of "the most enlightened and benevolent occupation in history" disintegrating into open barbarity against demonstrating school-children. They are revealing pictures of an explosive and probably exploding situation resulting from layers of accumulated injustice, international negligence and continuing suppression.
28. A foreign occupation that last nine years is bad enough. It is cause enough for rebellion and explosion. But what has been happening in the occupied areas; is even worse and can easily explain the present uprising. During these nine years Israel has utilized every hour to plant its own settlements in the occupied territories, transfer the population, expropriate vast areas of land belonging to the inhabitants, exploit and Kbsorb the economy of the areas under its occupation, force the needy and helpless sectors of the Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza to become cheap labour in Israel's factories and construction projects and above all, to annex officially and absorb physically the most historic and precious part of the occupied territories, Jerusalem. The people of the occupied territories are held in a tightening noose while they watch the very character of their land udergo a horrible metamorphosis.
29. Nowhere is the metamorphosis more radical and more painful than in occupied Jerusalem. No wonder, then, that the spark of rebellion started in Jerusalem, Jerusalem is the most beautiful, unique and precious part of the historic legacy of the Arabs of Palestine. It stands for human brotherhood and common destiny. Sir is as universal and pluralistic in spirit and in symbolism as it is distinctly the legacy of the distinct people who inherited it and protected it and lived in and around it for many centuries. Until the advent of the invading and fanatical Zionists, Jerusalem f signified tolerance, openness and the eternal spiritual values. It was the first phase of Zionist invasion which divided Jerusalem in 1948. The second phase of the invasion, accomplished in 1967, led to Jerusalem's immediate and forcible annexation by Israel and the gradual but systematic mutilation of its physical, cultural and demographic character. As early as July 1967 the matter was brought to the urgent attention , of the General Assembly, which adopted two resolutions [2253 (ES-V) and 2254 (ES-V)] calling on Israel to withhold measures and actions aimed at changing the character and status of the occupied city. Then repeatedly the Council considered the deteriorating situation in Jerusalem resulting from the feverish Israeli measures there and adopted resolutions 252 (1968), 267 (1969) and 298 (1971). But notwithstanding those clear and explicit resolutions, Israel continued its systematic policy of physically and demographically altering the character of the city and subjecting it to Israel's aggressive chauvinism. The occupation authorities continue to expropriate Arab land and property inside the occupied and annexed Walled City and outside it, in order to build new Israeli quarters on the ruins of bulldozed Arab quarters. The area of land confiscated so far in Arab Jerusalem exceeds 22,000 dunums, which is a very substantial area in a small and highly congested city. Over 1,500 buildings have been confiscated. Thirteen new Israeli quarters have been established on the confiscated Arab land.
30. At the beginning of 1975 the Knesset—the Israeli parliament—approved the realization of the Master Plan for Jerusalem, by which 30 per cent of the total area of the West Bank of the Jordan would be annexed to Jerusalem in order to be gradually absorbed. That area includes nine towns and 60 villages inhabited by 250,000 people. When the Israeli plan for Jerusalem completed, the new quarters will comprise 35,000 housing units, accommodating 122,000 new Israeli Jewish residents living on Arab land and radically altering the character and composition of the city. Various methods of pressure are used to effect this systematic displacement of the Arabs of Jerusalem. The Arab-owned hills surrounding the city have already been taken over, thus cutting off the Arab population of Jerusalem from their compatriots in the rest of the occupied West Bank. These most radical changes in the physical and in the demographic and cultural composition of the Holy City are aimed at the systematic strangulation of its Arab inhabitants and the gradual obliteration of the city's Arab character. In this relentless enterprise Israel has infringed upon the Islamic waqf—Moslem endowments and religious properties—and pulled down many of them, as well as mosques and venerated shrines.
31. That Israeli attitude is not accidental. It fits in with the pattern of attitudes and policies of the Israeli State towards the cultural legacy and rights of the people who have come under Israeli occupation. Their religious sites have no sanctity. Their cultural heritage is a barrier to Zionist cultural domination. The great Al-Aqsa Mosque has been violated not only physically but in more radical and ugly ways. Its spiritual dignity has been continuously undermined. This year there is a rising tide of attacks by gangs of delinquents who enter into the Mosque publicly to create commotion and chaos and to commit acts of desecration and provoke Moslem worshippers. There have also been orchestrated voices inside Israel calling for the division of the Mosque and the taking over of part of it. The same pattern has been demonstrated in another place. In Hebron the occupation authorities have outraged the whole Islamic world and all enlightened humanity by their ruthless encroachments on the sanctity of the sacred Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi.
32. While religious and cultural domination and displacement take place in the occupied areas, a parallel systematic process is taking place in the whole of the occupied territories. The occupation authorities have since the occupation in 1967 been engaged in a policy of planting Israeli settlements in the various parts of the occupied areas. Israeli sources tell us that over 70 settlements have already been established in these Arab areas. These settlements are constructed on confiscated land in the midst of the Arab population. They represent a creeping colonization and national displacement, a fearful and inescapable national fate for the inhabitants. There is daily friction and tortured protest as the new settlers, backed by the military machine of the occupation, embark on a new displacement of the people living peacefully in their ancestral homeland.
33. How could such a situation remain calm and stable? How could the people of the West Bank remain silent? If the international community, paralysed by the powerful who chose to back, the aggressors, could settle for inaction, the victims could not. There is a continuing uprising in the occupied Holy Land. The people of Jerusalem, Ramallah, Al-Bireh, Nablus, Al-Khalil, Bethlehem, Jericho, Halhoul and Tulkarm have exploded against the occupation. Strikes have spread in the cities of the West Bank. Violent street clashes have become a daily event. Israel has called upon its expertise in various forms of suppression. Curfews are imposed. Striking store owners are threatened and beaten and arrested and forced to open their stores. School children are savagely attacked by the occupation forces. It is a painful but heroic sight.
34. Were the Arab parties right to come again to the Security Council? What is the alternative? One possibility is to rely exclusively on what is happening in the occupied territories, which is the subject of this debate, until it achieves its purpose: ending Israeli occupation. The resistance is going on there, and it is not deterred or defused by inaction or obstruction in the Council. But the cost in lives and in every other way is high, and it is the duty of the Arabs and the duty of the Council to seek a peaceful alternative. Jordan, which has strong and intimate links with the Arabs of the West Bank and with the cause of Palestine and the Palestinians, feels the responsibility to urge the international community to seek a peaceful alternative for the costly and painful suffering of these brave people as they struggle for their emancipation in their own homeland. The occupation cannot last. The ultimate liberation of the people in the occupied territories is inevitable. But the United Nations, representing the international community, has a duty towards the suffering of the people and towards the general cause of freedom.
35. The Security Council cannot ignore the imperative of action this time. It must act immediately to highlight the urgency and seriousness of the situation. World opinion must know and be called upon to assist the victims of the aggression. Israel must be compelled to abide by the principles of international law governing the conduct of the occupying Power in the occupied areas. It must refrain from any action which is designed to change the character of the occupied areas. It must be compelled to respect the human rights of the inhabitants of the occupied territories provided for in international law. It must, above all, act to end the occupation finally and irreversibly.
36. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French):
The next speaker is the representative of the Syrian Arab Republic, whom I invite to take a seat at the Council table and to make a statement.
37. Mr. ALLAF (Syrian Arab Republic) (interpretation from French): Mr. President, I should first like, on behalf of my delegation and on my own behalf, to express our pleasure and satisfaction at speaking in this debate under your Presidency. You represent France, a friendly country which has historical links with my country. I am convinced that under your guidance the Council will successfully take the action needed to ensure international peace and security.
38. I should also like to join the speaker who has already welcomed Ambassador Malik, the representative of the Soviet Union, on his return to the Council after his serious accident. I should like to say how pleased I am to see him safe and sound, and I extend our best wishes for good health to him and to Mrs. Malik.
39. I should also like to welcome Ambassador Abe of Japan, who has just taken up his duties. I should like to say how pleased we are to see him here.
[The speaker continued in English.]
40. In 1954, Henry Hurwitz, the American editor of the then influential quarterly The Menorah Journal wrote:
"What a paradox is here! In all the countries of the West, Jews have been and continue to be in the forefront of liberalism. There have been myriads like Heine, soldiers and leaders in all the struggles for intellectual and spiritual liberation. This contribution of ours to Western civilization is one of the, glories of the 'Diaspora'. Yet when Jews have gotten a chance to run a State of their own, look at it! All cant aside, can anyone really affirm it to be 'the Switzerland of the Middle East'? We rub our eyes, some of us who were lifelong Zionists, and we hang our heads in shame. No, we must speak with frankness: this present Israel is not what we dreamed and hoped for and worked for—we who followed Herzl or Ahad Ha'Am, Brandeis or Weizmann."
41. Today, 22 years later, the truth is even more bitter. Far from being the Switzerland of the Middle East, Israel has quickly developed, instead, into another South Africa. As a matter of fact, the Afrikaner regime in South Africa and the Zionist regime in Palestine have many features in common and have had right from the beginning. They are both settler regimes based on exclusivism, racism, oppression and exploitation. The regime in Pretoria bases its exclusivist ideology on racial superiority. The regime in Tel Aviv adds to the insult religious discrimination. Apartheid removes non-whites from their homes; zionism uproots non-Jews from their homes and territory. The indigenous populations in both Palestine and South Africa are similarly exploited as a reservoir of cheap labour, and the two unfortunate peoples are subjected to many identical forms of oppression, repressive measures and discrimination. Both regimes continue to defy the international community, to violate the principles of international and humanitarian law, to disregard United Nations resolutions and decisions, and to persist in their inhuman practices against the original population and in their illegal occupation of their territory.
42. The analogy between the two regimes in Pretoria and Tel Aviv was justified by the South African-Jewish publication Jewish Affairs, in its November 1970 issue in the following terms:
"The argument that Israel and South Africa have a basic community of interests in the Middle East and farther south has more than a grain of truth. There is nothing secret or sinister about it. Strong ties between the two countries, closer than ever since the 1967 war, are inseparable from their geographical and strategic position, from their anti-communist outlook, and from all the realities of their national existence."
43. Much more recent evidence of the organic cohesion between the racist regimes in Israel and r South Africa manifested itself clearly during the official I visit last month of the South African racist leader Vorster to Israel and the subsequent establishment of much closer political, military, economic and scientific collaboration between the two regimes at the very moment when the United Nations and the international community are endeavouring to step up their struggle against the racist white minority South African regime and to strengthen the international sanctions imposed on it. In a recent meeting of the Economic and Social Council,1 the representative of the Zionist regime was not ashamed to describe the visit of the leader of the world's ugliest racist regime as a "pilgrimage" to the Holy Places. Besides constituting an insult to the Christian, Moslem and Jewish religions, this tasteless reference by the Zionist representative amounts to an act of moral sacrilege as well.
44. Less than six weeks ago, the Security Council met to consider Israel's policy of expansion and oppression in the occupied Arab territories. The Council was prevented then from adopting an otherwise over-whelmingly supported draft resolution [S/12022] by the negative vote of one of its permanent members. The Zionist regime interpreted that regrettable obstruction as an encouragement of its aggressive policies and pursued its repressive practices against the Arab population in the territories under its illegal occupation.
45. In fact, the particularly brutal acts of the Zionist soldiers during the last few months have unmasked N the true face of Israel, which, like that of all other occupiers and aggressors, is that of an enemy of all H moral and humanitarian values. The Zionist occupation in particular has proved to be one of the ugliest forms of alien domination, because it is an occupation which has a built-in design of creeping expansion and premeditated racist settlement of the land.
46. In spite of the strong censure that the vetoed draft resolution represented in relation to oppressive Israeli practices in the occupied Arab territories, the Zionist regime has completely ignored the serious warning by the 14 other members of the Council and has persisted in its savage oppression of the Arab population. Even in the United States, where the information media are not known to be particularly sympathetic to the Arab cause, there was wide coverage and daily reports—often with self-explanatory and expressive pictures—on Israeli brutalities against innocent men and women, and especially youth and children. Scores of innocent unarmed demonstrators were killed, wounded or savagely beaten, curfews were imposed on Arab villages and cities and the inhabitants subjected to the worst inhuman treatment. The streets of Nablus, Tulkarm, Jenin, Ariha, Ramallah, Al-Quds, Al-Nassrah and other Arab cities and villages were infested with Israeli paratroopers and soldiers, and the life of the Arab inhabitants of those localities became unbearable under the yoke of Zionist occupation.
47. On 17 April, many thousands of Zionist fanatics, with the encouragement and approval of the Israeli authorities, invaded the occupied West Bank. The ultra-racist nationalist Zionist marchers penetrated more than 20 miles into the heart of the occupied territories, carrying guns, rifles and guitars, shouting provocative expansionist and racist slogans and insulting the national feelings and dignity of the Arab inhabitants. The unashamedly declared objective of that provocative march was to dramatize the Israeli claim to the West Bank and to claim its pure and simple annexation. The armed Zionist marchers and the Israeli soldiers surrounding and protecting their aggressive procession opened fire on the Arab inhabitants, and several Arab youths were killed and wounded.
The Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, Mr. Yitzhak Rabin, was almost at that very moment encouraging the Jewish racist settlers in the occupied West Bank and telling them:
"I see the Jordan River line as Israel's security border and the establishment of settlements along this line as the defence line for the State of Israel."
48. Thus, while the Zionist regime repeatedly claims that it wants peace and that it is ready to negotiate with the Arabs without any precondition in order to reach that peace, it is secretly and feverishly carrying out a premeditated evil plan to ensure the total usurpation of all the occupied Arab territories through expansion, overt and covert purchase, acquisition and expropriation of Arab lands, as well as what is even more serious—the establishment of new Jewish settlements in the occupied Arab territories.
49. The creation of these Jewish settlements in the territories occupied as a result of Israel's aggression is unanimously condemned by all countries and nations, including an increasingly larger number of Jews themselves, inside and outside Israel. Israel can no longer deceive world public opinion about its real intentions or its expansionist nature. It is crystal clear to everyone now that the Zionist settler regime aims by this universally condemned practice to create a number of fails accomplis, hoping with the passage of time to pressure the international community into accepting these imposed and calculated acts.
50. It should not be surprising, in this light, to see the Israeli Government blocking every effort towards a comprehensive settlement for the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the region. For Israel knows that any such settlement would mean its withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories—something that Israel does not want and has never really wanted. What Israel wants, in fact, is to perpetuate its occupation of the Arab territories and to prevent the Palestinian people from obtaining any of its national rights.
51. The establishment of about 70 Jewish paramilitary settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan and Sinai is a flagrant act of racist expansion which, added to the already grave act of illegal Israeli occupation of these territories, should prompt the United Nations, and more particularly the Security Council, to take the necessary measures, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter to put an end to Israel's illegal occupation.
52. In addition to all its previous acts of aggression against the Arab people during the first two decades of its implantation in the heart of the Arab homeland, Israel has persisted for nine years now in its illegal occupation of the Arab territories which it invaded during its perfidious aggression of 5 June 1967. The Zionist regime refuses to abide by the United Nations resolutions requesting its withdrawal from those territories and persists instead in carrying out its illegal plans for their usurpation and annexation. But the Arab people will not permit the Israeli aggressors to complete their racist designs and will not accept the usurpation of even one inch of its territory. The Arab people is determined, as well, to continue its tireless struggle until all Palestinians are able to exercise their sacred rights to self-determination, independence and sovereignty.
53. The heroic struggle of the Arab population in all parts of the occupied territories against its Zionist occupiers and aggressors is not an isolated struggle. It is supported by all its Arab brothers in every part of the Arab homeland and by all peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The socialist countries, the Nordic countries and the majority of the European nations also support the rights of the Palestinian people and consider their fulfilment a precondition for the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.
54. I take this opportunity to address from this Council chamber a message of unlimited support and solidarity to our Palestinian brothers and sisters who whit their bare fists are defying the Zionist paratroopers and mercenaries and who are waging a heroic struggle against the Israeli forces of occupation. Hear, my brothers and sisters, the voices of the representatives of free nations from all regions and continents of the world supporting your struggle and expressing solidarity with your just cause. The long dark night of occupation and oppression is nearing its end. By your courage, patriotism and determination, you will defeat the alien aggressor and you will liberate your own land.
55. Peace in the Middle East and in the world cannot be achieved without full recognition of the national rights of the Palestinian people or without total Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied Arab territories.
56. The heroic uprising of the Palestinian people in occupied Palestine will go on, despite the terrorist measures of the Israeli forces of occupation, until the liberation of all the occupied territories. Even under the yoke of occupation, the Palestinian people proved its devotion and attachment to its nationalism The Zionist authorities have tried to use the municipal elections, organized under their control, as propaganda about their so-called "benign" occupation. The results of the elections were, on the contrary, the strongest proof that there is no "benign" occupation, that every occupation is an act of continued aggression and that the peoples subjected to that humiliating act of aggression will not surrender their freedom and their aspiration for independence and sovereignty at any price. The Zionists were hoping to prove as a result of those municipal elections that the Palestine Liberaltion Organization does not enjoy the support and backing of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories. The results were a slap in the face for the occupiers, because they proved that the PLO is the sole legitimate representative-of the Palestinian people, inside and outside the occupied territories.
57. The Security Council is called upon to face its responsibilities under the Charter. The Council, which is entrusted, on behalf of the Member States, with ensuring the maintenance of international peace and security, cannot remain idle while millions of Palestinians are subjected to the yoke of occupation and the ugliest forms of oppression, or condemned to a life of misery and suffering in refugee camps. The Council cannot remain silent while the occupied territories are being swallowed, piece by piece, parcel by parcel, by the expansionist Zionist regime. Occupation, even temporary, is, according to international law, a continued act of aggression. How could the council by its inaction condone this continued aggression? It cannot this time meet, debate, consult, recess, reconvene and then adjourn without adopting the measures needed to put an end to the present dangerous situation in the occupied Arab territories. The Palestinian people is not awaiting the mere adoption of a resolution which adds a new condemnation to the pile of hundreds of previous condemnations of Israeli aggressions accumulated since the creation of Israel. What the Palestinian victims of Israeli occupation and aggression really seek is only the end to the nightmare in which they have been living for so many years.
58. The illegal Israeli occupation is the root of the evil, and the Security Council cannot fulfil its responsibilities properly unless it attacks this very root. Therefore, the Council is under obligation to adopt the necessary measures in the framework of a resolution which would, first, condemn the Israeli acts of oppression against the Arab inhabitants in the occupied territories; secondly, request that such Israeli practices and violations of international and humanitarian laws, particularly the fourth Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949,2 be brought to an end; thirdly, order Israel to abstain from establishing unusual settlements in the occupied territories and to dismantle all the settlements which it has implanted in those territories, pending the speedy withdrawal from those territories; fourthly, and what is most important, instruct Israel to end immediately its illegal occupation of the Arab territories.
59. Only such a resolution could really render justice to the struggle and cause of the victims of Israeli Occupation and aggression, and we hope that all countries will co-operate in order to make that possible.
60. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French):
Before calling on the next speaker, I should like to inform members of the Council that I have received a letter from the representative of Saudi Arabia in which he asks to be invited, under Article 31 of the Charter, to participate without the right to vote in the debate. If I hear no objection I propose in accordance with the practice in the Council and with rule 37 of the provisional rules of procedure to invite the representative of Saudi Arabia to participate in the debate.
At the invitation of the President, Mr. Baroody (Saudi Arabia) took the place reserved for him at the side of the Council chamber.
61. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French):
The next speaker is the representative of Israel, on whom I now call.
62. Mr. HERZOG (Israel): Mr. President, I thank you for permitting me to address the Council, and I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your assumption of the presidency of the Council and to express to you personally, Sir, the feelings of respect and regard which my delegation holds for you.
63. I take this opportunity, too, to express my good wishes to Ambassador Malik on his recovery and to the new representative of Japan on the assumption of his post.
64. Well, here we are again, listening to the same old cracked record grinding out the inevitable theme of hate, of venom, of perverted argument as one Arab representative after another comes forward, launches his tirade and retires for another to take over. Not one word of reason. Not one word of compromise. Not one word of accommodation. Not one word about Israeli rights. Indeed, when I heard the comments of the Syrian representative, I was reminded of the Arab saying: "Like the muezzin of Horns he calls the people to prayer, but he himself goes to his work".
65. Not one word about negotiation. Indeed, the word is taboo. If ever there was a futile, useless waste of time, it is this discussion, for as the representatives are only too well aware, it bears no relevance to the subject under discussion. It is a function of the volatile, unstable internecine interrelationship within the Arab world which must surely bewilder those who are used to more stable norms of international relationships.
66. It brings me back to my assertion in the last Council meeting on this issue, when I quoted Sir Winston Churchill in respect of the Mother of Parliaments, to the effect that this Organization has become an international public convenience to be utilized by each Arab faction as and when it suits its stand in the Arab world. When they so desire and crack the whip, the Council meets. When they do not so desire, the Council does not meet. Yes, they do not want the Council to discuss the slaughter of 20,000 people and the wounding of 50,000 in Lebanon; they do not want the threat of the annihilation of 1 million Christians to be even hinted at; they do not want the dismembering of a Member State to be the subject of international concern; and there has therefore been no mention for over a year in this body of one of the greatest human tragedies besetting the world today which yet threatens to turn into a holocaust. They do not want it, and so the mighty nations of the world assembled in solemn session in the council of nations remain silent. They are too preoccupied with some sporadic stone-throwing in the West Bank to turn their attention to wholesale slaughter and to the disintegration of a nation. Has there ever been such a flagrant example of international hypocrisy? Has international morality ever descended to lower cynical depths?
67. And so, now, because Egypt has to indulge in a game of one-upmanship with Syria and to take advantage of the tension and confrontation between Syria and the PLO in Lebanon, the Council is called into session to satisfy Egypt's urge to score over the Syrians. The Palestinian Arabs are an excuse, a convenient excuse as always, utilized by the Arab States, as always, as pawns in the inter-Arab game. Why, even the simple act of seating here in the Council has become the subject of inter-Arab rivalry and hostility.
68. When I analyse Egypt's behaviour over the past year I find that it emerges as a classic example of double-faced hypocrisy such as has rarely been witnessed even in the Byzantine excesses of inter-Arab intrigue. In September 1975, just eight months ago, Egypt signed an interim agreement [S/ll818/Add.l] with Israel which stated, inter alia:
"The Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Government of Israel have agreed that:
"The conflict between them and in the Middle East shall not be resolved by military force but by peaceful means.
"The parties hereby undertake not to resort to the threat or use of force or military blockade against each other.
"This Agreement is regarded by the parties as a significant step towards a just and lasting peace. It is not a final peace agreement."
69. That was signed eight months ago. One can hardly have noticed a reflection of the spirit of this agreement in the behaviour of the Egyptian representative in the United Nations. During the thirtieth session of the General Assembly Egypt was one of the sponsors of a resolution condemning United States imperialism in Guam, Samoa and the Virgin Islands [resolution 3429 (XXX)]. A few months later it was soliciting economic and military aid from the oppressors of the Virgin Islands. A treaty of co-operation and friendship was freely entered into with the Soviet Union by Egypt, which as a consequence benefited from Soviet aid over the years to a degree unsurpassed certainly by any country outside the Communist orbit. When it suited Egypt, the treaty was unilaterally abrogated. Now it is the turn of the Chinese. At least my Chinese colleague will not be able to deny, when it happens, that he was not forewarned. Yes, Egypt is becoming so involved in this game of betrayal that it may discover one day that it has betrayed itself.
70. It is impossible to isolate events in the Middle East one from the other. Therefore, in addressing myself to the problem under discussion, I find it necessary to elaborate on a series of events in the area which are all interlinked.
71. In order to examine the reason for this debate and the Egyptian request for it, one has to appreciate the intricacies of inter-Arab relationships. The focus of the problem is not Israel or the territories administered by Israel or Palestinian Arabs. The focus of the problem today is the situation in Lebanon.
72. For over a year a bitter fratricidal war has been going on in Lebanon, with Christian pitted against Moslem and Moslem against Christian. Many of the representatives must have wondered why, with all the means at their disposal, the Arab countries were unable to bring this tragic situation to an end. This question was asked in the Arab world as well and was asked by none other than President Sadat of Egypt. Let me quote his question as it was posed to the Arab world in an interview he gave but a short time ago, and let me give you his answer:
"Why didn't the Lebanese battle stop 10 months ago? It is understood that it was Syria… which was feeding this battle. It was [the Syrians] who were supplying arms to both sides. They could have stopped all of this destruction. How is it that the fighting stopped 10 months later? I have the detail and I know the reason… The Syrians gave arms both sides. They know very well that I have the details of what was being supplied to both sides to the Moslems to kill the Christians and to the Christians to kill the Moslems."
So much, incidentally, for the constructive role which we are told the Syrians have been playing in Lebanon.
73. However, the developments in Lebanon got of hand as far as the Syrians were concerned, and they suddenly awoke to realize that the dangerous game that they were playing was liable to bring about the partitioning of Lebanon. This was a development utterly irreconcilable with the Syrian aim in this whole exercise, namely, to take complete control of Lebanon as part of the Syrian implementation of the Greater Syrian Plan.
74. In the Lebanese crisis, the Syrians used the PLO as an instrument. Suddenly, they found themselves in conflict with their PLO agents; for in the course of developments in Lebanon the Syrian-controlled As-Saiqa PLO faction began to grow in strength and influence out of all proportion to its importance. Other elements of the PLO suddenly discovered that the process of the inexorable takeover of the PLO by the Syrians was proceeding apace. The PLO groups suddenly awoke to realize that they were losing their only base in the Middle East. The Egyptian President had spoken of them in the past few months in a derisive manner, and in his opinion, they did not know what they wanted. They were not free to operate in Egypt. They could not dare to enter Jordan, let alone to operate from there. In Syria they were under the tightest possible control, with the As-Saiqa faction being the only one free to operate from Syrian territory, subject to Syrian army authority.
75. Here now was the only area, Lebanon, in which they were free to operate—with what catastrophic results the world has already seen—coming under Syrian control, with all that this would imply for the PLO. They evaluated their situation and came to the inescapable conclusion that their interests and indeed their very existence were liable to be prejudiced by Syrian control of Lebanon. Accordingly, a hasty truce was effected between Al Fatah, the group led by Yasser Arafat, and George Habash's group, the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], and both joined against the Syrian threat. Only two weeks ago they became involved in armed conflict with the As-Saiqa group, a development which added yet further confusion to the Lebanese situation. The PLO groupings joined forces with the left-wing Moslems under Kamal Jumblatt, with whose idiosyncrasies and eccentricities we in the Middle East are only too familiar. The danger of partition in Lebanon became imminent, and the Syrian army intervened, blocking the movement of the PLO and the left-wing groups and placing a virtual arms embargo ,on them by land and sea.
76. All this time a verbal battle had been taking .place on this issue and on other issues between Egypt and Syria. The PLO, in danger of losing its only base in the Arab world, began to mend its fences with the Egyptians. The Egyptians, seeing an opportunity to play another game of one-upmanship with the Syrians, suddenly began to espouse the cause of the PLO in their conflict with the Syrians. Indeed, in this morning's press I read Mr. Jumblatt's assertion that "if there is a conspiracy in Lebanon, it is Syria that is mounting it"—an allegation made in reply to the Syrian charge that "imperialists", Egyptians and others had instigated the civil war.
77. This debate is part of an effort by Egypt to reassert itself in the Arab world and to score over the Syrians within the framework of their struggle one with the other. It is for this barren purpose that the members of the Council have been summoned here, to satisfy Egyptian political motives completely unrelated to the issue under discussion. The question that must be asked is: how long can this world body continue to be used for Arab political purposes?
78. I referred before to the agreement which was signed between Israel and Egypt in September 1975. A few months ago we renewed our efforts to maintain the momentum of the past two years which has led to two disengagement agreements, one with Egypt [S/ll198 and Add.I of January 1974] and one with Syria [S/11302 and Add.l of May 1974], and to an interim agreement with Egypt [S/110561 Add.3 of II November 1973, annex], in addition to the establishment of the Geneva Peace Conference, all within the framework of Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), which we see as the basis for an advance towards peace in the area.
79. The Government of Israel made a proposal whereby the termination of the existence of a state of war in the Middle East would be envisaged. We have been waiting for a reply. Are we to understand that the barren rhetoric and diatribe of the Egyptian representative to the Council is the reply? Is this the manner in which we are going to make an advance towards peace in the area? Is this the reply to our proposal which has so far remained unanswered? Will we solve the tragedy of the Middle East this way? Is this type of debate not compounding tragedy with tragedy?
80. Here we are subject to the all too familiar sermonizing by those least qualified to sermonize. As I listened to the terrifying enumeration by my Egyptian colleague of the familiar allegations against Israel in the territories, I had lying before me a newspaper describing the transfer of a lady from Egypt, on the advice of her doctors and accompanied by her family and her doctor, to the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem for open-heart surgery. If the territories are such a hell on earth for the Arabs, why the long line of Arabs crossing from every country in the Middle East daily into Israel for treatment?
81. The inevitable question raised by several statements made here regarding alleged Israeli violations of human rights in the administered areas is surely one of common sense. If conditions in the administered areas are so unbearable and it is claimed that Israel is committing "war crimes" in the areas, why is it that hundreds of thousands of Arabs, including women and children, voluntarily cross the Jordan River every year to spend their vacations in the very same areas? What perversion of human nature is drawing these multitudes into a vortex of unspeakable maltreatment? Why do they freely choose to take their holidays in this allegedly Nazi-like atmosphere? The following figures speak for themselves. Since June 1967, 4.5 million people have crossed the bridges of the River Jordan in both directions, and this includes 700,000 Arab tourists from Arab countries all over the Middle East.
82. The true state of affairs is quite simple. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs do not believe either the stories recounted in the Council or reports written by some United Nations committees. They believe only what they themselves see and hear in the areas concerned, and their verdict is, in the recent words of the West German weekly Der Spiegel, "the Zionist hell is an Arab tourists' paradise".
83. Indeed, it is a sad commentary on the role of the media in the world today to compare the lurid descriptions of events as they are published with the facts on the spot. In contradistinction to the emphasis given to a number of sporadic incidents, Israel is today experiencing the greatest tourist boom in its history. And just as those visiting Paris or London or Lisbon or New York, all of which have graced the front pages of late as centres of unrest or bomb incidents, achieve a measure of proportion and discover that much else is going on too, so do the hundreds of thousands of tourists—Jews, Arabs and Christians—visiting Israel today.
84. The representative of Egypt has once again had the effrontery to discuss Gaza in the Council. The last person with the moral right to mention the word "Gaza" here or anywhere else is an Egyptian. For 19 years, the Egyptians kept the residents of Gaza imprisoned in their refugee camps. They oppressed them and subjected them to every form of human disability. For 19 years, the Egyptians could have given them the freedom they talk about, and what did they do? They treated them as slaves. For 19 years they could have done what they ask Israel to do, and what did they do? They violated one human right after another. For 19 years they did not even allow the residents of Gaza to work in Egypt either for remuneration or without remuneration.
85. Today thousands of Gaza inhabitants move daily into Israel to work and live freely without curfew. One of the first decrees of the military governor of Gaza, when the Egyptians took over, was the imposition of a curfew—9 p.m. to dawn. That curfew lasted for 19 years and violators were put to death. This is no longer the case, not since 1967. Highways were closed to all but military traffic after dusk. This is no longer the case, not since 1967. A strict censorship was imposed and locally published newspapers were prohibited—all came from Cairo. This is no longer the case, not since 1967.
86. Let me give the Council a Jordanian description of the situation in Gaza published in Falastin
"The shabbily clothed and undernourished refugees said that they were ill-treated by the Egyptian authorities. Every refugee had a card issued by the Egyptians which said: 'Bearer is prohibited from employment with or without wages'… We must admit that thousands of young Gazaites flee under cover to the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca in the hope of finding work in Saudi Arabia and escaping the disgrace of living under Egyptian domination in the Strip."
Or Radio Damascus announcing in October 1961, "Egypt is exercising tyranny in the Strip." Or the testimony of an English lady, Mrs. Edith Reid, broadcast by the BBC and printed in The Listener on 15 February 1968:
"As one of the handful of Britishers who actually lived in the Gaza Strip… I may be able to add a little to what has already been stated. The Gaza Strip was an Egyptian military police zone and, although the United Nations international workers had complete protection within UNEF, it was not long before one felt the claustrophobic atmosphere engendered by the travel restrictions to and from the Strip and within the area itself. We were no permitted to walk about the town after sunset. Arabs with rifles and mounted on camels and horseback policed the streets when it was dark. All phone calls were tapped. I was warned to destroy all personal letters."
Or let the Saudi Arabians have their say too on conditions in the Strip. Jiddah Radio on 10 March 1962 attacked Egypt in blunt 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 that he occupied during the World War."
Some months before the 1967 war, a resident Gaza Strip was interviewed in a Saudi Arabian paper, Al-Medina, on 28 November 1966:
"Gaza is the only remnant of our seized country I wish it had also been taken so that we could know at least that the one who profanes our honour hurts us and tortures us is the Zionist oppressor Ben Gurion and not an Arab brother named Abdel Nasser… Consider the attitude of Nasser' administration to us and you will find that the Jews under Hitler did not suffer as we do un Nasser."
87. For 19 years under the Egyptians no elections were ever held. The governor was the executive, the legislature and the judiciary all rolled into one. His decree was final.
88. In contrast to the horrifying records of the 19 years of despotism, wickedness, cruelty and oppression which has left the Egyptian name despised and hated in the Gaza Strip, let me quote the following excerpt from an article by a neutral observer in West Germany in Die Rheinphalz on 5 January 1976 — bit four months ago:
"One cannot help but be impressed by the efforts undertaken by the military administration in the Gaza Strip to 'normalize' the situation of the Palestinian refugees… During the entire period of Egyptian rule nothing had been done to improve their economic and social lot. At the time of my first visit to Gaza, in 1969, there appeared to be no solution for the misery and despair of the Palestinian refugees rotting in the camps. Yet much has changed since. The Israeli administration has learnt from experience… There is virtually no longer any unemployment in the Gaza Strip. Private income per capita has risen from 553 Israel pounds to 1,158 Israel pounds.
"Apart from security, the administration of the Gaza region is largely in the hands of the Arab authorities… Israel has developed a blueprint to free the refugees from the run-down camps. They can purchase houses of their own on very favourable terms… The main aim is to ensure that the new building sites do not, themselves, turn into refugee camps. To guarantee fairness, the plots of land being sold are chosen by lot. Interest in this new programme is so great that the authorities have considerable trouble coping with demand. Israel invested about 50 million Israel pounds during 1974, without any political strings attached."
That was a neutral observer's impression of the Strip but four months ago.
89. Gaza is today a prosperous area, and despite attempts to incite the population from outside, particularly from Cairo, there have been no disturbances. The people of Gaza who have suffered the hell of Egyptian occupation for 19 years are not inclined b be influenced by this sort of Egyptian rhetoric. The issues in Gaza today are of a local nature, of a purely municipal and fiscal kind such as occur in any society engaged in day-to-day living.
90 For 19 years the Jordanians occupied the West Bank of the Jordan. For 19 years they did not even create a central administration in the West Bank. They oppressed the Arab population. Every few months riots broke out in the West Bank only to be suppressed brutally by the Jordanian Army. Dozens were killed and wounded.
91 We heard the moving remarks on Jerusalem made by my Jordanian colleague. He did not mention the father germane fact that for the past 100 years the Jewish population has been the majority in that city. The Jordanian representative, the representative of a State which is credited by the Chairman of the PLO with killing and wounding over 20,000 Palestinian Arabs, has the effrontery to speak here. His speech was nothing but a tissue of lies and misstatements. Who is he trying to make an impression on this time? On the PLO? Why not let them enter Jordan? That would be more convincing. On the Egyptians? To judge by President Sadat's remark the other day, he is not impressed. On the Syrians? They do not need to be impressed; they are well on the way towards achieving their aims in Jordan.
92. The situation in Jerusalem is open for all to see, including over 200,000 tourists from all over the world this week, under the most enlightened administration the city has known in 2,000 years.
93. I can appreciate my Jordanian colleague's sense of guilt in respect of Jerusalem and the West Bank. But even that does not justify his departure from the truth to such a degree.
94. I do not want to waste the Council's time with a history of Jordanian rule in the West Bank. Suffice it to recall the events in the West Bank only in 1966 —that is, some months before the Israeli administration began.
95. In January 1966 the Jordanian authorities arrested 200 persons in Jericho; in April they arrested 2,000 persons in the West Bank. In May mass demonstrations took place in East Jerusalem, Hebron and Ramallah. The police used force, closed down schools and arrested hundreds of persons. In July disturbances and mass demonstrations broke out in Nablus. The Jordanian police used tear gas; 12 persons were wounded and 250 arrested. That November saw a series of stormy disturbances and clashes between civilians, police and army forces, with numerous casualties. On 21 November shop and business strikes broke out in the Ramallah area. The army was called in to intervene and employed tanks. The Jordanian authorities imposed a curfew and closed all schools. Similar events occurred through November and December in most other towns. On 24 November the Jordanian Army again employed tanks and tear gas. Twenty demonstrators were killed and many more wounded. On 8 December a general business strike was put down by force by the police and the Jordanian Army. On 13 January 1967 the population of Nablus rose up, and barricades were put up in the streets. The Jordanian Army had to surround the city and suppress resistance by force.
96. With an army composed mainly of Bedouin from the East Bank, the Jordanian Government succeeded in retaining its military hold over the West Bank.
97. As I sit here in the Security Council, I recall only too well that Yasser Arafat announced on the night of 9 April 1971 that "the Palestinian revolution has lost 20,000 killed and wounded in Jordan". Did that not warrant the convening of a meeting of the Council at the time? Apparently not.
98. We are justifiably proud of our record in the West Bank. And I am not by that indicating an unawareness of the important political issues at stake. I am not trying and I never have tried in this forum to suggest that they do not exist. All one has to do is read the free Israeli press—so liberally quoted by my Arab colleagues—to discover to what degree the problems do exist.
99. However, pending an over-all political solution — and I emphasize that this problem cannot be isolated from the over-all Middle East problem—we are proud of our humane approach. We are proud of the fact that despite the pressure and the provocations over the years in which the most heinous crimes have been committed by terrorists, we have never carried out the death penalty. We are proud of the fact that there has been a real growth in the gross national product in both territories of an average of 18 per cent per annum, that per capita income has increased by 80 per cent in the West Bank and by 120 per cent in Gaza in eight years, that the unemployment rate had dropped from some 10 per cent in the West Bank and almost 30 per cent in the Gaza Strip in 1967 to zero by June of last year, that agricultural machinery in the territories has increased tenfold in eight years, that there has been a 46 per cent increase in the number of educational institutions and classrooms in a system which provides free education in the West Bank and Gaza. We are proud of the fact that of a total of 16,000 administrative officials in the territories, only 500 are Israelis, that all the mayors and municipal councils have been elected by free and secret ballot, that three newspapers in East Jerusalem are edited, written and published by Arab editors and journalists with absolute freedom to express any political opinion, including extreme views, opposing the State of Israel, that there is complete freedom of movement in Israel to and from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and for visitors from the East Bank—including visitors from all the Arab countries. We are proud of the absolute freedom of religion granted to all beliefs, in which all holy places are autonomously administered by the respective religious authorities. We are proud of all this, because we know that it has already created a bridge to the Arab world, has created a daily dialogue between us and a major element of the Palestinian Arabs, has brought about a greater degree of mutual understanding than has ever been achieved before, despite all the problems, and has developed daily grass-roots Arab-Jewish co-operation in all fields of human endeavour—medicine, agriculture, commerce, politics, science and higher education. We are proud that we have created the foundations from which we hope to advance further towards the solution of the Palestine Arab problem on a basis of growing understanding.
100. A month ago free and democratic elections took place in the West Bank. The inhabitants of the West Bank had to wait for an Israeli administration in order to enjoy the experience of free elections. The elections were carried out despite the fact that it was quite obvious that candidates hostile to Israel would be returned. I stand here proud of the fact that only under the Israeli administration was it possible to carry out free and secret elections in one part of the Arab world, and that in the entire Middle East only under an Israeli administration are Arabs free to vote as their conscience dictates, to vote against the Government of the country in which they live, if they do desire.
101. I noted the derisive remarks made here by the representative of Egypt about the recent elections in the West Bank. As usual, his remarks do not tally with those of his President on the subject of the elections, nor with those of other Arab spokesmen who hail the elections and their results. For heaven's sake, cannot they all even agree on this point? Let them make their minds up. Either the elections are a subject of derision and therefore of no consequence, or they were serious and valid elections, in which case Israel has something to be proud of, and Israel's behaviour in this respect remains a permanent reproach to the Arab States.
102. Of course there has been incitement from the outside. I have here copies of broadcasts over the Cairo radio describing events that never occurred, relating stories of mass murder on all sides, describing, in fact, the horrors of Lebanon and replacing the word "Lebanon" with the words "Israel", "the Gaza Strip" or "the West Bank". It is indeed ominous to read in the press today reports about an inquiry which is being conducted in Israel and abroad on the subject of incidents being fabricated and specially prepared for the foreign media. According to the reports I read today, this arose out of the proposal of a citizen of the West Bank to a foreign television crew to organize incidents such as the burning of tyres or the creation of a road block in return for a payment of $300. Apparently an inquiry is now under way, as I say both in Israel and outside Israel, in order to unearth this new process of producing on-the-spot news.
103. Of course the Egyptians and other Arab countries are inciting people. Why should they not? Of course the PLO is actively calling for disturbances. It is obvious that not one of these elements wants to countenance the rise of a young militant Arab leadership in the West Bank elected to office by its own people at the ballot box and not by the muzzle of the Kalashnikov or by the assassin's bullet—a leadership which, while it may be militant and certainly divergent in views from the Israeli administration, has its roots in the population and is engaged in a dialogue on a day-to-day basis with an Israeli administration and also, despite its views on Jordan, with a Jordanian administration and a Jordanian civil service in the West Bank. The present incitement is designed to prevent the development of a dialogue between this new leadership and the Israeli administration. For those elected, while they certainly do not accord in their views with the Israeli administration, will not, I trust, allow themselves to be pawns in the hands of the Arab States and will not allow themselves to be dictated to by an emigre PLO leadership, the only so-called leadership in the world which does not live among the population it purports to liberate.
104. Under Jordanian law, which is applied in the West Bank, the Government of Israel had the right to ignore the election results and to appoint its own candidates. The results notwithstanding, this was the practice under Jordanian occupation. The Government of Israel, which as a matter of principle has decided to respect the results of the elections, has this week appointed all those elected and has refrained from interfering in the municipal affairs of the various towns, regardless of the political opinions of those elected.
105. I emphasize again that I am not for a moment endeavouring in a facile manner to minimize the problems which face us, although I can but reiterate that the core of the problem is not a question of territory and is not a question of Palestinians, though these are both important. It is a question of change of heart in respect of Israel on the part of the Arab countries. Until that change is achieved no meaningful advance can really be attained. At the heart of the conflict lies the Arab refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish nation to self-determination and national sovereignty.
106. Our drama is enacted in a region in which the Arab nation has realized its sovereignty in 20 States comprising 100 million people in 4.5 million square miles, with vast resources. The issue therefore is not whether the world will come to terms with Arab nationalism. The question is at what point Arab nationalism, with its prodigious glut of advantage, wealth and opportunity will come to terms with the but equal rights of another Middle Eastern nation to pursue its life in security and peace.
107. This frivolous complaint has been brought to the without any reference whatsoever to the problem involved. Indeed, the mere fact of bringing it to this table is an indication of the callous approach of the Arab States to the problem under review and of their desire to utilize this forum for their own inter-Arab purposes. Until 1967—for 19 years—we were not in the West Bank, we were not in Gaza, we were not establishing settlements. We were living behind the 1967 lines. Did the Arab States talk of peace, negotiate peace, make peace? They did not Does this not show the basic dishonesty of the approach of the Arab countries? Does this not indicate the crux of the problem as I have set it out before?
108. This type of futile debate, this horrible diatribe, which we have heard repeated who knows how many times, is not going to solve the problem in the Middle East. A constant boring and repetitive outpouring of hate and malice has never solved any problem and cannot solve one in this case.
109. Let me make one point crystal clear. We will effectively block the current Arab aim to create a new Lebanon in areas under our control. It will not be. They will not succeed in widening the area of misery and horror in the Middle East in pursuance of their inherent negative purpose in callous disregard of what the results for ordinary people—Moslem, Jew and Christian—might be. The problem of the Middle East will not be resolved in the streets nor by stone-throwing schoolchildren.
110. What an unbelievable stage we have reached in the world. To what depths have we descended. The practice of placing bombs designed to kill innocent civilians indiscriminately is now too prevalent in the world to be ignored, and yet on this issue too the world Organization has not had the courage to deal with the problem of international terrorism: London, New York, Miami, Belfast, Jerusalem—to quote but a few instances in the last few weeks. Not only does this Organization do nothing about this problem, but it sees fit to seat the representatives of an organization which openly claimed the credit for such nefarious acts of terror only yesterday. The other day a bomb exploded in a main street in Jerusalem, wounding innocent people—men, women and children, Jews and Arabs, and even the Consul General of Greece and his wife. With great fanfare the PLO claimed credit for this gallant act of chivalry, for this deed of outstanding heroism. And what does this Organization do? What does this Security Council do? It seats them here as equal members. Will you grant such status to those who left bombs in London, Belfast, Peking, New York, Madrid, Rome, and anywhere else, when their seating is proposed by other mischief-makers? And should Israel dare take action against the perpetrators of these atrocities, then world society raises its hands in righteous horror at the spectacle of a people defending itself. The Arabs have a saying for this—as, indeed, they have for everything in their rich language: "He strikes me and cries; he preceded me and complained".
111. The problem of the Middle East will not be solved by the transparent double-talk used by the Arab representatives in this forum in an attempt by semantic acrobatics to avoid saying what fate they really propose for Israel. The problem of the Middle East will never be solved in any other way than at the negotiating table. We can achieve a solution of our problems only on the basis of growing understanding. And this we will achieve if the process of negotiation and dialogue in the Middle East is encouraged and not obstructed by this Organization. We shall not achieve it if the vicious invective which permeates this debate is allowed to be the prevalent idiom in the Middle East today. I repeat: you have no option today but to choose between, on the one hand, the ongoing process towards peace in the Middle East as envisaged within the broad framework of resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) calling for direct negotiations and for the establishment of a just and lasting peace, and, on the other hand, the uncompromising intransigent attitude reflected in the Arab statements before you, which choice means a perpetuation of war and misery.
112. For our part, we shall continue on our path towards peace, irrespective of the outcome of this discussion. We trust that we shall not be alone in pursuing that path.
113. On this our twenty-eighth anniversary of independence, I wish to reiterate our desire for peace. We are prepared to negotiate. We will negotiate only on the basis of a recognition of Israel's sovereign rights. We will not negotiate our own suicide. If the Arab nations are serious about this, let them begin to behave like mature nations. I reiterate once again Israel's willingness to join at any moment in negotiations designed to lead to peace, fully aware of the fact that by their very nature negotiations must be based on mutual respect and compromise.
114. But, above all, let the world realize that at the heart and root of the problem lies the question of acceptance of the Jewish people's sovereignty and right to its own homeland. We seek no legitimization of this right. We seek no confirmation of this right. We make no apologies for our statehood and we owe no explanation for the exercise of our rights. These we exercise by the right of our Bible, of our history, of our tradition and of our unbroken link of 4,000 years with our country. The recognition by our neighbours of these rights and of our place as an integral element in the Middle East lies at the heart of the problem, and only when this fact is acknowledged by the world community will the Middle East become once again a centre in which the great cultures of Judaism and Islam will combine, as they have done in the past, to contribute to the elevation of mankind for the benefit of humanity in general and, in particular, of the Middle East.
115. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French):
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.
116. Mr. BAROODY (Saudi Arabia): Mr. President, as a person from France, you are a symbol of the spirit of freedom that has kindled the torches of the liberty of peoples, not only in Europe, but also in many other parts of the world, including the host country, the United States. As a representative of your beloved country, you epitomize the Gallic lucidity of expression with such dignity and decorum that, indeed, it has naturally gained for you the respect and admiration of your colleagues and all those who have the privilege of knowing you. You are not only an honour to your country but also to all of us at the United Nations. May you remain a shining example to all the diplomats, including myself, who am not known for mincing my words.
117. A few minutes after you started this meeting I felt that the lights shone brighter in the Council chamber, and for a moment I ascribed the luminosity to the vagaries of electric currents. But I soon realized that the brightness emanated from the re-entry into the Council chamber of our friend Yakov Malik; not so much because he represents a major Power but simply because throughout the period I have known him —about a quarter of a century—setting aside ideologies and political persuasions, I have found him to be imbued with a deep sense of humanism—all this notwithstanding the cogent manner in which he sometimes upholds or defends his country's policies.
118. Today I miss an Asian friend—your predecessor, Mr. President, none other than Ambassador Huang Hua. But his colleagues who are occupying China's place at the Council table have also won favour with us by their most agreeable manner and perpetual smiles.
119. I shall comment on the other colleagues in the Council when their turn comes to assume the Presidency.
120. I wish now, as usual, to be frank with the Israelis, but I always find that Mr. Herzog absents himself when I take the floor. At any rate I count on the dignity of his colleagues. They will convey and he will read what I say verbatim.
121. Sometimes I do not agree with my colleagues for throwing criticisms which sometimes degenerate into invectives or aspersions, but that is understandable, for when we are angry—and sometimes we have a right to be angry—we are roused and may not be in control of our language. But I do not think that anybody can beat Mr. Herzog for the invective and the mudslinging in which he engaged this afternoon. He deviated from the subject which is on the agenda I was about to go to the documents section to see if there was another item on Lebanon and if somebody had asked to merge the question of Lebanon with the question of Palestine.
122. This is a diversion. I know a lot about Lebanon; I do not think Mr. Herzog knows more than I do. But let me tell him that there are several forces pulling the strings in Lebanon, including those of his own country. But I shall not be tempted to open the question of Lebanon in this debate, as he has done. Of course he mentioned Lebanon because he thought it would contribute to his argument about how the Arabs are such evil persons, using religion or political persuasion as motivations for political and economic ends.
123. Now, the Arabs are not saints; we fight, like any other people. If he wants to know about our own Jews, there were wars between Judah and Israel long before the time of Christ. People fight, unfortunately. If they did not fight, we would not have had the League of Nations and now the United Nations.
124. We have an Arabic proverb which he should know, and it may perhaps enlighten him and prevent him from engaging in diversions: "My brother and I may be against our cousin, but my cousin and I are against the stranger." So, let him not try, for heaven's sake, to drive a wedge between us by trying to cite certain, shall I say, events that could perhaps, on their own merits, be cited in another context—I mean differences amongst Arabs.
125. But, as I mentioned years ago when Mr. Eban used to come to the United Nations for meetings, when the Israelis bitterly criticized the Syrians—the Syrians are known in our area to be the torch-bearers of pan-Arabism and the Arab spirit; ask me, from the time I was 17 I used to travel to Syria and demonstrate against the Mandatory Powers of those days—I told Mr. Eban, from the podium of the United Nations that we may be monarchists, we may be Socialists, we may be Communists, we may be anarchists, but when it comes to someone who wants to trespass on our rights, we are one. This is natural, I think. You, Mr. President, have the Bretons, those from Marseilles, you have people from the Basque country. But if anybody touches France, they are all one for France.
126. Let this gentleman, Mr. Herzog, know that all the Arabs, from Morocco to the Persian Gulf, are one solid bloc when it comes to the violation of the self-determination of the original people, the indigenous people, of Palestine. We may quarrel; we may kill one another. But when somebody trespasses on a segment of our country, we are united. As I have tried time and again to tell the Israelis, the indigenous people of Palestine have been Arabized, because these people were Semitic before they were Arabs. Even Jerusalem was populated by Semites 2,500 years before our Jews under Joshua stormed Jericho and then conquered Jerusalem. Our Jews were Semites; let us not quarrel about it. Then here comes this round-headed Khazar from Eastern Europe, from the northern tier of Asia. There is nothing wrong with the Khazars; some of them became Christians, others became Moslems. But those Khazars became more Jewish than our Jews. Never did our Jews hoist the banner of political zionism: they respected Zion, and we respected Zion with them, whether we were Christians or Moslems, because, allegedly, Mount Zion the site of the grave of King David—Nebi Daud, as we call him in Arabic—the prophet David.
127. There is no quarrel with our Jews. Zionism is an eastern and central European movement, a colonial movement. They wanted not to colonize but to expropriate the land of Palestine, and, as I mentioned time and again, even to Mr. Kissinger, many of them had been Jews before they embraced Christianity; and then, when they became fed up with Christianity under Byzantium they embraced Islam. What is wrong with I that? Freedom of choice of religion.
128. There is a motto in Islam: there is no compulsion in religion. Those Khazars, who were not rooted in the land, whose ancestors had never seen the land and who became Jews in the eighth century A.D., come and say, "God gave us Palestine, and we have to exercise self-determination". I have said this time and again, but it bears repetition.
129. Who is looked upon as a second-class citizen? Our Jews, who, because of political zionism, left many Arab countries fearing that this political movement had fomented passions everywhere. They look down upon them. The leadership, the masterminds, are central and eastern Europeans, not colonialists but usurpers, usurpers of others' land. So why should we waste our time here and trade insults, whether Arab or Zionist?
130. This man from Egypt—forget that he is an Arab. I have known him; he is a very honourable man as a person. Yet Mr. Herzog spoke of "double-faced hypocrisy". Let me tell Mr. Herzog, or his alternates who are sitting here—and believe me, I feel sorry for the Zionists as human beings—they are predicating their policy now on the fait accompli: "We are there". I And, of course, the major premise of their syllogism "because God gave us Palestine"—gave the Jews Palestine—is invalid. Tomorrow somebody, a new prophet, may say that God gave him another country. Why should not the American Indians say, "God gave us the whole North American continent"? They are on reservations now.
13l. Why do the Zionists get away with it? Because they have utilized all the mass information media, they interfere in the domestic affairs of countries. They are nationals of those countries and think they have a privilege. Who is discriminating against whom? They bring pressure on the Soviet Union through another great Power to let all the Jews go—where? To Palestine. They do not say where, but we know where they end up. They say: "Don't sell them corn, or don't trade with them". The Zionists are powerful. Why? Because they have permeated society. But if the Jew is left to himself he identifies with his country of birth or origin. He is a human being. There is no quarrel between us and the Jews. But when anyone wants to use a noble religion like Judaism as a motivation for a political and economic end, then we have to reveal the facts.
132. I do not want to embarrass our American friends, but here in the host country 75 senators toe the line in support of Israel. Why? Because the Jews manage their campaigns. They create an image for them.
133. I feel sorry for the Jew who feels that he is American and wants to identify with the interests of his country. They do not leave him alone. As God is my witness and by my mother's tomb I have been receiving people who used to be with them—not from this country but from Europe and other places—and they say that "We are fed up with this question". They interfere everywhere, 3,000 or 4,000 running 16 million. They want to bend the will of every country to their own policy, and this is not good either for them as Zionists or for the Jew who wants to make a living and feels that he is a loyal Russian, a loyal American or a loyal Frenchman. They play on his sentiment. They harp on the tune that they are being discriminated against, that they are the chosen people of God. I do not have to repeat this time and time again, but it bears repetition.
134. There is no status quo in the world. Things will change. And I am addressing myself across the table to the Zionist. Empires have crumbled and gone down the drain. Do the Zionists think they can sustain their power in Palestine? They are intelligent, but they have repeated things to themselves so often that they have ended up believing them and they have a certain stubbornness. I do not want to say that it is European, because then I would be discriminating against the Europeans. The European colonialists were chauvinistic and thought they were the masters of the world, but now we find that, having lost their empires, they are very kind and reasonable. They have become human. Power goes to people's heads, makes them drunk. I want to address the Zionists: do not get drunk with power because in the long run your power will vanish, not necessarily through war. Perhaps by attrition. I hope not through war because there will be a lot of misery perpetrated on those who take up arms, but by attrition or by assimilation. Why not come to terms now with the Palestinians? Not with the Arab States. Of course, the Arab States whose territories are occupied have a problem, and I believe that this problem should be resolved by Israel leaving the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and all Arab territories that have been occupied. Show your good will.
135. But they say they have to have defensive borders. Who do they think they are fooling? I am not a military man, but what about the sophisticated arms they possess? Rockets now do not know frontiers. If anybody wants to be mischievous, Arabs can send rockets from their land and hit Tel Aviv and vice versa, Tel Aviv can send rockets and destroy many Arab cities. What do they mean, that they do not want to evacuate those Arab lands because their defence needs dictate that they should still occupy them? What about the nuclear weapons they allegedly possess? I do not know, but I hope that nobody will use nuclear weapons. But we do not care. Let them use nuclear weapons. If out of 120 million Arabs 30 million should perish, there would still be 90 million left, and then they will stop. This chauvinism is inhuman.
136. I am not throwing mud at them or calling them names such as "hypocrites". I thought that we had got rid of that at the last meeting. We had enough of those expletives when our tall friend used the word "obscene". I do not want to mention his name lest I become personal. We are through with all that name-calling. "The biggest lie", "obscene". I told him, "Young man, sit down there", and he sat, like a pussycat. Who does he think he is?
137. The Palestine Liberation Organization happens to be the representative of the Palestinian people, but suppose there were no PLO? The Palestinian people—and I see them every year in many countries, in Arab countries, in Europe—will not rest until they go back to Palestine. What shall we do with them? Should the Arab States tell them, "No, come and work with us"? Some of them—as someone, I think Mr. Herzog, mentioned—are working in Saudi Arabia. But what about those who do not want this or about those who do want to work in Saudi Arabia and who say, "We have people to fight behind". What shall we tell them? Once, speaking with the late King Faisal I said, "They will shoot the Arab leaders and call them traitors if they should tell them to forget Palestine", and he said, jokingly, "What, are you inciting people against us?" I said, "No", and he agreed that it was a fact. What shall we do?
138. The will of the Palestinians matches the will of the Zionists, and if we go by numbers sooner or later, I believe, unless there is Doomsday and the world dissolves through nuclear war, God forbid, or through any other calamity, they will see they cannot survive. They know.it. The Zionists live on tension, because if tension goes our American friends will not continue to support them with arms for the balance of power and power politics. Can they be sure that the Americans will still continue for another decade to support them? The American people are tired of sweating and paying taxes. Two or three billion dollars go to the Zionists, and for what? To keep the Palestinians out of their own land. It is a wonder that we are still talking with the Americans, but the American people are as good as the Russian people, the Spanish people, the German people, the French people. It is the leaders. The Zionists have permeated the leadership of the Governments. So out of mercy to themselves they should adjust and adapt themselves. Otherwise they will vanish; it is just a question of time. I do not know whether it will be in my lifetime, but it is a question of time. We have seen the vicissitudes of fortune and of war, how empires crumbled, not necessarily from outside forces, but because the seed of decay germinated within and made short shrift of them The Arabs had three empires. Where are they. Finished. Where is the Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire or the British Empire? Where is the French empire or the Dutch empire? The people of the former empire-building countries are happier because their boys do not have to shed their blood to serve the interests of a few. I made a humble study, which was corroborated by two British researchers, to show that the British Empire was a losing proposition. Who benefited? A small circle, though we must also not forget the glory, the vainglory, of belonging to air empire.
139. Our friend, Mr. Herzog—if we may call him so, because in the United Nations I hope one day we may call him a friend—mentioned that human rights had been violated by the Arabs. He said they had no elections, they had no democracy. But let me tell him that I have been here since the beginning, and the United Nations finally succeeded in spelling out the right of self-determination as the first article in the International Covenants on human rights. We worked for seven or eight years on those Covenants. These are collective human rights, not individual. The Zionists are violating the human rights of a whole people: their right to their land, their right to their patrimony, the land of Palestine. And are they doing it without knowing it?
140. They have suffered a great deal at the hands of the Europeans throughout the ages. Why do they not make peace? Why do they not come and say, "We want to make peace"? No, they say, "we want peace on our terms". Why not on the terms of the indigenous people of Palestine? Do they not have rights? This reminded me of a saying in the New Testament. This applies to Mr. Herzog, and I will quote it: "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thy own eye?" He sees all the faults in the Syrians and the Egyptians and the rest of the Arabs, but the violations of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people—which, using the analogy, is the beam—he does not see. He says the Arabs should tell them to settle between Morocco and the Persian Gulf- Again and again we have said that it is not for us to tell them; it is for them to accept. Why should we tell them that, when the Israelis, who come from Europe, rally all the Jews, who would like to live a normal life among their countrymen regardless of their nationality? Why do they keep fomenting trouble, Collecting money, indoctrinating them? They are human beings, like you and me. Their religion is a question between their consciences and themselves. Israel wants to make Judaism, which, as I have mentioned time and again, is a noble religion, a Motivation for political ends. This has been tried before, by the Christians and by the Moslems—I do not have to cite many examples throughout history— and it backfired.
141. Then he mentioned elections. What kind of elections? For heaven's sake, once and for all -democracy has been peddled in the street and it has n ritualized, unfortunately, like all religions. In two world wars the people went to churches and prayed in the name of Christ, the Prince of Peace, and the next day they cut each other's throats. They lived under democracies. What kind of democracies? This is a ritual: the wooden box and the chit of paper. Of course nothing is perfect. The best democracy is the primitive democracy, the tribal democracy, the democracy of the community. The leader of a people is their servant. Let us see what the politicians of today, including some of the leaders of our own region, do. They know on which side their bread is buttered. There is collusion between Government and business, all under the aegis of democracy it is decadence. The social fabric is tattered, in the name of democracy. They say they are democrats. We see the dispersal of the family, the disappearance of the extended family. Our grandmothers and grandfathers lived with us, and we revered them. Now they put them in nursing homes in most civilized countries. Why? Because the community has dissolved; there is no more community. Democracy is in the way of life of the community; it is not a political or mathematical equation.
142. So let Mr. Herzog not try to fool us by always referring to democracy and elections and saying that some of us do not have elections. In the country I represent the King cannot be King unless the chiefs of tribes give their consent. They do not have to issue a paper and put it in a box. It is by virtue of the people that he is King. If they do not want to give their consent, they are free to say so. We do not brag about it, but I had to mention it. I have seen Bedouins stop the King on the road with petitions. He had to stop his car. We are not bragging about it; this is our way of life. We do not say it can be applied to modern society here, but it suits us. This is the democratic spirit. Who is he fooling about this democracy business? Can anyone be a politician or even a candidate unless he has money or somebody collects money for him? In a certain country, whose name I will not mention, some people are pulling out of the race because their budget is not enough to allow them to continue the campaign. They talk about democracy—the Zionists, the usurpers of Palestine. I do not want to use harsher words than this. Who are they fooling? My Greek colleague will bear me out in this. "Democracy" comes from "Demos", which in Greek means "the people", and Athens thought the people should have a voice, but the establishment was not different from our establishment, the European establishment or the Asian establishment. So what happened? One day a man by the name of Socrates made the people think for themselves. He was a teacher; he sat under the tree. The establishment —meaning the politicians—got worried that this man was opening up the minds of the people, that these young men might rebel against them and no longer obey them. So they came to Socrates and told him not to teach any more. He said: "What shall I do? I am 70 years old and this is my livelihood. I am not doing anything wrong; I am teaching the people to think." Then they told him: "You constitute a threat to our society; you had better live outside Athens." He said: "Am I at age 70 to be exiled amongst the barbarians? I do not know their language and their customs." They said: "There is only one thing left for you: drink the hemlock. Either you stop teaching and go abroad or drink the hemlock"—meaning death. He said: "Give me the hemlock." Democracy then was still new, and anyone who lived beyond the walls of Athens was considered a barbarian.
143. Democracy was an ideal, and we praise our Greek friends for having instituted a kind of system to ascertain the will of the people. But there is no perfect system. Democracy has been ritualized and formalized. So do not resort to using cliches, Mr. Herzog, so that they might hit the press here and the press might say that the Israelis are democrats and the Arabs have no democracy. We have democracy of the spirit; we have democracy of behaviour; we have democracy of the community; we have the democracy that is attained through compassion, mercy and love, and not the democracy that is political and that has become fossilized.
144. Then Mr. Herzog said that it was a question of a change of heart on the part of the Arabs. But by the same token the Arabs can tell him: why not a change of heart on the part of the Zionists? Yasser Arafat stretched out his hand and offered an olive branch. They do not trust him, and that is their business. They may have a reason. But let me tell the Israelis one thing. I have said it before and I shall repeat it: they seem to thrive on tension, because if the tension is removed then the Americans and others would say: "Well, there is no tension now and they can fend for themselves", and they would no longer get aid in the billions. They thrive on tension because without it they could not go and beg from the wealthy Jews living outside Israel. They always have to keep them astir by saying "We are the chosen people of God; we are the remnant; we are going to be liquidated". And so, of course, they give money and, remember, that money is tax deductible. Perhaps I should have said this to my friend, Ambassador Sherer. It is tax deductible and so they are not giving away that much.
145. The ones for whom I feel sorry are the Jews of all countries whose concern is to live in peace with their countrymen and who find themselves incessantly hammered at by this outdated ideology called zionism. The Zionists have to play on their emotions because those Jews have a numerical value. Leave them alone, lest one day—and the day is not far off—they become scapegoats. I should then be the first, if I am still alive, to stand for saving them from those who would wish to persecute them again. The writing is on the wall. Many people are complaining of the Zionists' interference in their domestic affairs, of their international self-assertion. We do not want them to suffer. They are human beings—even the Zionists, let alone the Jews many of whom are Jews in name only. If they persist, they will be slaughtered and persecuted. I am not being cynical; I am being compassionate. We do not want them to suffer. They are human beings; they are our brothers in humanity. But they merely pay lip-service to peace.
146. I shall conclude by again saying that if they want to stay in the area as Jews and as Zionists, they must adapt themselves and adjust and seek acceptance of the majority of the Arab world, lest, either through war, attrition or assimilation, they become a dream that has turned into a nightmare.
147. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French):
The representative of Egypt has asked to speak in exercise of the right of reply. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.
148. Mr. ABDEL MEGUID (Egypt): I should like to begin my statement by welcoming Ambassador Malik back among us and wishing him and Mrs. Malik all the best.
149. Given the dangerous situation prevailing in the occupied Arab territories and the inhuman sufferings of the Palestinian people under the yoke of Israeli occupation, the customary diatribe by the representative of Israel before this world body is, to say the least, most abhorrent. No amount of rhetorical bombast could possibly divert the Council's attention from its present task and responsibilities. Yet, precisely this has been the sole purpose of the Israeli representative's statement.
150. His continued references to the situation in Lebanon, however tragic that situation is, do not detract from nor wipe out the horrors and the murder which the Israeli army is daily, even hourly, inflicting on the Palestinian people. Moreover, his personal feelings of anguish concerning the situation in Lebanon somehow strike a discordant note with the official policy of his Government, for it was not long ago that the Israeli Government indulged in daily raids on Lebanon causing untold sorrow and suffering. The records of the Security Council bear witness to such senseless acts of State terrorism as, for instance, Israel's attack on Beirut Airport.
151. The Israeli representative's unending stream of pretexts and perpetual evasion of the basic issue at hand, namely, the illegality of Israel's continued occupation of Arab territories and its consistent refusal to abide by international obligations, emphasize ever more clearly that State's malicious intentions a designs. It seems that the Israeli representative sheds a lot of crocodile tears about the situation in Lebanon while ignoring the slaughter his Government is wagging against the Palestinian people. He describes what is happening in the West Bank as some sporadic stone throwing. One could expect such behaviour only from a criminal who is afraid of being caught at his crime and tries to divert the attention of witnesses — in this case the international community — to something else.
152. I tried in vain to find a single word in the Israeli representative's statement about the criminal and barbaric acts of his Government. I tried to find ever a weak defence or justification. But none was there.? "He spoke only about the situation in Lebanon, again and again. I hope, Mr. President, that in future you will draw the attention of the representative of Israel to the fact that he should confine himself to the issue under debate.
153. The Israeli representative spoke about Gaza at length. He has a certain inclination to speak about Gaza; this is not the first time he has done so. But he tried to conceal the fact that only this week the Mayor of Gaza submitted his resignation, in protest against the attitude of the Israeli occupation authorities. Why?
154. The Israeli representative tried also to conceal the fact that his Government does not allow any representatives of the foreign press to visit Gaza. Why? I wish that he and everyone else here would read the many articles written by a distinguished British journalist, Mr. Michael Adams, and published in The Guardian some time ago. Mr. Adams vividly described the terrible situation prevailing in Gaza under the "benevolent" Israeli occupation. These articles are proof from a neutral observer about the real situation in Gaza. They were not written by an Arab; they were written by a British journalist.
155. Last but not least in reference to Gaza, I would draw attention to the report for the period 1 July 1974 to 30 June 1975 by the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. This is an official record of the United Nations. I quote the following from this report:
"By its note of 15 August 1974, the Agency protested to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel against the punitive demolition of refugee shelters mentioned in paragraph 174 of last year's report. The Ministry replied by its note of 20 October 1974 restating its position. The Agency, by its note of 13 November 1974, regretted it was unable to agree with the Ministry's position, reiterated its request that such punitive demolitions cease and reserved its right in regard to its outstanding claims for compensation."3
156. The representative of Israel tried as usual—he has done this many times—to distract the Council's attention from the issue under debate. The issue is clear-cut: it is the barbaric and terrorist measures taken by the Israeli authorities against the Arab people of Palestine and the illegal occupation of the Arab territories in defiance of United Nations resolutions and international law. That is the issue the Council is discussing under its agenda—nothing more, nothing less. The world has become accustomed by now to these Israeli manoeuvres. But all these manoeuvres will not help to conceal the real facts, the striking facts.
l57. Another fact which the representative of Israel disregards is that Israel cannot live in peace while it ;,'persists in its policies. Egypt has said many times before in the Council and in many other international arenas that the core of the problem is the Palestinian question and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The Palestinian people have made it clear that they consider the Palestine Liberation Organization to be their true representative; it is the PLO which Israel has to recognize and with which it must reach an acceptable settlement. If this question is not solved, there will be no permanent peace in the area.
158. I wonder what justification the Israeli representative is trying to find for the policies of his Government which lead to killing and more killing of innocent people, beatings, arrests, eviction of persons from their homes by force, new settlements on Arab land, 24-hour curfews in many cities, and so forth. The record is too long and too well known to the Council for me to have to repeat it. Does the Israeli representative regard resistance to occupation as a new phenomenon? The peoples of all the States represented in the Council once fought for their freedom and independence. Occupation, whatever causes it, always ends one day.
159. The statement I made yesterday before the Council [1916th meeting] cited many examples of the strong condemnation of the Israeli policies against the Palestinian people that has been voiced in different parts of the world.
160. A very bizarre argument is used by the representative of Israel in regard to the second disengagement agreement, of September 1975. His allegation is absurd and is a mere falsification of facts. That agreement is not secret; its full text and related documents were submitted to the Security Council by the Secretary-General and appear in a document dated 2 September 1975 [S/l1818/Add.l]. I challenge the Israeli representative to cite anything from that document which could justify his allegation. The fallacy of his argument is self-evident. I remind him that it was Egypt which on 3 December 1975 [S/11893] called for the urgent convening of the Security Council to discuss the barbaric Israeli attack on the innocent Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. It was at that series of Council meetings that the PLO participated in the debate for the first time. At that time we did not hear any argument from the Israeli representative like the one he is using today. But his argument will deceive no one. Any careful study of the agreement makes it clear that it is a military disengagement agreement, an agreement to disengage forces. The Israeli representative echoes today the words used by his Government yesterday in its allegations about the "spirit of the agreement". Does the "spirit of the agreement" include the eviction of hundreds of persons from their homes in Rafah or El Arish or other parts of Sinai? Does it include the establishment of settlements in Sinai? Does it include the establishment of a deep-water harbour inside occupied Egyptian territory? I advise the Israeli representative not to belittle the intelligence of members of the Council any more by using such bizarre arguments.
161. Egypt will never, I repeat never, tolerate the abuses of the Israeli authorities in the occupied areas, especially against the heroic people of the West Bank and Gaza. I want to assure the Council and the Israeli representative that Egypt will spare no effort and will use all means at its disposal to liberate the occupied Arab lands. No Israeli measures of settlement or other purposes will deter us from doing our sacred duty. I should like to assure him also that all the Arabs are united in their determination to liberate the land and to fulfil the rights of the Palestinian people. With the same determination, we are working for a just and lasting peace in the area.
162. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French):
The representative of Jordan wishes to exercise his right of reply. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make a statement.
163. Mr. SHARAF (Jordan): In his statement the Israeli representative was faithful to the tradition of Israeli spokesmen in various forums and in various statements over the last several decades. He answers the issues by diversion and myth-making. If they are asked about what they did to the Palestinian people the displacement and uprooting—they speak of "Israel's survival". If they are asked why they have held the territories under their occupation for a decade, offering no alternative, they answer, "But those areas are prosperous". When they are asked what is their policy towards the Palestinians and what is their policy towards the Arabs, they answer, "But the Arabs have their quarrels". These are the twin weapons of diversion and myth-making. These arguments are irrelevant and they distort the facts.
164. The issue before the Council is the situation in the occupied territories. It has two components. First, there are Israel's practices in the occupied territories which violate human rights, including the implanting of settlements; the absorption, physically and in every other way, of Jerusalem; and the repression of the people of the occupied territories. That is one aspect: the record of Israel in violating human rights in the occupied territories. Secondly, the other aspect is the necessity and urgency of Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories, which is required by the Charter of the United Nations, by international law and by the right of self-determination.
165. They give no answer to that, even if the Israeli representative resorts to diversion and myth-making. That is why sometimes inconsistencies and lack of logic manifest themselves in Israeli statements. Jordan, we are told, was "occupying" the West Bank. Well, if that is so, and Jordan was "occupying" the West Bank, how can this be reconciled with Israel's insistence that Jordan is a Palestinian State and that with regard to the West Bank the only negotiating partner for Israel is Jordan?
166. Let us reconcile this logic. Which do we accept? Well, the answer to that is very clear. Jordan was in association with the West Bank, in a state of union, for nearly two decades. It was a situation of merger between two Arab peoples who have in common the ties and bonds of culture and brotherhood and common aspirations and geography. It was one of union, and that is why, when the Israeli representative asks his rhetorical question, which is irrelevant and distorts the facts, as to why Jordan, during the years in which there was an association between the West and the East Bank, did not create a central Palestinian authority in the West Bank, the answer is simply that there was a complete union; there was sharing and partnership and elections and a joint Government and a joint Parliament. That is the answer to the question. And when Jordan declares its policy of readiness to recognize the will of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories to decide their future for themselves, Jordan is consistent with its policy and with the requirements and imperatives of changing circumstances in the area and the requirements of the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Is Israel ready to match that? That is the issue.
167. When in the course of his distortions the Israeli representative refers again to events and disturbances that took place in Jordan, he is again injecting a totally irrelevant fact into the wrong context. Yes, the disturbances to which he refers took place in 1966. Why did they take place? They took place as a reaction to a premeditated and massive Israeli attack on a village called As-Samu, which generated a shock wave throughout the whole country and produced disturbances, demonstrations and protests against the aggression of Israel, and because of the lack of protection against premeditated Israeli attack.
168. In disturbances in the Arab world, one can always trace the germ injected by Israel's aggression, which produced the shock wave and the disturbances in the Arab world—the emotional and psychological shock which was produced by Israel's displacement of the Palestinians and its aggression against the Arab peoples and States neighbouring Israel. That is the issue.
169. So, while it is totally irrelevant to inject into this argument and the case before us questions such as the Lebanese situation or inter-Arab relations or relations between Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization, it is not irrelevant to say that if considers differences and disturbances within the world, one can trace them to the shock wave that was created by Israel in 1948, when it managed by brute force to expel and uproot an Arab people and continue to expand territorially at the expense of the Arab people, and to the feeling of frustration in the world regarding Israel's physical territorial expansion at their expense.
170. Myth-making and diversion should not be allowed in the Council. When Israel speaks of the prosperity in the occupied territories, it is both, a myth and an irrelevancy. It is totally irrelevant to say that the people in the occupied territories enjoy an increase in the standard of living. It is an irrelevancy and is rejected in the Council. This logic is rejected here and in the various other organs of the United Nations, as well as by enlightened world opinion, which has rejected apartheid, colonialism, the logic of exploitation and the mediaeval and anachronistic logic which tries to perpetuate and legitimize occupation and foreign domination by the alleged economic benefit to people under domination and occupation. But it is not only irrelevant; it is not true. Israel's economic policies in the occupied territories are those of exploitation, manipulation of the economy and economic absorption. These are the facts of the situation with regard to the occupied territories.
171. However, the issue before the Council—regardless of the diversion and the myth-making—remains an issue that all representatives know: there is a continuing occupation by Israel of a substantial part of the Arab world, an area at least three times the size of Israel, which is inhabited by over 1 million people. For nearly a decade these people have been under occupation. Israel offers neither readiness to withdraw unilaterally nor readiness to withdraw in the context of a peaceful settlement from all the occupied territories. In the meantime, the area is not intact; it is being absorbed. Israel gnaws at it, eats it piecemeal, devours it step by step. Jerusalem has been unilaterally annexed and its area is being expanded and physically and economically absorbed and culturally obliterated. And gradually the creeping annexation by Israel is manifesting itself in the planting of Israeli settlements in various parts of the occupied territories—over 70 of them, we are told by Israeli sources. Those are issues to which the Council must address itself, and if the Israeli representative wishes to reply he should address himself to them. Everything else is irrelevant.
172. The answer is very simple. Israel must apply the principles of international law regarding occupied territories and ultimately must withdraw from the occupied territories and allow the people in those territories to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination.
173. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French): I call on the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization to make a statement in reply.
174. Mr. TERZI (Palestine Liberation Organization): The Council has been told that the representatives of the Arab countries who have spoken, including the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, have embarked on matters and issues unrelated to the issue under discussion. The representative of the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv has accused the PLO lot-being a group of terrorists and—but representatives know the rest of what he said.
175. However, I wish to remind the Council that it was not the Palestinians who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, massacring in cold blood the officials of the Mandatory Administration of Palestine. It was the secretariat of the Palestine Administration that was blown up by the Zionist movement. It was a sign of their gratitude to their creators and protectors. It was a sign of gratitude to the Administration that gave them Orde Wingate, Herbert Samuel and Norman Bentwitch to form their armed forces, administration and the laws that still prevail in occupied Palestine. It was not the Palestinians who sank the Patria, a ship carrying Jewish refugees from Europe, the remnant from Nazi extermination camps. It was deliberately sunk by the Zionist movement. It was not the Palestinians or the PLO that assassinated a Minister of State, Lord Moyne, in 1944. In this respect, I shall recall here the statement made by Sir Winston Churchill in November 1944 in the House of Commons regarding that assassination. Sir Winston said:
"If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins' pistols and our labours for its future are to produce a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past… If there is to be any hope of a peaceful and successful future for Zionism, these wicked activities must cease and those responsible for them must be destroyed, root and branch."
"If Sir Winston were still alive to view the atrocities Against our people in Jerusalem and other places, wonder how he would react to this concept of Zionism.
The representative of Tel Aviv referred to some difference in points of view between the PLO and the Arabs. I must admit here and declare that there exist different points of view. This is only natural. But we can and we do settle those differences within our own means and by our own methods. But the Council is dealing with another issue, that of the illegal occupation and barbaric practices of the forces of occupation.
177. What happened during the administration by our Arab brethren is a matter to be appraised by our people and our people only. It should not be misused as a pretext or justification for the Zionist atrocities against our people, and it is completely outside the context of the item under consideration. The incidents were described as sporadic incidents by stone-throwing school-children. Well, I wonder whether the schoolchildren in my home town throw such stones as require a cannonade or paratroopers to stop them. Members are all aware of what has been happening.
178. He referred to the "Arab tourists" coming from all over the Middle East. What a shock! The Palestinians, in their home towns, in their country, have been described as residents living in areas under administration—"residents", mind you, not citizens. Those who have found work in the neighbouring Arab countries are described as "tourists" when they try to go back and visit their families. I wonder whether this is the system that they are considering using to purify Palestine of its Palestinian indigenous population. They are "residents" in one case and "tourists" in the other.
179. I shall embark now upon the subject of the so-called prosperity. In the Israeli Ministry of Defence report on development and the economic situation in Judaea, Samaria, the Gaza Strip and Sinai, the view of the occupation forces with regard to the territories occupied in 1967 was characterized in the following terms:
"The areas are a supplementary market for Israeli goods and services, on the one hand, and a source of the factors of production, especially unskilled labour, for the Israeli economy, on the other."
This is a quotation from the Israeli Ministry of Defence, Unit for Co-ordination of Activity in the Administered Areas, October 1970.
180. Thus we see that the Zionist authorities practise a form of double exploitation with regard to the occupied territories, using them both as a market and as a source of unskilled labour. This double exploitation has the effect of depriving the occupied territories of their own manpower resources and of ensuring that the benefits from Palestinian toil go not to the indigenous population but to the Zionist State.
181. From the beginning of the occupation in 1967 to mid-1974, the balance of trade between the Zionist State and the occupied territories was consistently in the former's favour, amounting to a cumulative total of well over 2 billion Israel pounds. From taxes alone, and, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, from taxation on Palestinian workers' earnings during the period 1967-1973, the earnings amounted to 650 million Israel pounds—that is, $108.3 million.
182. Since 1970, 19 vocational training centres have been established by the occupation authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with heavy emphasis on menial construction skills. As an incentive, trainees are given a stipend of 2.50 Israel pounds—something like 40 cents—per day while training; and, according to the Israeli Ministry of Defence, trainees in other skills are paid even less.
183. As for discrimination, I shall quote the Statistical Abstract of Israel for 1973, which states that:
"In 1972 the average wage for an Israeli worker was 34 Israel pounds, while for a Palestinian it was only 17 Israel pounds."
184. Furthermore, a large part of the Israeli Palestinian labourer's wages is spent in the Zionist entity on food, taxes, lodging and other purchases, so that take-home pay is limited. Some 40 per cent of the Palestinian's wages go to the Israeli treasury. While the same is true of the Israeli labourer, he nevertheless receives social benefits—pensions, health insurance and unemployment benefits—which are denied to the Arab labourer, while in the event of economic difficulties within Israel, according to the Statistical Abstract of Israel, it is the Arab labourer who is always the first to lose his job.
185. As regards living conditions, I shall quote from Ha'aretz of August 1972, where it is stated that:
"Often travel to and from the place of work takes long hours a day, thus adding to the length of the working day. Those who wish to save the time the money spent on travel sleep in makeshift shell * near their place of work. Many of the labourers spend their nights in the cellars of buildings under construction in kitchens of restaurants, etc."
If that is the paradise and prosperity that has been presented to us, our intelligence has apparently been insulted or belittled.
186. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French):
There are no other speakers on my list. Before adjourning the meeting, I should like to discharge the agreeable duty of welcoming back our colleague, Ambassador Malik. I am very pleased, as are all other members of the Council, that Ambassador Malik escaped more serious injury in the motor accident and is now on the road to recovery. I hope Mrs. Malik will continue to convalesce satisfactorily, and I should be grateful if he would convey our best wishes to her.
187. Mr. MALIK (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) (interpretation from Russian): I had intended to express my gratitude, as today marks my first appearance after my serious motor accident, in my statement on the item under discussion, but since you Sir have spoken, I consider it necessary to respond to your kind words and express gratitude to you and all my colleagues who have extended their good wishes in connexion with my reappearance in the Council. I am very grateful to them, and as I listened to them, and to you, Sir, I was reminded of a Russian saying: in misfortune one learns who one's friends are.
The meeting rose at 7 p.m.
Notes
1 Official Records of the Economic and Social Council, Sixtieth Session, 1993rd meeting, para. 23.
2 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 75, p. 287.
3 Official Records of the General Assembly, Thirtieth Session, Supplement No. 13, para. 175.
Document Type: Meeting record, Provisional verbatim record
Document Sources: Security Council
Subject: Agenda Item, Incidents, Occupation
Publication Date: 05/05/1976