Seventh emergency special session
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
PROVISIONAL VERBATIM RECORD OF THE TWELFTH MEETING
Held at Headquarters, New York,
on Tuesday, 20 April 1982, at 3 p.m.
President: Mr. KITTANI (Iraq)
– Resumption of the seventh emergency special session
– Organization of work
– Scale of assessments for the apportionment of the expenses of the United Nations
– Question of Palestine [5] (continued)
RESUMPTION OF THE SEVENTH EMERGENCY SPECIAL SESSION
The PRESIDENT: I declare the seventh emergency special session of the General Assembly resumed, pursuant to its resolution ES-7/2 of 29 July 1980, entitled "Question of Palestine".
ORGANIZATION OF WORK
The PRESIDENT: Inasmuch as operative paragraph 14 of resolution ES-7/2 authorized the President of the latest regular session – the thirty-sixth session in this case – to resume the meetings of the seventh emergency special session, may I take it that the Vice-Presidents of the thirty-sixth session would also be expected to serve in that capacity?
It was so decided.
The PRESIDENT: I am certain that, as usual, I can count on the full co-operation of my colleagues the Vice-Presidents.
Similarly, may I take it that it is the wish of the General Assembly to decide that the Credentials Committee of the thirty-sixth session should serve for the resumed seventh emergency special session?
It was so decided.
The PRESIDENT: May I remind members that in his note convening the resumed session the Secretary-General indicated that
SCALE OF ASSESSMENTS FOR THE APPORTIONMENT OF THE EXPENSES OF THE UNITED NATIONS (A/ES-7/15)
The PRESIDENT: In keeping with established practice, I should like to invite the attention of the Assembly to document A/ES-7/15, which contains a letter addressed to me by the Secretary-General informing the General Assembly that two Member States are in arrears in the payment of their financial contributions to the United Nations under the terms of Article 19 of the Charter.
AGENDA ITEM 5 (continued)
QUESTION OF PALESTINE
The PRESIDENT: May I request representatives who wish to participate in the debate to inscribe their names on the list of sneakers as soon as possible. This will enable us to organize our work. It is my intention to close the list of speakers on Thursday, 22 April, at noon.
I now call on the first speaker in the debate the Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, His Excellency Mr. Massamba Sarre of Senegal.
Mr. SARRE (Senegal): Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (interpretation from French): A little less than two years ago, when tension and violence were raging in the Middle East, when the peace talks on Palestine were marking time and the United Nations was unable to play its proper role in the quest for a just and peaceful solution to the Palestinian problem, Senegal, as Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, requested the convening of an emergency special session of the General Assembly on the question of Palestine.
In requesting the convening of that session we wanted in particular – and indeed quite rightly – to manifest our refusal to see the situation in Palestine deteriorating, to see international peace and security being daily threatened without the United Nations being able to play its rightful role in stopping such a process.
Today the resumption of the seventh emergency special session simultaneously with the series of Security Council meetings which has just ended, has come at a particularly crucial time for the situation in that part of the world. Even over the past five months we have convened the Security Council five times and the General Assembly twice to consider a highly disquieting situation. All those meetings are based on two considerations: on the one hand, our faith in and devotion to the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter and, on the other hand, our desire to find, within the United Nations framework, a just and comprehensive solution to the question of the Middle East, whose basic, central element in the question of Palestine.
The problem confronting us today is especially serious since the constant worsening of -the situation in the region has not yet led the Security Council -and we have just seen proof of this – to take the necessary steps to safeguard international peace and security there.
Since July 1980, when the seventh emergency special session was adjourned, the Israeli leaders have not only made claims to the occupied Arab territories but have proceeded to action.
Indeed, after having annexed the eastern part of the Holy City of Jerusalem in June 1980 and the Syrian Golan Heights last December, the Tel Aviv authorities, exploiting the paralysis of the Security Council and insensitive to the oft-repeated appeals of the international community, now seem to have decided to speed up the process of the steady annexation of the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
By dismissing last March the democratically elected mayors of El Bireh, Nablus and Ramallah within the framework of the so-called civil-administration plan for the occupied territories, by systematically stepping up acts of intimidation against the Palestinian population and by encouraging or tolerating the desecration of the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock Mosques, Israel has clearly shown that it is determined, at any cost, to subject the Palestinian people and their occupied territories to Israeli rule.
The unanimous reaction of the Moslem, Christian and Jewish world to these acts of desecration should have impelled the Israeli authorities to ponder the consequences of their escalating actions against the Palestinian people, whose only fault is that they claim restitution of their rights. The recent events in Jerusalem will only strengthen the resolve of the Palestinian people to fight for the triumph of justice and equality. Following the annexation of Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights, an attempt is now being made to create in the remainder of the occupied territories a de facto situation which they hope will be one day sanctioned by law. One need only refer to recent statements of Mr. Mattityahu Drobless, Chairman of the Settlement Commission. He said:
My country, through its President, His Excellency Mr. Abdou Diouf, who, like all other African leaders, rightly appreciates the gravity of this situation, and he clearly stated this in a communiqué published 6 April last from which I shall quote some extracts:
By on the one hand, requesting Israel to withdraw from all the territories occupied since 1967 while recognizing its right to live within secure and recognized borders, and on the other hand, recognizing that the Palestinian people has the right to establish an independent State in Palestine in accordance with the principles of the Charter and the relevant provisions of resolutions adopted by the General Assembly and the Security Council, the General Assembly, endorsed the recommendations of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, recommendations which, in the view of the Committee, form the only framework within which the question of the Middle East – particularly the question of Palestine – can find a lust and global solution. Must we recall that the Palestinian people has the right to independence and self-determination, to return to the homes from which they were unjustly ousted to participate, through the Palestine Liberation Organization, their sole and authentic representative, in any negotiations to determine the future of the Palestinian people; and above all, as a precondition to obtain the unconditional withdrawal of Israel from all the territories occupied since 1967.
Those recommendations have been recently reproduced in the program of action adopted by the special meeting of the Co-ordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Countries in Kuwait from 5 to 8 April 1982. The communiqué states that the Bureau requests the Secretary-General of the United Nations to undertake appropriate efforts as soon as possible to establish contact with all the parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict in order to find concrete means to reach a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement that can lead to peace in accordance with the principles of the Charter and the relevant resolutions of the United Nations. The Bureau also called on the Security Council to recognize the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as set forth in resolution ES-7/2 of the emergency special session of the General Assembly.
Unfortunately, by defying with impunity the authority of the United Nations which presided over the establishment of Israel – Israel continues to demand that the legitimate rights of the peoples of the region be sacrificed to its so-called security needs, a concept which implies that any settlement of the question must necessarily be based on conditions which Israel itself will impose.
With respect to the Palestinian people, in the light of events which have just occurred in occupied Arab territory, and particularly in Jerusalem, they have shown once again, through the demonstrations of resistance in the occupied territories, that 15 years of occupation have not at all impaired their resolve to continue to fight to attain their legitimate goal of national liberation.
Today, as an international community, our goal should be to see to it that that people does not despair of seeing international law triumph. To keep them in despair will only uselessly prolong a tragedy, the short-term or long-term outcome of which is perfectly clear, namely, the exercise of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, independence and national sovereignty, and then the right to establish their own sovereign, independent State.
The stakes are high. Today, in the light of these events, we must defuse a dangerous situation because it contains all the seeds of a generalized conflict with unforeseeable consequences in a region of the world already so troubled. The credibility of the United Nations among small countries and oppressed peoples is at stake, peoples who, like the Palestinian people, are only claiming their right to freedom and independence in the land of their ancestors.
We will succeed in strengthening the faith of the international community in the effectiveness of the United Nations if we manage to take action which, bearing in mind the human and political dimensions of the problem, will initiate the process of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. To do that it would be sufficient for the legitimacy of the aspirations of the Palestinian people to be finally recognized by those who still continue today to turn their back on the exigencies of history. It is appropriate at this time to recall a statement made in July 1981 by an Israeli – Nahum Goldmann – who said:
As I read out that quotation I am reminded of a letter which, after the events that recently took place in Jerusalem, an Israeli woman addressed to the Jerusalem Post. It said, in part:
Weeping for the fate of all our sons points to the need to find a change in the present situation in the occupied territories. With such a change it will perhaps be possible to create both peace in justice and justice in peace for all the peoples and States of that region. Peace, justice, love – that is the eternal motto of that region from which stem the great spiritual values of humanity.
As we embark on this debate, we must take that pathetic appeal into consideration and we just see to it that peace is restored to that region, that peace and justice prevail in that region, that the Arab and Jewish peoples use a Senegalese greeting when they meet, with the one saying "Peace be with you", and the other replying, "Only peace". Peace is the goal, peace is the principle, peace is the reason why we are meeting today and we must do everything not to prolong the suffering of these peoples.
The PRESIDENT: I now call upon the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. This is in accordance with General Assembly resolution 3237 (XXIX) of 22 November 1974.
Mr. KADDOUMI (Palestine Liberation Organization) (interpretation from Arabic): Once again we meet in a special session of the General Assembly to discuss a new link in the chain of Israeli crimes committed in disregard of international law, humanitarian agreements and international charters, and ignoring the threats they pose to international peace and security.
Once again we meet only two months after we last met in a similar session and now as then we are the victims and Israel the convict.
There would have been no need for resuming this emergency special session, and we could have done without the previous ones, had not the United States prevented the Security Council from adopting draft resolutions to impose sanctions on the aggressor and to try to deter him from committing other crimes
The United States tried at that time to justify its misuse of its veto power by stating that the policy of imposing sanctions on Israel was useless as a method of deterrence and at the same time that the annexation of the Golan Heights was no threat to peace. What is the United States going to say today? What pretext will it rely on to cover up for its pampered ally, following the latter's ugliest crime ever – the attack on one of the holiest sanctuaries of the Moslems, aimed at terrorizing our people and forcing them out of their homeland in preparation for the already well-known and clear next step: the annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the annexation of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem having been completed.
We are quite sure that this special session will not be the last this year. The day may soon come when we shall find ourselves required to keep the doors of the General Assembly open throughout the year, on a daily basis, to discuss an apparently endless chain of Zionist crimes and violations of all human values, ideals and conventions.
We shall not despair, regardless of the extent of Israeli arrogance and intransigence in challenging United Nations resolutions, and regardless of United States complicity in preventing the implementation of these resolutions. Our Palestinian people, whose national entity was one day torn apart by this Organization through an unjust resolution, will continue to pursue this Organization until the restoration of our national entity and the establishment of our independent State, no matter how long that may take and how high the price may be in the blood and sweat of our children, women and men in the arenas of struggle.
We did not come to this special session in order to request a new resolution from this Assembly. For this Assembly has since 1974 adopted and reaffirmed a number of resolutions by overwhelming majorities – indeed I can almost say unanimously, with the exception of Israel and, of course, the United States. Those resolutions recognize that the crux of the crisis which threatens the Middle East, and perhaps the entire world, is the question of Palestine. These resolutions recognize that there can be no peace or stability unless that question is solved and consequently, that there can be no solution without guaranteeing and implementing the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people – that is, the tight to return, the right to self-determination and the right to an independent State. There is an international consensus on this issue, reflected by dozens – indeed hundreds – of declared political positions taken unilaterally, bilaterally, and by blocs among most of the States and peoples of the world.
We are here to disclose to the world that the grave responsibility for the failure of the political option of a just and peaceful solution rests on the shoulders of the Zionist enemy, the United States and the forces which support the aggressive and expansionist policy of the Zionist enemy, a policy based on the principle of force, oppression and military superiority, and the possibility that it will last forever.
We are here to disclose to the world, especially to the peoples of States that claim to be democratic and on the side of human rights, that the practices of those Governments are indeed the full embodiment of all that is contrary to democracy and human rights. Therefore, those Governments are opposed to justice and peace regardless of the claims of their propaganda. Indeed, their hypocrisy has become so obvious that no proof is needed.
We did not have to be prophets to state repeatedly before you that the Camp David accords would not be accepted; that no force in the world could compel a people to give up its national and human rights; that not a single individual – even insane or without conscience – among our people would accept either of the following two options: forced exile, or slavery under occupation and deprived of his identity with his fathers and forefathers.
We know more about our people than anyone else. Like all other peoples, it is an original people, proud of its patriotism and national identity. Today, it sets an example of patience and steadfastness in the face of all conspiracies and wars. It is entering the seventh decade of its tragic and bloody struggle against the forces of oppression, racism and colonialism, raising its voice and weapons against blood and fire, and declaring to the entire world: "No" to occupation; "No" to the so-called civil administration-. "Yes" to national independence and to the Palestine Liberation Organization, its sole and legitimate representative.
Under the auspices of the United States, and with its blessings, the Zionist enemy tried to tame our people, resorting to all methods for that purpose. The Zionist Gestapo has exhausted all the means of oppression, terrorism and torture available to it. The prisons are so full of our men that the wardens have asked their authorities to release those who could be considered not dangerous to security. The courts have thousands of cases – false cases filed against simple people, to terrorize them, to force them to leave, and to block their means of subsistence. The Zionists have resorted to arbitrary expulsion, collective punishment, and everything that the mind of a Fascist, a professional in torture and persecution, could produce – so much so that voices inside Israel itself could no longer remain silent, out of concern for their credibility with some of the international bodies to which they belong.
A Zionist historian, Jacob Talmon, whose faithfulness to Zionism is beyond doubt, addressed in 1980 an open letter to Menachem Begin in which he stated: "Apart from our feeling of shame and pain at the harm befalling our neighbors because of your ill-advised, anachronistic policies, we should fear most what these practices do to us, and what they bring on the Jewish people and on our dream of justice and of social and moral rebirth".
When Begin failed as a result of the steadfastness and determination of our people, and saw that the policy of the "big stick" was not feasible, he resorted to the policy of "temptation", as conceived by the primitive terrorist called Menachem Milson, the intellectual who insisted, prior to his appointment as an administrator, that a military title be conferred upon him – and he got it. This colonial Orientalist tried to make our people believe that the problem is one of clothes, and that with his civilian clothes he could achieve what his uniformed military colleagues had failed to achieve. He tried a policy familiar to our people from the days of British colonization, a policy aimed at finding an alternative leadership to replace the elected mayors who took a, heroic, manly stand, not intimidated by assassination or by threats of the demolition of houses and expulsion. The ignorant intellectual soon failed, along with his plan and his illusions. As the Israeli Jerusalem Post put it: the village associations that Milson invented were stillborn. True to the nature of any Nazi rule, Begin and his band returned once again to the policy of the "big stick". Hence the arbitrary decisions to remove the mayors and to turn the municipalities into military centers under the command of a number of low-ranking Fascist officers. Hence also the recent mass uprising, which spread throughout the occupied territories, including our people's towns and villages occupied in 1948.
When the Begin Government found itself being exposed daily to international public opinion as a Government systematically practicing terrorism, Begin issued instructions to release some criminals and convicts, who now are free to move around, provided with the arms and protection they need to terrorize our people.
However, this has only increased our people's cohesiveness and steadfastness, and consequently the struggle of the masses has grown everywhere. They confront bullets, grenades and tanks with their bare arms and with-stones, branches and sticks.
It is indeed war. When I say that, I am only repeating what our enemy's Chief of Staff Raphael Eytan admitted to the correspondent of the Israeli broadcasting service: "When one is fighting for the security of the State and the people, there is no difference between war on the borders and any other war." In the same interview, he added: "I consider these operations" – that is, the operations of confrontation by completely unarmed masses – "a continuation of a war, and I do not know where it will end."
Therefore, it is war, and that is admitted by the Zionist Chief of Staff. But war against whom? Against the masses of the Arab people in the occupied territories, against children. The Assembly undoubtedly noted the high percentage of children among the victims – 11 of them were under 10. While Begin and his band were waging this war against our courageous people, they were at the same time preparing for another aggression, or rather another war, at the borders – to invade southern Lebanon in order to control the waters of the Litani River and destroy the Lebanese homeland so as to realize their dream of liquidating the Palestinian revolution.
On 11 April, this month, the day of the savage attack on the holy Al Aqsa Mosque, the Jerusalem Post wrote: "Military and government leaders have in the past few days fanned war hysteria, clearly hoping to arouse domestic public opinion, if not world public opinion, in preparation for an expanded military attack on Lebanon." When the press even in the Zionist entity itself was unable to keep silent because it wanted to save its reputation, it was the object of all kinds of arbitrariness, humiliation, insults and punishment from Begin. This led Shom Shukini, a journalist who has been working for Ha'aretz for years, to respond to Begin last March in the pages of Newsweek by asserting that he is a professional, talented demagogue and a primitive nationalist.
And now we have reached the height of these crimes and challenges: the aggression against the Al Aqsa Mosque on Easter Sunday, 11 April 1982. That is a date that no Palestinian, no Arab, no Moslem, no believer will ever forget.
At the outset we must emphasize that this Zionist aggression on Al Aqsa Mosque, while worshippers were inside, was not the first of its kind although it was the most bloody. On 15 August 1967 the Chief Israeli Rabbi entered the court of the Mosque in his military uniform, accompanied by a group of officers of the enemy's army and conducted some ceremonies for two hours, during which he declared his intention to build a synagogue in the court of the Mosque.
On 21 August 1969 the Mosque was deliberately set on fire; the historic pulpit, dating back over 800 years, was destroyed. The Israeli Government claimed then what it is claiming today: that the arson was the fault of a mentally deranged Israeli – of Australian origin in that case.
Early in Hay 1980, huge amounts of explosives and weapons were discovered on the roof of a synagogue very close to Al Aqsa Mosque; the purpose obviously was to blow the Mosque up.
And we must add to all this the ongoing excavations on the pretext of searching for Solomon's temple. This Assembly has more than once condemned these operations and ordered that they be stopped – but to no avail.
On 9 April 1982 – three days before this horrible crime – Sheikh Sa`d ad-Din al-Alami contacted the Israeli Government and informed the adviser to the Police Minister, the liaison officer for religious affairs, of letters addressed to the Supreme Islamic Council containing threats of murder and attacks on sanctuaries – all signed by Gush Emunim and Zionist Guards of the Temple. He requested the officer to pursue those people. Then came the tragic day of the unforgettable crime.
On the morning of Easter Sunday masses of our people, both Moslems and Christians, were gathering, as has been usual on such occasions for hundreds of years, to celebrate the holiday jointly. Archbishop Lutfi Lahham of the Roman Catholic Church stated: "While we were preparing for prayers, we heard about the attack on Al Aqsa Mosque. We wept; all of us felt the holiest dignity and sanctity in their hearts being threatened." By now, we know from press and radio reports the details of the crime that was deliberately designed and planned by Zionists.
Eighty-four years ago Mr. Alan Harry Goodman, who is accused today of having perpetrated the Al Aqsa crime and of being mentally deranged, was not yet born. But in 1898 an ordinary Zionist visited Jerusalem. That Zionist wrote the following in the second edition of his memoirs – and I quote from page 754 of the English version:
(spoken in English)
"When I remember thee in the days to come, 0 Jerusalem, it will not be with pleasure. The musty deposits of 2,000 years of inhumanity, intolerance, and uncleanliness lie in the foul-smelling alleys. The one man who has been present all this time the amiable drearier of Nazareth has only contributed to increasing the hatred. If we ever get Jerusalem and if I am still able to do anything actively at that time I would begin by cleaning it up."
(continued in Arabic)
The man I have just quoted was not an ordinary Zionist. And in spite of what I have must quoted from his memoirs, we have not heard it said that he was mentally disturbed or crazy. In fact, he is considered by the Zionist movement to be its prime, its main founder. This man is Theodor Herzl. No one familiar with Zionist ideology, in thought and in practice, can find anything surprising in such fanatic words, deeply against everything that is not Jewish.
Herzl accused Jesus Christ of being the prophet of hatred. He did not even mention the Al Aqsa presence and refused to recognize its sacred importance to the Moslems. In those circumstances, it is impossible for his movement and its adherents to be anything except what he called them.
And today, after 80 years, they are trying to achieve his goals of cleaning up Jerusalem and ridding it of the sacred Holy Places, as he wished and desired.
It is not that Australian Zionist who attempted to burn the Al Aqsa Mosque in 1969, or the Zionist American who fired inside Al Aqsa and at the Moslems praying there in 1982, who is mentally disturbed; it is in fact the Zionist ideology that has all that sickness. That is why the world body denounced the Zionist ideology in 1975, and called it a discriminatory ideology that had to be fought and stopped. And yet the Government of Israel would not accept a committee from the world body to investigate what has happened – no doubt a crime planned, organized and implemented by the Zionist Government and later on present a report on the facts.
We shall not go deeply into the details, regardless of their importance and the indication they give of the grave and dangerous consequences. For the central, the main issue is the continuation of the occupation of Arab territories and the plans of the Begin Government to annex the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. That is the essence of the issue, and if a definite end is not put to those plans, a series of crimes will follow, and every day we shall hear of more tragedies, and we shall see thousands of martyrs created every day.
I would draw the Assembly's attention to the fact that all my quotations in this speech have been from Zionist and Israeli sources only. In a way, the accused is shouting: "Come and take me." Now I shall quote something said by Mr. Abraham Ahitof, the former head of Israeli Intelligence, a few days ago and published in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on 16 April 1982. He submitted his resignation in protest against the Begin Government's dropping of the investigation into the assassination attempt against two Palestinian heroes, Mr. Bassam al-Shaka and Mr. Karim Khalaf. He said:
Talking about the annexation of the Golan Heights, he went on to say that it was an "unnecessary decision which led to the rebellion of the Drusze sect". After having condemned the Israeli authorities for establishing what they call "village leagues" to confront the PLO in the occupied territories, he expressed the belief that "the support of the Palestinian
residents for the PLO will not be diminished by any number of rifles whose objective is to protect Palestinian leaders whom we regard as influential"
Ahitof concluded by saying: "We have to realize that even if we were able to weaken the rebellion of the Palestinians through an imposed settlement, that would not lead to Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. It is better to have a real negotiator who is elected, even if he is an open supporter of the PLO, than a negotiator who is an easy client of agents and who can be influenced by repressive policies …"
I need not comment in detail on those quotations, for they are very clear. If they demonstrate anything it is the depth of the crisis which now afflicts the Zionist movement and Israeli practices. It is a crisis that emanates from the big lie upon which the Zionist movement is based, the lie which says that "Palestine is a land without a people for a people without a land". The people of Palestine have a history of thousands of years in their national soil. That soil still belongs to them, they are mixed with the stones of that soil as are their struggles for freedom end independence and the right to life.
It is difficult if not impossible for me to give in this statement a full picture of the horrendous conditions from which our people are suffering these days. It is also difficult for me to present conclusive figures about the number of our sons who have been either martyred, wounded, or detained. But reports on the developments which have occurred in our land are a clear indication that we are faced with a process of annihilation and group eviction unparalleled in the darkest of eras – namely the era of the Nazis.
Dozens of our people are being martyred, hundreds are being wounded thousands are being detained and these figures are increasing tremendously every day. Our people will not retreat; it will continue its war, using stones and sticks, until the conscience of the world awakens and comes to the support and implementation of justice and the punishment of this Nazi clique which pays no heed whatsoever to any resolution or warning or condemnation, thus defying all laws, resolutions and traditions.
Israel has even challenged the so-called resolution 242 (1967), that unjust resolution which Israel falsely claims it accepts and which speaks against the admissibility of occupying other peoples' land by force. Israel has defied that resolution and considers the land, to quote Menachem. Begin, "the land of Israel". Hence the annexation of the Golan Heights, and hence the annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the future.
We warn the Assembly today that a special session will discuss the annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. What are you doing about that? Shall we wait for the tragedy and its consequences, or shall we stop it now and put an end to the chain of continuous crimes? We hold the Security Council, which adopted that bleak resolution 242 (1967), fully responsible for all that happens in our land in terms of terrorism, repression, the burglary of land and water, the establishment of settlements, and for all other acts which an occupying power is not permitted to commit on any pretext or under international law. We appeal to the Security Council to take the necessary measures for the protection of our people and our land in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, to ensure full withdrawal, so that our people may realize its objectives of freedom and sovereignty. We appeal to the United Nations to form an international committee and dispatch it immediately to inquire into the frightening nature of the crimes and acts perpetrated by Israel. This committee should contact our people, its national institutions which have been repressed, the dignitaries of our land, such as the mayors, in order to get a complete picture as a first step toward adopting the measures that will deter this barbaric Zionist conquest which has desecrated sacred places and violated religions.
The crisis that was triggered by the occupation of Palestine is now threatening to blow up a huge powder-keg not only in the Middle East but in the whole world.
The recent strike which was observed in all the Arab, Islamic and friendly countries in support of our people and in condemnation of our enemy, is no more than a first sign of the outrage in the hearts of millions of people who love justice and peace. It is an outrage which may unleash a war against the enemies of our people and those who support their traditional senseless policy, a policy that will make them regret its consequences.
It is true that our people's fingers are being now burned in the fire. But let everyone know that if the international community, with you in the forefront, does not put out this fire and restore its rights to our people, then our fingers will not be the only ones to burn. The fire that will spread around us and around our region will leave no room for spectators and observers. History is full of lessons for all of us. He who forgets history will be liable to commit the mistakes, even the sins, of the past and to feel what these sins entail in terms of regret. But it will be too late then for regret.
Mr. KHADDAM (Syrian Arab -Republic) (interpretation from Arabic): The international community finds it necessary for the United Nations General Assembly to resume its seventh emergency special session to discuss Israel's aggressive practices in the occupied Arab territories against the Arab people and the rights of the Palestinian people, pursuant to the Charter and resolutions of the United Nations.
A quick survey of the activities, documents and resolutions of our international Organization would undoubtedly confirm that discussions of Israeli policies and violations have occupied most of the time of both the Security Council and the General Assembly.
What always seems to happen is that we meet time and again and session after session only to witness thereafter Israel's persistent escalation of aggression against Arab lands and the serious violations of the rights of the Palestinian people and brutal suppression inflicted by the Israeli authorities in the occupied Syrian and Palestinian territories.
Israel's aggression has been consistently increasing indirect proportion to the successive meetings held here at the United Nations to discuss that aggression and to adopt appropriate resolutions to deal with it. This phenomenon leads one to pose the following question: Why should all this be happening in this manner? The clear, direct answer can be summarized in two facts:
Firstly, Israel flouts this international Organization, which gave it its birth certificate. Israel shows complete disregard for the principles of the United Nations Charter and resolutions. Whatever is said here only increases Israel's disregard for international law and its defiance of the whole world.
Secondly, the United States of America is always ready with its veto weapon in the United Nations Security Council to paralyze the Council's draft resolutions, thus protecting Israel from its measures and sanctions. This attitude encourages Israel to continue its acts of aggression against the Arab lands and peoples and to violate any measures, sanctions or resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. It is this umbrella of American protection which encourages Israel to pursue its policy of annexation of the occupied Arab and Palestinian territories.
I do not intend to review the hundreds of resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council with which Israel has refused to comply. I shall only recall the most recent resolutions, in order for us to examine Israel's behavior.
Security Council resolution 476 (1980) declared all Israel's measures in Jerusalem null and void. What did Israel do after this resolution was adopted? It not only rejected it, or just refused to comply with it, but it also followed that up by its decision to annex the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. In a subsequent resolution – resolution 497 (1981) – the Security Council demanded the rescission of that aggressive decision in the Golan Heights. Once more Israel was not satisfied with rejecting that resolution, it also began to escalate, in an unprecedented manner, its acts of aggression against the occupied Syrian and Palestinian lands, as a prelude to their annexation, and against the Arab inhabitants of those lands.
We meet here today to discuss the brutal acts of repression perpetrated by Israel against Arab youths, women, children and old people. Though those people were completely unarmed, scores of them fell dead or wounded under the hails of Israeli bullets. They were shouting their Protests against the repressive, unjust rule of Israeli occupation. They were protesting, Israel's arbitrary measures when Israel forcibly dismissed the legitimately elected mayors. Israel's troops are being used to intimidate the Arab citizens in the occupied Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The toll of Arab victims, martyrs and wounded continues to rise day by day.
Yet the racist grudge of the Israelis did not stop at that. It soon extended to places of worship and to holy religious shrines. They attacked worshippers, killing and wounding at random, before the very eyes of the whole world. The Israelis were not content or satisfied with violating the laws and statutes of the world. So they raised their blood-stained hands against the laws of Heaven, desecrating the sanctuaries and attacking worshippers.
I do not propose to review history and its various events. I should like only to refer to some historical phases which testify that that State, Israel, was established in our Arab land of Palestine in the absence of two thirds of the States in today's world. Since the days of preparation, Israel had specific tasks linked to colonialism and world imperialism. This made Israel play a role no less unjust and worse than the role of the racist regime in South Africa.
During the First World War, the Zionist movement allied itself with Western imperialism. The reward offered by Balfour, the British Foreign Minister, was the Balfour Declaration promising the establishment of a Hebrew State in Palestine, as if Palestine were part of the possessions of the British Crown. During the Second World War, the Zionist movement allied itself with the leader of world imperialism, namely, the United States of America. The reward was the establishment of the Hebrew State in Palestine.
Between those two wars, the British imperialists in Palestine were very active in their encouragement of Jewish immigration, exerting pressure on and persecuting the Arab inhabitants. They also gave all forms of aid and support to the Zionist gangs until the day of the major catastrophe in 1948, when the establishment of the State of Israel was proclaimed on part of the soil of Palestine.
Israel is thus the result of a marriage of convenience between a racist movement, that is, Zionism, which adopts the mentality of superiority and distinction from the rest of mankind, and imperialism and colonialism, which came to our region to rule it, control it, impose hegemony on it and exploit its economic and human resources in order to utilize everything in this region for the service of the strategic interests of Zionism. A State based on a racist ideology and allied to the forces of imperialism and colonialism cannot but be both aggressive and unjust.
That State was admitted to membership in the United Nations provided that it would respect the Charter of the international Organization and commit itself to the implementation of United Nations resolutions. However, Israel used every means to violate the Charter, refused to implement United Nations resolutions and showed only utter contempt for this Organization and international law.
The organic link between Zionism and Israel, on the one hand, and imperialism and colonialism, on the other, has led to the following results. First, the Palestinian people were expelled from their homeland and the whole of Palestine and other Arab territories were occupied. Secondly, a state of constantly explosive tension was created which continues to threaten peace and security in the Middle East and in the whole world. Thirdly, in 1956 and within the framework of its alliance with the British and French Governments, Israel waged a war of aggression against Egypt simply because the latter had regained its right to control its national property and nationalized the Suez Canal. Thus Israel was used as a tool of vengeance, but at the same time Israel used its two allies to achieve some territorial gains. Fourthly, in 1967 Israel waged yet another war of aggression against three Arab countries, occupying the whole of Palestine and parts of the territories of Syria and Egypt. After that war, Israel began to establish settlements and to pursue a repressive policy of terrorism aimed at the displacement of the Arab inhabitants in order to evict the indigenous population of the occupied territories and create a demographic vacuum. It changed the landmarks and features of those occupied Arab territories. It perpetrated dozens of attacks on Lebanese towns and villages and villages end against the Palestinian groupings in Lebanon. It bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor. It issued threats against Syria. Those threats nearly led to a military conflagration following the Israeli attacks on the Arab deterrent forces in Lebanon. Israel enacted two "laws" – one providing for the annexation of the Arab city of Jerusalem and the other for the annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
All these acts corroborate the following facts.
First, Israel continues to carry out its aggressive plots, refusing to allow the development of any situation conducive to the establishment of a just and durable peace in the region. A just peace requires that Israel withdraw totally from all the occupied Arab territories and recognize the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to repatriation, self-determination and the establishment of their own independent State on their national soil. All this is contrary to the Zionist ideology whose objective is the establishment of a State based on racial discrimination, racial superiority and expansion.
Secondly, Israel utterly refuses to adhere to the United Nations Charter and refuses to implement or honor United Nations resolutions. The Charter rejects the principle of the use of force to annex territory. Israel's Zionist ideology is based on continued expansion and the annexation of territory till the Hebrew State becomes commensurate with the principles and strategy of the Zionist movement.
Thirdly, Israel refuses to implement all the relevant United Nations resolutions. It refuses to abide by resolution 478 (1980) concerning its measures in Jerusalem, resolution 497 (1981) concerning its measures in the Golan Heights and resolution 446 (1979) concerning the establishment of Jewish settlements, which were all adopted by the United Nations Security Council. There are also hundreds of other resolutions, adopted by the General Assembly, all forming a strong body of decisive and irrefutable evidence of Israel's utter contempt for the international Organization and all the values on which the United Nations is based.
These facts are corroborated by the historical development of Israeli aggression against the Arab nation, in general, and against the Palestinian people, in particular. They are also corroborated in the files of the international Organization whether they be those of the Security Council, the General Assembly or the specialized agencies of the United Nations
We believe that this highly abnormal phenomenon in the international situation, namely, the phenomenon of Israel is the result of the following factors:
Faced with this state of affairs, we at this session must pose a question: What is to be done to confront this irregular phenomenon in the international arena, and to impose respect for the Charter, the implementation of resolutions, to repel aggression and to assist the victims of the acts of that racist State? Should Israel be allowed to behave in that manner with no deterrence? Does anybody imagine that this bizarre, abnormal situation can continue in the Middle East?
In pursuing that aggressive policy, refusing to adhere to the United Nations Charter, continuing to occupy Arab lands and suppressing both private and public activities of the Arab citizens in the occupied territories, Israel is deliberately pushing the Middle East region towards explosion, day by day. Such an explosion poses a threat to peace and security, not only in the Middle East, but also in the world at large.
The failure of the United Nations Security Council to take appropriate measures in accordance with the United Nations Charter, thanks to the United States use of the veto, makes it incumbent upon the United Nations General Assembly, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter, to shoulder its responsibilities for safeguarding world peace and security, and to impose respect for the Charter and the implementation of the Organization's resolutions.
Therefore, the United Nations General Assembly has no choice but to adopt a resolution revoking resolution 273 (III) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1949, admitting Israel as a Member of the international Organization. The General Assembly, which adopted resolution 273 (III), has the authority to revoke a resolution – which it had the right to adopt in the first place – particularly since the party concerned with this resolution, that is, Israel, has not fulfilled its pledges defined by that resolution and by the United Nations Charter.
The adoption of such a resolution would restore confidence in the international organization and consolidate international legitimacy and would not permit the use of the universality of this Organization as a cover for aggression oppression and injustice. It would rather make the Organization a mainstay of justice, right and freedom.
As we present the Assembly with this picture, we affirm that the Arab nation will continue the just, legitimate struggle for the liberation of all its occupied territories, both Syrian and Palestinian, and for the restoration of the inalienable national rights of the Arab Palestinian people in their homeland, Palestine, including their right to repatriation, self-determination and the establishment of their own independent State under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation
Organization. From this international rostrum, we declare that we and our kin in the Golan, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and throughout Palestine will continue to offer sacrifices.
The struggle of our brethren in the occupied Arab territories is a basic part of the struggle waged by the nations suffering under occupation and imperialism to regain their freedom and national independence.
That struggle is in itself a defense of the people's right to self-determination, as well as the rights and dignity of man everywhere.
Hence, the Arab people in the occupied Syrian and Palestinian territories look forward to the Organization's aid and support of their legitimate struggle to regain their freedom and their rights.
The people's struggle for their freedom cannot be defeated, no matter how long it takes. Injustice may prevail for a while, but it cannot prevail forever.
Mr. BLUM (Israel): Today, the twenty-seventh day of Nissan on the Jewish calendar, is being observed in Israel and throughout the Jewish world as Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this day we remember the martyrdom of four and a half million Jewish men and women and one and a half million Jewish children who became the victims of what Sir Winston Churchill termed "a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime". On this day we also remember the heroism of those who, unarmed and emaciated, rose against their barbaric tormentors in the Warsaw Ghetto and in the many other ghettos, extermination camps, concentration camps and forced labor camps established throughout Nazi-infested Europe by the Nazi-Germans and their Fascist collaborators of various nationalities. It is only fitting that they should be remembered here today. For their martyrdom is now being minimized by some, vulgarized by others and even denied by yet others. We remember them here today also because out of their suffering and martyrdom grew the Organization which became known as the United Nations.
It is all too often forgotten that the United Nations is the product of the great war-time coalition that came into being to fight the forces of Nazism and Fascism, the enemies of mankind, of human progress and decency. Those forces of evil and hatred singled out the Jewish people as their prime target, just as the forces of hatred have done throughout history. While they inflicted untold misery and destruction upon the whole world., there can be little doubt that the main victim of their genocidal practices was the Jewish people. It was thus only natural that Jews the world over rallied to the cause of the United Nations which fought the Nazi-Fascist scourge. More than 1.5 million of them fought in the ranks of the Allied armies that eventually crushed the Axis Powers and brought this Organization into being. These facts appear to be forgotten in the United Nations of the 1980s.
Barely 37 years after the defeat of the Nazi-Fascist beast and within the lifetime of many of the survivors of the Holocaust, the forces of evil are on the march again. The enemies of Israel and of the Jewish people know that at the root of the terrible tragedy that befell my people lay Jewish homelessness and Jewish statelessness. They know that with the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel after 19 centuries of exile and dispersion the days of Jewish defenselessness are over.
This is why the enemies of my people have turned this Organization into one of their main battlegrounds. It is here that they seek to revive and promote the criminal designs against my people. And just as the perversion of the human language in the 1930s and the 1940s preceded the terrible genocide perpetrated against the Jewish people, so the perversion of the human language in this Organization is intended to be a preliminary to the physical onslaught against my people. For a number of years now Israel and the Jewish people have been subjected by the forces of international lawlessness in this Organization to an uninterrupted barrage of lies, distortions and vilification. This so-called resumed emergency special session is yet another manifestation pertaining to this phenomenon.
When this Assembly was first convened in July 1980 for what in United Nations parlance is referred to as the seventh emergency special session, we pointed out that its convening was both illegal and preposterous and that it made a complete mockery of the rules of procedure of the General Assembly, Its resumption now, 21 months after it was suspended "temporarily", and the current revival of an initially contrived emergency, is not only a complete abuse of the emergency procedure envisaged by the "Uniting for Peace" resolution and by the rules of procedure of the General Assembly, it also constitutes yet another stage in the constant perversion of this Organization by an obsessed, unprincipled and hypocritical group of countries which has shed the last vestiges of decency in its fixation on my country and my people. This group of countries is responsible, inter alia, for the establishment by the General Assembly of a Committee which has become not only a pliant tool in the hands of a group of international terrorists bent on the destruction of a Member State of this Organization but has also converted itself into a travel agency pure and simple whose members roam the world in a procession of junkets paid for by the international taxpayer.
Nor does the corruption of that Committee stop there. It offers its so-called "guidance" also to a unit set up within the United Nations Secretariat which has already gravely compromised the latter's standing as an impartial organ of this Organization. That unit has been engaged in what can only be termed a sustained display of moral and intellectual depravity, and its parasitic pursuits are also charged to the international taxpayer.
But it is not only the enemies of Israel obsessed with the very existence of my country and of my people that are responsible for the ongoing orgy of hatred that has already done so much to discredit this Organization. Their obsession is being cynically fuelled by those who seek to exploit it for their own sinister designs both in an attempt to fish in the troubled waters of the Middle East and in an attempt to divert attention away from various trouble spots around the world. As a result, this Organization hardly finds any time to discuss the ongoing genocide against the people of Kampuchea or the continuing Soviet aggression against Afghanistan. This Organization is unaware of the Iraqi aggression against Iran. The fact that in recent weeks the Iraqi aggressors have suffered severe setbacks and now find themselves on the brink of defeat can serve as no justification for this Organization to ignore the criminal conduct of Saddam Hussein al-Takriti and his gang.
This Organization is unaware of the Syrian rape of Lebanon that has been going on for a number of years. This Organization is equally unaware of the massacres carried out by the Assad brothers in Syria against their own people, most recently in the city of Hama, where thousands of Syrians fell victim to the lunacy of their rulers. This Organization is unaware of the attempts by the level-headed ruler of Libya to subvert various régimes in Africa. This Organization is unaware of the role played by the Cuban mercenaries of the Soviet Union in various parts of Africa. This Organization is totally oblivious to the Soviet-imposed predicament of the Polish people. This Organization turns a blind eye to international terrorism, with its concomitant features of indiscriminate murder and. the taking of hostages. In fact, the linchpin of international terrorism, the criminal PLO, has been masquerading in this Organization under the guise of a "national liberation movement". And this Organization is also unaware of the massive violation of human rights by most countries represented here.
When one contemplates the very real threat to the existence of literally hundreds of millions of human beings, the wars, the lack of freedom, the brutal suppression of minorities, the mass death sentences, the persecution and torture of dissidents, the cruelty and degradation, the disease, the malnutrition and the poverty in the world today., one can only conclude that many in this Assembly shamelessly turn their backs on humanity and on the real problems facing mankind by engaging so much of the Assembly's time in barren and vicious anti-Israel exercises and in fanning the flames of religious hatred, incitement and fanaticism.
The fact is that many of the States represented here regularly violate every human standard and international norm in the conduct of their affairs both domestic and external. They regularly practice every crime that they mendaciously attribute to Israel, but the Assembly is not convened in emergency special session. The international crimes and the threats to peace persistently perpetrated by totalitarian and dictatorial régimes which rush to harass Israel are legion, yet the General Assembly passes over them in silence.
The reason for this hypocrisy, cynicism and bias is not hard to explain. In everything to do with the Arab-Israel conflict a majority of this Assembly lets itself be led, in some cases willingly, in others under duress, by a coalition of extreme Arab States, in conjunction with the Soviet Union, its satellites and the so-called radicals in the Non-Aligned Group of Countries.
Central to any discussion of the Arab-Israel conflict is one basic fact – namely, that two States have been established on the territory of the former Palestine Mandate. One is Jordan, which is the Palestinian Arab State, and which achieved national self-determination, independence and sovereignty in 1946. The other is Israel, which is the Palestinian Jewish State, and which became independent in 1948. Hence there is no need or justification whatsoever for the establishment of a second Palestinian Arab State. The fact is that the vast majority of Jordan's citizens are Palestinian Arabs; and, similarly, the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs are Jordanian citizens. Palestinian Arabs occupy leading positions in Jordan today, too numerous to mention. They constitute Jordan's administrative, intellectual and economic elite, and are in fact the backbone and mainstay of the country. Moreover, Jordan, the Palestinian Arab State, is only one of 21 separate Arab States from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf in which the Arabs have realized self-determination since the end of the First World War.
The PRESIDENT: I call on the representative of Jordan on a point of order.
Mr. BURAYZAT (Jordan): According to the documents before us relating to the agenda item, the subject under consideration is the "Question of Palestine". We have been listening to a statement by the representative of Israel on the internal situation in Jordan.
Mr. President, I request you kindly to instruct the representative of Israel to limit himself to the question on the agenda and not to speak about the internal situation in my country.
The PRESIDENT: I call on the representative of Israel to continue his statement.
Mr. BLUM (Israel): Moreover, the Palestinian Arab State of Jordan is only one of 21 separate Arab States, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf, in which the Arabs have realized self-determination since the end of the First World War. The combined area of those 21 States is 5.5 million square miles, that is to say, 10.3 per cent of the world's land surface —
The PRESIDENT: May I interrupt the speaker to tell the representative of Jordan that he has made his point of order; please let the debate continue.
I call on the representative of Jordan.
Mr. BURAYZAT (Jordan): Mr. President, I made my point of order and I am waiting for your ruling. The representative of Israel is still interfering and talking about the internal situation in my country; he is also not referring to my country by its proper official name. I therefore request you to instruct him not to speak about the internal situation in my country and to use its official name. And unless I hear a ruling from the Chair in this regard, I shall keep on interrupting the representative of Israel.
The PRESIDENT: The Chair's ruling is that the whole history of the debate of the question of Palestine has given the widest possible interpretation of what speakers may or may not say. That is my ruling and, unless it is challenged, I call on the representative of Israel to continue.
Mr. BLUM (Israel): Moreover, Jordan, the Palestinian Arab State, is only one of 21 separate Arab States, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf, in which the Arabs have realized self-determination since the end of the First World War. The combined area of those 21 States is 5.5 million square miles, that is to say, 10.3 per cent of the world's land surface. The Arab States straddle an unbroken land mass greater in size than Europe, the United States or China, and are rich in the material resources – not least of them oil – on which much of modern life depends.
On the other hand, the total area of the original Palestine Mandate on which a Jewish State was to be established was about 45,000 square miles, that is, less than 1 per cent – I repeat, less than 1 per cent – of the enormous territories encompassed by the 21 Arab States today. However, this is by no means the end of the story. With the establishment of Jordan, the Palestinian Arab State, on about 80 per cent of the territory of the Palestine Mandate, Israel, the Palestinian Jewish State, was left with less than one fifth of 1 per cent – I repeat: less than one fifth of 1 per cent – of the total area of all the 21 Arab States today. And even this tiny sliver of land for the Jewish people to exercise its right of self-determination in its ancestral patrimony has been begrudged by the Arab world, which is apparently incapable of countenancing a non-Arab and non-Moslem State in the Middle East.
Everything that we have experienced in the Arab-Israel conflict since 1948 flows from one fundamental fact: the unwillingness of Arab Governments to accept and coexist with a sovereign Jewish State, irrespective of its size and boundaries.
The adamant refusal on the part of the Arab world to recognize Israel's right to exist has always been and remains the core and cause of the Arab–Israel conflict and everything else is pretext or subterfuge. This was the reason why the Arab States, as well as the Arabs of Palestine, categorically and on the United Nations record, rejected General Assembly resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947 and initiated hostilities with the express purpose of aborting that resolution and preventing the establishment of the State of Israel. The fact that the Arabs failed in their armed aggression aimed at destroying Israel does not legitimize their violation of international law. At the same time, that armed aggression Precludes them from invoking now in any form the benefits of a General Assembly resolution which they both rejected and destroyed by force of arms.
This refusal to recognize Israel's existence, as well as its right to exist, is the reason why the Arabs have since 1948 launched four major wars against ray country. This is the reason why they have developed a ramified series of battlefronts and a vast array of weapons against Israel. These weapons include, inter alia, an economic boycott of Israel, which has been extended into a secondary boycott on third parties trading with Israel. Various countries have been blackmailed into joining this campaign against Israel. A propaganda war of major proportions has been directed for years against Israel. And, in total disregard of the elementary canons of decency and parliamentary propriety, the United Nations has been seized upon, in all its various organs and agencies, as an instrument readily at the disposal of the Arab States in their relentless political warfare against Israel.
Within this context, but with even uglier intent, the Arab States in 1964 also created the terrorist organization which came to be known as the PLO.
If we put aside the myths, the political sloganeering and the propaganda, the problem facing us can be seen to be of manageable proportions. There is already a Palestinian Arab State called Jordan, populated by the majority of the Palestinian Arabs. It is a State in which the national identity and aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs have already found full expression.
Because of the Arab refusal to make peace with Israel, it was not possible for three decades to conduct serious negotiations about the Arab-Israel conflict in all its aspects. The possibility of such negotiations opened up only in 1977, and the elements for a comprehensive solution of the conflict came together only at Camp David in the late summer of 1978. In the course of bringing these elements together and in the light of the experience gained in negotiating the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, we have all come to recognize how difficult and complete the process is of reconciling and accommodating the legitimate concerns, including the security interests, of all those involved.
To make peace with Egypt, Israel made many sacrifices and took many risks. Israel preferred these sacrifices for peace over the sacrifices of war.
With regard to the Palestinian Arab residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District, the Camp David framework sees the solution in terms of their full autonomy, for a transitional period of five years, before reaching an agreement on the final status of the areas concerned. To that end, it was agreed to negotiate on a principle of self-government – to be exercised through an administrative council – for the Arab inhabitants of the areas in question.
The Camp David framework invites the Palestinian Arab residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District to play an active role in shaping their future, by calling on them to participate not only in the current negotiations to set up a self-governing administrative council, but also in the negotiations which will determine the final status of the areas they live in, as well as in the eventual negotiations on a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, in which the delimitation of boundaries between the two countries will be agreed.
This solution offers the Palestinian Arabs concerned greater opportunities than any they have ever experienced in their history. It offers them the prospect of governing themselves, of prosperity and of a peaceful co-existence alongside their neighbors. It offers them a secure future, free from terror.
A framework for peaceful co-existence between Jew and Arab is thus clearly emerging now. The PLO, Jordan, Syria and their ilk are conspiring to destroy it. The greater the promise for Jewish-Arab understanding and co-operation, the greater the combined rejectionist effort to see it terminated. The terrorist chiefs, as well as the leaders of Jordan, Syria and their rejectionist friends, are obviously gnawed by the fear that the Palestinian Arabs might strike out in a different direction, aimed at peaceful co-existence and mutual accommodation with Israel in a spirit of reconciliation between the two fraternal Semitic peoples.
It must surely be recognized by now that the pattern adopted by this Organization in its deliberations on the Arab-Israel conflict has proved sterile and has indeed become an obstacle to a peaceful settlement. Yet, that conflict is clearly amenable to solution, given a political will to effect a solution. Moreover, it is a conflict for which a framework for a solution exists and, indeed, one which has over the last few years been moving towards a solution within that framework.
Hence we do not need alternative frameworks; we do not need alternative plans. We certainly do not need advice from States in this Organization which are fully identified with the Arab cause, or from those who over the years have preferred to sit on the fence and, instead of being genuinely supportive of the peace process, have for all intents and purposes put spokes in its wheels.
Israel has shown its willingness and ability to make peace with its largest Arab neighbor. It is now up to the rest of the Arab world to show that it is willing to make peace with Israel. This Organization under its Charter is dedicated to the promotion of international peace and security and of peaceful relations among nations. Instead, it has grotesquely condemned a peace treaty of epoch-making proportions, while at the same time lending its support and granting irregular privileges to a group of international terrorists. If the United Nations has a contribution to make, it is to encourage the Arab States to come to terms with Israel and to negotiate with us directly, without preconditions, seriously and in mutual respect.
The PRESIDENT: Before calling on the representative of Iraq, who has asked to speak in exercise of his right of reply, may I remind him and the Assembly that, in accordance with decision 34/401, rights of reply should be limited to 10 minutes and should be made by delegations from their seats.
I now call on the representative of Iraq.
Mr. MARDAN (Iraq) (interpretation from Arabic): In the statement he just delivered the representative of the Zionist entity in his persistence in forging and falsifying the facts – a constant characteristic of his statements – referred to my country, saying that this Organization has not considered Iraqi "aggression" against Iran.
I wish to make the facts clear: Iraq has not committed acts of aggression against anybody, and did not think of committing acts of aggression against Iran. Iraq has been the object of acts of aggression for a long period of time, as the Zionist representative, as well as others, know very well.
Despite these facts, Iraq has been and is still declaring its full readiness to solve the outstanding problems between the two countries by peaceful means, in a manner conducive to the restoration of the internationally recognized rights of the two parties. To compare what takes place in the occupied Arab territories at the hands of the Zionist invaders – these criminal acts and the invidious occupation – with the situation in the Iraqi-Iranian war is intolerable.
The PRESIDENT: I call now on the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who has asked to make a statement.
Mr. TERZI (Palestine Liberation Organization): We have just heard that there was a framework for peace and that there were attempts to torpedo that framework for peace. But let me remind this General Assembly that in November 1975 this Assembly, by a vote of 101 to 3, called for the invitation of the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in all efforts, deliberations and conferences on the Middle East. Those were meant for peace and were to be held under the auspices of the United Nations, on the basis of resolution 3236 (XXIX), which identified and reaffirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. That was reconfirmed in 1976 when the General Assembly endorsed the recommendations of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
The Camp David plot was meant to torpedo the joint efforts of the United Nations for a comprehensive peace. As we k now very well, and according to Mr. Begin:
That means the Camp David accords. Nowhere in the Camp David accords are the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people mentioned – not their right to return, nor their right to self-determination, nor their right to sovereignty.
So we can see that the Camp David accords, which it is claimed were concluded on behalf of the Palestinian people, were in fact concluded in the absence of the Palestinian people, and against the will of the Palestinian people. The only thing I can say about the Camp David accords is that they were a malicious attempt by the parties to those accords to torpedo the prospects for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.
We have been told that Israel would be willing to accept something called "coexistence between two Semitic peoples". Who is he trying to insult? The Palestinian people – Arabs, Jews, Christians and Moslems alike – have lived together – not coexisted, but lived – in peace for centuries. Conflict arose only in 1929, when it dawned on the Palestinian Arabs that the Zionist movement was planning to uproot them. In our dictionary there is no word "coexistence": we live together in peace. That is what we are striving for, and will continue to strive for, to live together in peace.
About the "sterility" in this Organization: I only wish the Organization had been sterile in 1947, before it conceived and delivered this creature called the State of Israel, with all its criminal acts.
With reference to "international taxpayers", What is it that is forcing us to come to the United Nations? Is it not the crimes of Israel against our people that take place every day? Is not the Security Council being convened almost every day because the Israelis have committed crimes against our people?
It is high time that the world realized who is the villain in this drama here.
The Zionist representative should be the last one to speak of the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, for now we all know the truth about the Warsaw ghetto uprising: the Zionist leaders were able to buy their documents and run away and leave it to the heroes to fight against the Nazis. That is what happened in Warsaw. The Zionists simply turned their backs. We know the facts. There were three classes in Warsaw: those who could buy their documents and escape – most of them were of the Zionist leadership – those who tried to collaborate with the Nazis – and they really paid the price to the Nazis, who killed them – and those who took up arms against foreign occupation in order to fight for their dignity and their rights.
That is exactly what the Palestinians are doing. They have taken up arms against foreign invaders, against the new Nazis.
The meeting rose at 5.45 p.m.
Document Type: Meeting record, Multimedia
Document Sources: General Assembly, General Assembly 7th Emergency Special Session
Subject: Agenda Item, Golan Heights, Holy places, Human rights and international humanitarian law, Jerusalem, Palestine question
Publication Date: 20/04/1982