Mideast situation – Letter from Oman

Letter dated 13 October 1986 from the Permanent Representative of

Oman to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

 As current Chairman of the Arab Group, I have the honour, on behalf of the Arab States Members of the United Nations, to ask you, in the light of the misrepresentation of the facts by the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, in a letter which he addressed to you and which was issued on 18 September 1986 under the symbol A/41/626-S/18352, to have the text of the enclosed letter circulated as an official document of the General Assembly, under item 37, and of the Security Council.

(Signed)  Saoud Bin Salim AL-ANSI

Ambassador

Permanent Representative

---

ANNEX

The Arab Group has been apprised of the contents of the letter from the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, which was issued on 18 September 1986 under the  symbol A/41/626-S/18352, and in particular of what is described therein as "a new wave of Arab terror".  It is patently obvious that the representative of the Zionist entity is endeavouring, through these racist remarks, to give a false picture of the Arab personality and civilization, in a desperate attempt to mislead the international community and to conceal the criminal acts, facts and proofs of Israeli and Zionist terror.

This method of camouflage reveals the extent of Israel's plans to prevent the exercise of, and even to deny, the legitimate right of the Palestinians and Arabs, by diverting the attention of the international community to marginal issues, so as to shake its support for the causes and the just and legitimate claims of the Arab States which are calling for Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Arab Territories and for the Palestinian people to be able to exercise its inalienable rights, in particular its right to self-determination on its national territory and its right to wage a legitimate fight against the occupation.

In that connection the Arab Group would like to outline a few facts and historical proofs of the inhuman acts and terrorist crimes which have been perpetrated:

The Middle Eastern region and Arab civilization had no experience of terrorism until Zionist groups from Europe brought these criminal acts along with them at the time of their migration to Palestine.  The Zionist movement had the distinction of being considered the first to resort to organized terror as an ideal means of realizing its political and ideological objectives. It can be said that terror was used against Palestinians and Jews who opposed the racist methods at that time. Those terrorist crimes were also committed against the Jewish citizens of Arab countries in order to sow terror among them and compel them to emigrate to occupied Palestine.

We have repeatedly reaffirmed that we unreservedly condemn all acts of terrorism, particularly since all the Arab States supported resolution 40/61 on the fight against international terrorism.

The allegations contained in the letter of the Permanent Representative of Israel concerning the crimes which have been committed against Turkish and French citizens and citizens of other countries only confirm Israel's violation of the principle of non-interference in the affairs of other States and the racist foundation upon which Israel's expansionary policy is based.

In view of the foregoing, it is no mere coincidence that men like Begin, Shamir and Sharon have successively held power and even less that they have led the most famous Zionist bands, namely, the Haganah, the Stern Group and the Irgun Zvai Leui.

It is a historical fact that Begin, the former Prime Minister, was responsible for the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre in Palestine, in which innocent and unarmed children, women and elderly people perished; during that massacre, pregnant women were disembowelled and the inhabitants of the Palestinian village were exterminated down to the last child.

After the creation of Israel, the authorities in question continued their numerous terrorist acts, the major ones being the massacres of Qibya and Kafr Kassem in 1955, under the leadership and authority of Moshe Dayan, who was at the time the Minister of Defence.

Has the representative of Israel forgotten the massacres at the Palestine refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila in 1982, during which hundreds of women and elderly people were killed?  Those massacres were organized by Sharon, currently Minister of Industry, under the guidance of General Amos Yaron, currently Military Attaché at Washington.

And what about the terrorist actions whose victims were the mayors of Ramallah, Nablus and Al Bireh in the occupied West Bank?

There are individuals in Israel who perpetuate terrorism, injustice and violence.  The world is fully aware of the terrorist activities of Kahan, a member of the Israeli Knesset who aspires to fulfil the Zionist dream, aiming to empty the occupied territories entirely of their indigenous Arab population by massacring or evicting the Palestinians, so that Israel can become a purely Jewish State.

The Arab Group draws attention of States Members of the United Nations to the hidden historic schemes of Israel, which is seeking to lay the responsibility for terrorist actions on the Arab people and enjoins them not to let themselves be deceived by Israel's hostile manoeuvres.   The international community must resist these Israeli machinations that aim to institutionalize terrorism in international relations, as was the case at the time of Israel's attacks on Iraqi installations and Tunisian territory, and is systematically the case in its repeated attacks on Lebanese territory.

The Arab Group affirms that it is not possible, from the point of view of international law, to justify terrorist actions or any other inhuman practices which radically contravene the provisions of the Charter, by claiming that they are reprisals and by falsely alleging that they are carried out in self-defence.

—–