Palestine question – GA emergency session – Letter from Israel

QUESTION OF PALESTINE

Letter dated 21 April 1982 from the Permanent Representative

of Israel to the United Nations addressed to the President

of the General Assembly

In my letter to the Secretary-General dated 20 July 1980 (A/35/344), I pointed out that the very convening of the seventh emergency special session of the General Assembly was in violation of the requirements laid down in Assembly resolution 377 A (V) of 3 November 1950, entitled “Uniting for peace”, and that its holding thus made a complete mockery of the relevant rules of procedure of the Assembly.  I further pointed out that, as a result, any resolutions adopted by an intrinsically illegal session of the General Assembly would themselves be illegal and tainted ab initio.

The impropriety surrounding the seventh emergency special session from its very inception and the illegality of its deliberations and proceedings have been further compounded this week by the “resumption” on 20 April 1982 of the seventh emergency special session after it had been adjourned “temporarily” on 29 July 1980 (resolution ES-7/2, para. 14).  A “temporary” adjournment must surely be temporary and cannot be construed as extending ad infinitum to suit the whims of certain States who ride roughshod over the Charter, the rules of procedure of the General Assembly, elementary propriety and basic logic.

As I pointed out in my statement to the General Assembly on 20 April 1982, the “resumption” now of the seventh emergency special session “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” (A/ES-7/PV.12, p. 51).

I have the honour to request that this letter be circulated as a document of the General Assembly.

(Signed) Yehuda Z. BLUM

Ambassador

Permanent Representative of Israel

to the United Nations