{"id":182021,"date":"1976-03-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T21:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/?p=182021"},"modified":"2021-10-20T19:01:43","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T23:01:43","slug":"auto-insert-182021","status":"publish","type":"document","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/document\/auto-insert-182021\/","title":{"rendered":"Situation in the occupied Arab territories – SecCo debate – Meeting record"},"content":{"rendered":"
CONTENTS<\/p><\/div>\n
Provisional agenda (S\/Agenda\/1899)<\/p><\/div>\n
Adoption of the agenda<\/p><\/div>\n
Request by the Libyan Arab Republic and Pakistan for consideration of the serious situation arising from recent developments in the occupied Arab territories:<\/p><\/div>\n
Letter dated 19 March 1976 from the Permanent Representatives of the Libyan Arab Republic and Pakistan to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S\/12017)<\/p><\/div>\n
President: <\/i>Mr. Thomas S. BOYA (Benin).<\/p><\/div>\n [Present: <\/i>The representatives of the following States: Benin, China, France, Guyana, Italy, Japan, Libyan Arab Republic, Pakistan, Panama, Romania, Sweden, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United Republic of Tanzania, United States of America.<\/p><\/div>\n Provisional agenda (S\/Agenda\/1899)<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n 1.\t<\/span>Adoption of the agenda<\/p><\/div>\n 2.\t<\/span>Request by the Libyan Arab Republic and Pakistan for consideration of the serious situation arising from recent developments in the occupied Arab territories:<\/p><\/div>\n Letter dated 19 March 1976 from the Permanent Representatives of the Libyan Arab Republic and Pakistan to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S\/12017).<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n The meeting was called to order at 5.05 p.m.<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Adoption of the agenda <\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n The agenda was adopted.<\/strong><\/i><\/p><\/div>\n Request by the Libyan Arab Republic and Pakistan for consideration of the serious situation arising from recent developments in the occupied Arab territories: <\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n Letter dated 19 March 1976 from the Permanent Representatives of the Libyan Arab Republic and Pakistan to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S\/12017)<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n 1. The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French): <\/i>In accordance with the decisions adopted earlier [1893rd, 1894th, 1896th and 1897th meetings], <\/i>I shall invite the representative of Israel as well as the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization to take their places at the Security Council table and the representatives of Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Iraq, Jordan, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia and Yugoslavia to take the seats reserved for them at the side of the Council chamber on the understanding that, as is customary, they will be invited to take a place at the Council table when it is their turn to speak.<\/p><\/div>\n At the invitation of the President, Mr. Herzog (Israel) and Mr. Terzi (Palestine Liberation Organization) took places at the Security Council table and Mr. Kaiser (Bangladesh), Mr. Abdel Meguid (Egypt), Mr. Jaipal (India), Mr. Zahawie (Iraq), Mr. Sharaf (Jordan), Mr. El Hassen (Mauritania), Mr. Baroody (Saudi Arabia), Mr. Allaf (Syrian Arab Republic), Mr. Driss (Tunisia) and Mr. Petric (Yugoslavia) took the places reserved for them at the side of the Council chamber.<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n 2.\t<\/span>The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French): <\/i>The first speaker is the representative of Saudi Arabia. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.<\/p><\/div>\n 3.\t<\/span>Mr. BAROODY (Saudi Arabia): I feel constrained to speak again in order to correct certain misconceptions that seem to have formed in the minds of a few representatives here. Furthermore, so that I shall not have to ask to speak once again, I shall seize this opportunity to make clear the part of my statement yesterday [1897th meeting] <\/i>to which reference was made by none other than my colleague from the United Kingdom, Mr. Richard.<\/p><\/div>\n 4.\t<\/span>I have been told that I was a little hard on the Jews. My reply is: I am never hard on the Jews. On the Zionists, yes, but not on the Jews. We have an Arabic proverb which says, "Stay away from evil and sing". Why should I wish to pick a quarrel with the Zionists? The fact is that the Zionists have not left us alone since 1922.<\/p><\/div>\n 5.\t<\/span>Indeed, had it not been for the 1947 plan for the partition of Palestine I would have quit the United Nations. I was asked by none other than His Majesty the late King Faisal—may his soul rest in peace—to organize, as a pan-Arab, the Saudi Arabian Mission to the United Nations. I really wished to do other things, because I was afraid that the United Nations was repeating the mistakes of the League of Nations. I had watched what had happened in San Francisco when the Charter was discussed and signed. At that time King Faisal was the Foreign Minister of his country. We were invited to the United Kingdom, before the war was over, by the Government of the late Mr. Churchill may God forgive him and have mercy on his soul. But we found that our British friends could no longer bear the blood, sweat and tears Mr. Churchill's famous phrase—and we were greeted on British soil by a representative of Mr. Attlee, the head of the Labour Government. This all happened in August 1945. While we were in mid-ocean—we were on the Queen Mary; <\/i>it was still a troop ship but this was towards the end of the war and it was rather empty—we read a dispatch about the atom bombs that had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the President of the United States, the late Mr. Truman—may God forgive him too and rest his soul in peace.<\/p><\/div>\n 6.\t<\/span>What relevance has all this to the item under discussion? The relevance will become very clear as I continue this statement.<\/p><\/div>\n 7.\t<\/span>The British got into the Second World War to liberate the world not only from Nazism and fascism, but also, allegedly, from any foreign yoke. But had it not been for Hitler—and I hold no brief for Hitler—the European empires abroad would still be extant.<\/p><\/div>\n 8.\t<\/span>History is not a collection of chronological facts; that is historiography. History is what was written by people like Ibn Khaldun, the Arab historian and sociologist who lived many centuries ago. He was born in Tunis and went to Morocco, and part of his life was spent in Egypt. Real history is what is written by people like Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. What are the factors that shape history? What is the sociological background, the political forces in conflict? That is history. That is the kind of history we should learn, and not chronological facts, dates, and so forth.<\/p><\/div>\n 9.\t<\/span>I may have said this before, but it bears repetition: the Allies in the Second World War. were deceiving one another. To see that that is so one need only read a book that appeared a few months ago: Meeting at Potsdam, <\/i>by Charles Mee, Jr. When Mr. Churchill and Mr. Truman were discussing the peace terms with the late Mr. Stalin—and, although he was a Communist, may God rest his soul in peace also—Mr. Churchill turned to Mr. Truman and said, "What about those 700,000 Nazi troops that have laid down their weapons in the British zone? Why do we not march on Moscow and finish off the Russians? The Germans started it and we will finish it." As if the Russians were soft-boiled eggs. And Mr. Truman threw his chest out and said: "I have something better:<\/p><\/div>\n I have the atom bomb"—at a time when Mr. Stimpson, the Secretary of Defense, was pleading with Mr. Truman not to use the atom bomb because one day it might usher in doomsday on this earth. <\/p><\/div>\n 10.\t<\/span>I knew certain things from Sir Alexander Cadogan, who used to sit in the Security Council, but they were not as explicit as the facts that were given by Charles Mee, Jr., the American researcher. The Russians—or the Soviets—can bear me out: the Japanese were getting in touch through their Ambassador in Tokyo to see how they could make peace. But still Mr. Truman wanted to drop the atom bomb. And what a tragedy it was, and still is—because everybody is trying to acquire atom bombs.<\/p><\/div>\n 11. I shall now go a little further on in years when our British friends saw fit to have Mr. Churchill again as Prime Minister, the Empire was crumbling India and Pakistan were obtaining their freedom, and later we had to fight for those African "lions" sitting <\/i>around this table, morally supporting them. All those beautiful "birds" in the British Empire were flying out of the "cage". And Mr. Churchill said: "I was not appointed His Majesty's Prime Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire."It is against this background that I will touch on the problem that has bedevilled us since 1947.<\/p><\/div>\n 12.\t<\/span>When in 1947 the experts of the State Department of the United States asked to see Mr. Truman, because the United States had friends in the Middle East, friends in the journalistic and diplomatic sense; in other words, the United States had certain interests among Arabs and non-Arabs in the Middle East and in the Moslem world, Mr. Wadsworth spoke on their behalf—and I knew Mr. Wadsworth; he was a fine man, not because he posed the question he did but because in his own right he was a man of good origin, as you are, Mr. Scranton—and Mr. Truman said "Tell me: how many Americans of Arab or Lebanese origin do I have in my constituency?" In other words, he threw in his lot with the Zionists, because the Zionists were strong; they permeated this count if the host country—a great country. They prospered and more power to the Jews if they prosper here. But they used their power in order to lord it over the Arabs and expel the Palestinians from their homeland. And I do not have to tell you again and again and again that their forebears had never seen Palestine. <\/p><\/div>\n 13.\t<\/span>Some people take issue with me, claiming that there were distortions and perhaps a falsification of history on my part. This was said by none other than my friend Mr. Richard. "Falsification" is a big word that one should not use. If Mr. Richard had said that. I might have been mistaken or that I had misinterpreted history, that would have been something else; but to accuse me of falsification? What am I, a forger? I do not expect Mr. Richard to say that I falsify certain aspects of history. I just learnt this from the press release:<\/p><\/div>\n "Ivor Richard, United Kingdom, said the representative of Saudi Arabia yesterday had falsify certain aspects of history."<\/p><\/div>\n "Falsified", that is a big word. There is intent behind the word "falsified". He could have said that I was mistaken or had misinterpreted. I make mistake; I stand to be corrected; I always say that. But falsified"? So in my statement of clarification I wish Mr. Thomas would listen very intently to me and convey what I say to our friend Mr. Richard.<\/p><\/div>\n 14.\t<\/span>I do not see why, with all the "good" that the they have done for the Zionists, the British are always afraid that the Zionists cannot defend themselves, and they begin to defend them here. He took issue with what I had said at yesterday afternoon's meeting. I mentioned three things: Dachau, The Diary of Anne <\/i>Frank and the empires that crumbled: the empires of yore, meaning the Roman, Arab, Byzantine empires, and what not, and also the recent empires. It seems if flayed the nerves of our friend Mr. Richard, who, I think, is always cool and collected, a tower of strength, when he sits in that chair; but he was ruffled, and so I went to the record to find out what irked him. And here is what I said:<\/p><\/div>\n \t<\/span>"Let those who support Israel beware that they cannot maintain their strength and power if they are based on injustice. Where are the empires of yore?Crumbled—and the modern empires too. I do not want to exacerbate matters by naming them."[Ibid.,para. 198.]<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n Is that a falsification on a statement of fact?<\/p><\/div>\n \t<\/span>"But, good Lord, colonialists? The other colonialists were a blessing in comparison with the Khazars. Neither the British nor the French, for that matter, ever expropriated the properties of the people of the land. Of course they had to rationalize their colonialism, and at one time they called it 'the white man's burden'." [Ibid., para. 200.]<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n Read Rudyard Kipling and the literature during Kipling's day. The British had a mission. But now they have a Labour Government, I think and they are happier without the colonies. You went to "civilize" the world. Of course you have to rationalize your presence in countries which are not your own. "The white man's burden", you call it. I added:<\/p><\/div>\n \t<\/span>"But how could the Zionists rationalize their colonialism? 'God gave us Palestine. We are the chosen people of God and you, all the peoples of the world, have to go down. You are upstarts because we are the chosen people of God.' What fiction, what hoaxes." [Ibid.] <\/i><\/p><\/div>\n That did not touch the British in any particular way. Maybe this is what irked him—I want to find out. I went on to say:<\/p><\/div>\n \t<\/span>"They [meaning the Zionists] have even played on the emotions of the Europeans and swindled them"—I did not say the Jews swindled them; the Zionists— "… Before those Jews had a country, so to speak, before Israel was established, they made West Germany pay billions of dollars. And, others, I was touched when I read a book which Mrs. Roosevelt pointed out to me, saying: You read that book. It is very touching.' It was The Diary of Anne Frank, <\/i>a girl of a Jewish family which lived in the Netherlands. She, her parents and her brother and sister were interned by the Germans. It was not until recently that it dawned on me that 90 per cent of the alleged dialogues were written by certain Mr. Levine." [Ibid., para. 201.]<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n 15.\t<\/span>I have here the British source. This was written by Mr. Richard Harwood, a writer and specialist in political and diplomatic aspects of the Second World War. At present he is with the University of London. I think it is a respectable university. Mr. Harwood turned to the vexed subject of war crimes under the influence of Professor Paul Rassinier, a French writer to whose monumental work this little volume is greatly indebted. The author is now working on a sequel in this series on the main Nuremburg trial, 1945-1946. <\/p><\/div>\n 16.\t<\/span>I shall mention what I referred to, now that my good friend from the United Kingdom knows the source, a British source. This is a recent publication. And I want my colleague from Sweden to hear this. The publication says:<\/p><\/div>\n "The truth about the Anne Frank diary was first revealed in 1959 by the Swedish journal Fria Ord. <\/i>It established that the Jewish novelist Meyer Levine had written the dialogue of the 'diary' and was demanding payment for his work in a court action against Otto Frank." Otto Frank was Anne's father. "A condensation of the Swedish articles appeared in the American Economic Council Letter, <\/i>April 15th, 1959, as follows:<\/p><\/div>\n 'The Western World has for some years been made aware of a Jewish girl through the medium of what purports to be her personally written story, The Diary of Anne Frank. <\/i>Any informed literary inspection of this book would have shown it to have been impossible as the work of a teenager.<\/p><\/div>\n 'A noteworthy decision of the New York Supreme Court confirms this point of view, in that the well-known American Jewish writer, Meyer Levine, has been awarded $50,000 to be paid him by the father of Anne Frank as an honorarium for Levine's work on the Anne Frank diary.<\/p><\/div>\n 'Mr. Frank, in Switzerland, has promised to pay… Meyer Levine not less than $50,000 because he had used the dialogue of author Levine just as it was and "implanted" it in the diary as being his daughter's intellectual work.'<\/p><\/div>\n "Further inquiries brought a reply on May 7th, 1962 <\/i>from a firm of New York lawyers, which stated:<\/p><\/div>\n 'I was the attorney for Meyer Levine in his action against Otto Frank and others. It is true that a jury awarded Mr. Levine $50,000 in damages, as indicated in your letter. That award was later set aside by the trial justice, Hon. Samuel C. Coleman, on the ground that the damages had not been proved in the manner required by law. The action was subsequently settled while an appeal from Judge Coleman's decision was pending.<\/p><\/div>\n 'I am afraid that the case itself is not officially reported, so far as the trial itself, or even Judge Coleman's decision, is concerned. Certain procedural matters were reported'—mark this down, my good friend Mr. Thomas, to pass on to Ambassador Richard—'in 141 New York Supplement, Second Series 170, and in 5 Second Series 181. The correct file number in the New York County Clerk's office is 2241-1956 and the file is probably a large and full one.' "<\/p><\/div>\n If I had been under a false impression, Mr. Richard, before saying I had falsified, could have asked me, "Where did you get your facts?" Perhaps he knows something about this author and could have told me "Well, he is a spurious author". But "falsify"? Baroody falsifies? Tut tut.<\/p><\/div>\n 17. Yesterday I made a reference to Dachau. I have other sources, but I do not want to encumber the Council; some of them are from American historians. I refer now to an eye-witness account about Auschwitz:<\/p><\/div>\n "Christopherson's account is certainly one of the most important documents for a reappraisal of Auschwitz. He spent the whole of 1944 there, during which time he visited all of the separate camps comprising the large Auschwitz complex, including Auschwitz-Birkenau where it is alleged that wholesale massacres of Jews took place. Christopherson, however, is in no doubt that this is totally untrue. He writes: 'I was in Auschwitz from January until December 1944. After the war I heard about the mass murders which were supposedly perpetrated by the S.S. against the Jewish prisoners, and I was perfectly astonished. Despite all the evidence of witnesses, all the newspaper reports and radio broadcasts I still do not believe today in these horrible deeds. I have said this many times and in many places, but to no purpose. One is never believed.' "<\/p><\/div>\n And then he goes on to other sources, quoting from books about the gassings:<\/p><\/div>\n "However, no living, authentic eye-witness of these 'gassings' has ever been produced and validated. Benedikt Kautsky, who spent seven years in concentration camps, including three in Auschwitz, alleged in his book Teufel und Verdammte (Devil and Damned), <\/i>Zurich, 1946, that 'not less than 3,500,000 Jews' had been killed there. This was certainly a remarkable statement, because by his own admission he had never seen a gas chamber. He confessed: 'I was in the big German concentration camps. However, I must establish the truth that in no camp at any time did I come across such an installation as a gas chamber.' … The only execution he actually witnessed was when two Polish inmates were executed for killing two Jewish inmates. Kautsky, who was sent from Buchenwald in October 1942 to work at Auschwitz-Buna, stressed in his book that the use of prisoners in war industry was a major feature of concentration camp policy until the end of the war. He fails to reconcile this with an alleged policy of massacring Jews."<\/p><\/div>\n 18.\t<\/span>I would not say there were not executions of Jews. Who am I to say that? I would feel sorry for any human being, Jew or Gentile, who was executed whether by gas, by sabre or by bombing. "The causes of death are multifarious, but death is one." It is a crime to take the life of another person. But the gist of what I said in reply to Mr. Herzog—who has again absented himself because, I think, he is very sensitive on this subject or he does not like to hear my voice, which irritates his eardrums—was that I was refuting allegations and mud-slinging at Arabs. I was telling him of the many distortions of history, quite apart from the myths and fictions of yore. And in that context I said that the Jews capitalized on the figure they always mentioned of 6 million Jews. Once, when Mr. Tekoah was sitting next to me, I said "Why don't you make it six and a quarter million, or 5,200,000? Why always 6 million, as if you have true statistics?" This is not true, and it will come out, just as it came out that the Germans did not eat Belgian babies when they invaded Belgium in the First World War. The greatness of the British lies in the fact that their Foreign Secretary made an apology to the Germans after the First World War in Parliament. But who except Baroody dares point out these things? They call him an anti-Semite. This is a contradiction: a Semite becomes an anti-Semite—Baroody against himself. How do you like that? Shame on the word "falsify".<\/p><\/div>\n 19.\t<\/span>I do not ask for an apology, but I can refute what is said. We are diplomats; we make mistakes. But I do not think he was justified in saying that I falsified certain aspects of history. If I did so unwittingly, it was by proxy, quoting British sources.<\/p><\/div>\n 20.\t<\/span>I will end my statement by asking our colleague, from the United Kingdom to be assured that I am still friends with the British. This will not cloud the personal relations or diplomatic relations I have had with them. But we here should not be automata, formalist, playing the old game with toffs of diplomats and measure our words and juggle semantics. Let us be frank. Let us have a new approach to international affairs. It is high time, when the big Powers say one sweet thing out of one corner of their mouths and then fill their arsenals for overkill. Who do they think they are? Are we fooled? No, Sir.<\/p><\/div>\n 21.\t<\/span>Although I am 70 years old, I hope that the youngsters will take a new approach and not use the antiquated approaches to international affairs by throwing mud, beating around the bush and going circles. Let them pirouette at the circus, if they want to go in circles rather than come here and deal with matters of life and death, matters that touch upon this self-determination of a people expelled from its own land. They cannot have one yardstick for the Europeans and another for the Asians and the Africans. We are all human beings, brothers under the skin. But if they want to be supercilious, we can beat them at that game. Who are they who wish to use the approach of wielding power over weaker people? The elements of destruction lie within them, and they will fall and crumble as others have. Let them beware.<\/p><\/div>\n 22.\t<\/span>I apologize for the length of this statement, knowing that members are all avid to finish this business and, perhaps, next week embark on another touchy question on which I will have my say—Angola, and other matters. We shall see what the Europeans are doing surreptitiously or covertly. I hope there will no mud-slinging and that we will all talk with good intentions in the hope of bringing peace, peace even between the Palestinians and the Jews in the Holy and Land of Palestine, and peace all over the world. For there is no escape from it: if we do not establish peace, we may be leading the world to perdition, into anguish and tribulation and, perhaps, the extinction of the human species.<\/p><\/div>\n 23.\t<\/span>The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French): <\/i>Since no other member of the Council wishes to speak at this stage of the general debate, now that the Council is about to conclude its work on the question of Jerusalem, I should like to make a few brief comments as the representative of BENIN.<\/p><\/div>\n 24.\t<\/span>My delegation is very happy to have among us the new Permanent Representative of the United States, to whom we extend our best wishes for success in his post. I can assure him here and now of our complete co-operation.<\/p><\/div>\n 25.\t<\/span>My delegation is also pleased to see that we have participating in the debate the delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organization as well as the delegation of Israel. The contributions which both delegations have made to the work will, I am sure, help to bring about the further evolution of the situation in the Middle East. Benin is willing to see in their participation in the debates a good omen that the time is not distant when Palestinians and Israelis will at last agree to meet together at a negotiating table so as to seek jointly the ways and means to half future bloodshed in that disturbed area.<\/p><\/div>\n 26.\t<\/span>The delegation of Benin has attentively followed the statements of the delegations chiefly concerned with the problem of the tension prevailing in Jerusalem and in the occupied Arab territories, and we have come to the conclusion that we have been warranted in the position we have been taking for a number of years. The question of the desecration of the Holy Places in Jerusalem and elsewhere and the marked tendency of Israel to change the demographic, political and social character of the territories at present under its domination are manifestations of a single problem, namely, the need for withdrawal by Israel from all the occupied Arab territories. This fact has already been emphasized repeatedly in resolutions of both the General Assembly and the Security Council on the general question of the Middle East.<\/p><\/div>\n 27.\t<\/span>Clearly, any situation of occupation, if it does not draw to a close at an appropriate time, ends by exasperating the populations and provoking reactions of rebellion which the forces of occupation usually cannot control. These are tangible facts and realities which Israel must recognize in order to be able to adapt its reactions to them. This occupation, so repugnant to the Arabs and so strongly condemned by the international community, must cease without a futile delay which would inevitably be detrimental to Israel. That is why the Council must not tire of striving to have Israel withdraw as soon as possible from all the Arab territories occupied since the 1967 war if that country has a genuine wish to ensure its own security and live on terms of peace and good understanding with its neighbours. It is the duty of the Council to appeal to the great Powers, particularly those which are able to exercise any influence on Israel, so that Israel may recognize this truth and bow to the lessons of the history of wars that last too long and therefore are ruinous. If Israel were to withdraw from the occupied Arab territories, the problem before the Council, which flows from this anachronistic and abnormal situation, would consequently disappear.<\/p><\/div>\n 28.\t<\/span>It only remains for us to express the hope that soon serious and real negotiations may start between Israel and the Arabs, particularly the Palestinians, so that they may find a solution that will permit the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Arab territories and the lessening of tension in the Middle East.<\/p><\/div>\n 29.\t<\/span>Mr. AKH±¬ÁÏÍøD (Pakistan): Mr. President, on behalf of your delegation, those of Guyana, Panama, the United Republic of Tanzania and my own, I have the honour to put before the Council the draft resolution contained in document S\/12022. The draft is self explanatory. Members are aware of the effort that has gone into its preparation. Nevertheless, I shall ask your indulgence while I explain briefly the considerations which the sponsors of this text have in mind in presenting it to the Council.<\/p><\/div>\n 30.\t<\/span>The present debate has ranged far and wide over the issues and emotions which divide the Arabs from the Israelis in the Middle East, and it has reflected the passions and the bitterness of this conflict, which has gone on too long. As happens often, not everything that was said was necessary or relevant. I want to say again, as I said in my statement at the beginning of the debate [1894th meeting], <\/i>that the objective of the present meeting was specific and was specified in the letter which my delegation and that of Libya submitted to the President [SI 12017}.<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n 31.\t<\/span>What has been happening in Jerusalem and in the West Bank generally is a warning signal that time is running out. It has been stated that the military occupation of Israel has been exemplary and benign. The fact of the matter is that in its nature no military occupation can be benign. As soon as resistance to occupation becomes effective the benign features disappear and the mailed fist reappears. This morning's issue of The New York Times <\/i>states, for instance:<\/p><\/div>\n "… the Israelis today hesitate less in using force to maintain public order. In putting down the most recent riots, Israeli soldiers, many of them teenagers, have used tactics they would themselves denounce in any other situation."<\/p><\/div>\n 32.\t<\/span>The situation has been described to us by impartial observers reporting from Jerusalem and the occupied territories of the West Bank. There are curfews in town after town, paratroopers in Jerusalem on the rooftops of private houses. All this has been going on for more than seven weeks and has only intensified with every passing day. The judgement delivered by the Supreme Court of Israel has made no great difference to the situation. It was possible to describe acts by individual guerrillas as acts of terrorism, as acts of banditry. It is not possible to do so in the case of the mass uprising that we are witnessing in the West Bank. The representative of Israel minimized the whole affair as demonstrations by teenagers who had been carried away by propaganda directed at them from the outside. I would submit that such self-deception is futile and destructive.<\/p><\/div>\n 33.\t<\/span>The debate which has taken place here indicated at least one thing: that Council members are well aware of the gravity of the situation, and not only the members of the Council but the world at large. Once again, Mr. Terence Smith, reporting from Jerusalem, writes in today's New York Times: <\/i>"The disturbances are a genuinely indigenous phenomenon that reflects the accumulated grievances of a population that has been under occupation for eight years." The world at large is also clear about the necessary elements of peace. There must be withdrawal of Israeli forces from all the territories they occupied in the war of 1967. There must be recognition of the rights of Palestinians: their right to entity, their right to self-determination, their right to return if they so choose to their homes and properties from which they fled or had to flee; and finally of the right of all States in the region to live in peace, in mutual respect with each other. We shall have to return to this larger issue on a later occasion when the Council takes it up, and we shall seek once again to reach the agreement which eluded us on the previous occasion.<\/p><\/div>\n 34.\t<\/span>On the specifics of the present agenda item, it was encouraging to see that there were no substantial or major differences and, if I may say so, there were no minor differences on what is required to be done to redress the situation. I shall take the liberty of quoting from only one of the statements made here, that of our colleague from the United States. On of the matter Jerusalem he recalled what his predecessors had said:<\/p><\/div>\n "The United States does not accept or recognize unilateral actions by any States in the area as altering the status of Jerusalem."<\/p><\/div>\n He went on to say:<\/p><\/div>\n "such unilateral measures, including expropriate of land or other administrative action taken by the Government of Israel, cannot be considered other than interim and provisional"—and I would venture to suggest that it cannot be considered anything but illegal—"and cannot affect the present international status or prejudge the final and permanent status of Jerusalem." [1896th meeting, paras. 66 and 67.]<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n On the wider issues that have been of concern to us, the representative of the United States stated:<\/p><\/div>\n "… substantial resettlement of the Israeli civilian population in occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under the [Geneva] Convention… the presence of these settlements is seen by my Government as an obstacle to the success of the negotiations for a just and final peace between] Israel and its neighbours." [Ibid., para. 68.]<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n 35.\t<\/span>In the circumstances, the Security Council's responsibility to act under the Charter and to intervene in the situation is unmistakable and undisputed. <\/p><\/div>\n 36.\t<\/span>I should like to say on behalf of the sponsors of this draft resolution that we have not approached it in a spirit of a semantical exercise. Although we do feel that fundamental principles must be stated with clarity, its language and phraseology is less important than its basic objective, its basic aim and thrust, which is, as expressed in the preamble, to express concern at what has happened, at what is happening and at what might yet happen, and to affirm fundamental principles such as the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force and war; and in the operative part, to call on Israel to do what seems to us essential in the present situation and inescapable in the longer perspective of the enduring peace which, Israel itself and all the other parties to the dispute desire and seek. I must say, in parenthesis, the fact that all the parties to the dispute are for the first time seated around this table is in itself a step towards reality.<\/p><\/div>\n 37.\t<\/span>If Ambassador Scranton will forgive me, I should like to return once again to his statement. There are three questions, he said, which would determine the position of his Government towards whatever action might be proposed to the Council. The first is, "do the facts and judgements on which the draft resolution is based correspond to the actual situation?" [ibid., para. 69]. <\/i>In other words, is it broadly correct, it is accurate that the measures taken by the Israeli authorities aimed at changing the physical, cultural, demographic and religious character of the occupied territories, the establishment of Israeli settlements in occupied territories, the violations of human rights- call them by whatever name you wish—should be a matter of deep concern to this Council?<\/p><\/div>\n 38.\t<\/span>It was put to us that Israel has shown the most punctilious regard for the religious sensibilities of Moslems and Christians who venerate the Holy Places situated in Jerusalem. I shall not burden the Council with a great deal of detail, but I have before me an article from The Guardian <\/i>of London, 27 April 1972, by David Hirst, entitled "Bulldozing through Arab history", a long article in which he states:<\/p><\/div>\n "Four days after Dayan made his proclamation"—a proclamation to the effect that Israel would show respect for the Holy Places—"Israeli bulldozers demolished… 700 years of Moslem history in the shape of the waqf <\/i>or religious endowment adjoining the Wall,"—the Wailing Wall—"founded by the son of Saladin himself; 135 houses of the lograbi quarter, where 650 beneficiaries of the endowment lived, and two mosques were swept away."<\/p><\/div>\n There is considerably more in the article.<\/p><\/div>\n 39.\t<\/span>Ambassador Scranton's second question was, "will the Council's action in practice advance the proper administration of the areas involved?" [ibid.]. <\/i>All that the Council can do is to remind the parties of their responsibilities, of their obligations, of their duties, of their commitments under the international instruments which exist, and this is what we seek to do. We have done it before and we have been met with silence and disregard. The least we can do—in operative paragraph 1—is to deplore the fact that Israel has failed "… to put a stop to actions and policies tending to change the status of the City of Jerusalem and to rescind measures already taken to that effect".<\/p><\/div>\n 40.\t<\/span>Finally, the representative of the United States asked—and he said, and I agree, that this was the roost important question of all—"will the Council's Action help or hinder the peaceful settlement process, the framework for which was established by resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973)?" [ibid.]. <\/i>It is the considered view of the five sponsors, a view we hope will be shared by all the members of the Council, that the adoption of the draft resolution which we put TO you will indeed help this process. If there is any delegation which feels that, on the contrary, the adoption of this draft resolution will hinder the peaceful settlement process, we should be very happy to hear in what way it would do so.<\/p><\/div>\n 41.\t<\/span>I said that we are not wedded to any particular and phraseology. We have been responsive and we remain responsive to any constructive ideas, any changes, that any member feels might be necessary or might even be advisable to improve this draft and, if not to improve it, to make it more generally acceptable.<\/p><\/div>\n 42.\t<\/span>I think that we have given affirmative answers and that this draft resolution gives affirmative answers to all three of Mr. Scranton's questions. It embodies the widest measure of agreement obtainable on the specifics of the case we are discussing. It would be more than a pity, it would be more than disappointing; it would be contrary to the political logic of the situation if that agreement fell short of what is necessary for the unanimous adoption of the draft resolution. With these words I commend this draft resolution to the members of the Council in the hope that it will be adopted without dissent.<\/p><\/div>\n 43.\t<\/span>The PRESIDENT (interpretation from French): <\/i>The next speaker is the representative of Israel, on whom I now call.<\/p><\/div>\n 44.\t<\/span>Mr. HERZOG (Israel): In my initial remarks to the Council [1894th meeting], <\/i>I dwelt on the abandonment of the principles of natural law in United Nations practices. I pointed out that the concepts of impartiality in such a hearing as this one had been replaced by the idea that United Nations organs are both prosecutor and judge.<\/p><\/div>\n 45.\t<\/span>An allegation was preferred in connexion with certain alleged events in Jerusalem connected with the Al-Aqsa Mosque. As I pointed out, the allegation was nothing more than a lie and uttered in a mischievous and sinister attempt to incite religious feelings for political purposes. I trust that I convinced at least some of the representatives that indeed we were dealing with a frivolous argument which was completely unsustained by the evidence and was in fact a facetious use of the representatives' time. What is so serious, of course, in this whole debate is the dangerous and sinister purpose behind it all, namely, an attempt to inflame religious opinion throughout the world on the basis of a foul untruth.<\/p><\/div>\n 46.\t<\/span>An attempt was made to condemn Israel, whose Government is in fact protecting the Moslems' rights and whose Supreme Court has twice upheld the Government's decision. I believe that I convinced some of my colleagues here on this point. In fact, you may have noticed that allegations in this respect have quietly disappeared from the speeches made before this body. Instead, we suddenly find ourselves seized of all sorts of matters irrelevant to the accusation preferred which do not relate in any way whatsoever to the original charges in respect of which this body was hastily summoned. This is in the Orwellian tradition of the Organization: to debate something that never was in the language which Orwell coined, "Newspeak", in which peace is war, love is hate and truth is falsehood. Yes, it may be 1976 outside this building, but the year inside this building is 1984.<\/p><\/div>\n 47.\t<\/span>And now what do we do? This allegation having been proved false, all forms of side issues were introduced, which only goes to prove what I explained to the Council regarding the real purpose of the frivolous document originally submitted in order to summon this body.<\/p><\/div>\n 48.\t<\/span>What might have been expected of this body if it had been acting in accordance with the principles of natural law—which should of course guide it? In those circumstances, those who had preferred this false charge would have been condemned not only for bringing it before this body and wasting everybody's time but also for a flagrant act of racial and religious incitement calculated to lead to a disturbance of the peace and to inflame passions in a situation fraught with danger. An impartial body seated as a judiciary, independent of the executive, unimpeded by considerations of expediency would first of all have condemned this disgraceful attempt to falsify the facts, create mischief, encourage religious incitement and do harm in a charged atmosphere today in a manner which is best calculated to bring deterioration and tragedy. This body would then have proceeded, if it had indeed been an impartial judiciary and unimpeded by considerations of expediency, to invite the States parties to the conflict to meet face to face in accordance with Security Council resolution 338 (1973) and come to grips with the issues at stake instead of wasting the time of the Council.<\/p><\/div>\n