YouSaid · the spoken record

EBAN

lines on the record: 663
first: 1949-09-24
most recent: 1973-09-24
sittings or episodes: 14
sources: un-general-debate

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“We had to ask ourselves whether the short negotiating period would be devoted to a genuine quest for peace; or whether it would be used as a respite for the United Arab Republic, with Soviet aid, to improve its prospect for a military solution by a massive missile concentration which would be brought up without Israeli interference under cover of the ceasefire. In short, what were the ninety days designed to promote: an EgyptianIsraeli effort at peace, or a SovietEgyptian deployment for a more effective war? 108. Decisive reassurance on this question was found for us in that part of the American peace initiative which provided for a "standstill" in an agreed area on each side of the Suez Canal ceasefire line.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“The ceasefire agreement, as members will see, held a central place in our response to the United States peace initiative. The United Arab Republic had limited its acceptance of the ceasefire to a period of ninety days. That restriction raised issues which would not have existed with comparable force in an unlimited ceasefire which would have brought the military phase of the conflict to a permanent end. Instead of this we now had an explicit prospect that after three months the United Arab Republic might regard the ceasefire as having expired. And the futile but destructive war of attrition would be resumed. Since that was the United Arab Republic position, its implications had to be seriously weighed.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“Each of the parties to be responsible within its territory for the prevention of all hostile acts by regular military forces or paramilitary forces, including irregular forces, against the armed forces or against civilians living in the territory of the other party; "(b) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the 1967 conflict to secure, recognized and agreed boundaries to be determined in the peace agreements." That was the text to which we agreed. 106. And, finally, we made clear that: "Israel will not claim the prior acceptance by the other party of her positions, as Israel does not accept in advance the positions of the other parties as communicated publicly or otherwise. Each party will be free to present its proposals on the matters under discussion." 107.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“On the basis of clarifications given by the United States Government in this matter, Israel is prepared to reply affirmatively to the United States proposal for a ceasefire for at least three months on the Egyptian front." We further agreed: "to hold discussions under Ambassador Jarring's auspices within the framework of Security Council resolution 242 (1967) on the basis of the expression of readiness by the parties to carry out the Security Council's resolution in all its parts, in order to achieve an agreed and binding contractual peace agreement which would ensure: "(a) Termination by Egypt and Israel of all claims or states of belligerency and respect and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of each other and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“We decided to designate a representative to discussions to be held under Ambassador Jarring's auspices with the United Arab Republic and Jordan. 105. We stated that: "Israel's position in favor of a ceasefire on the basis of reciprocity on all fronts, including the Egyptian front, in accordance with the Security Council's ceasefire resolutions remains unchanged.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“We knew that some Arab States and all the Palestine terrorist organizations had rejected that proposal because it spoke of peace, to which they are in principle totally opposed. We knew that Egypt and Jordan had accompanied their acceptance of the initiative by a statement of terms and conditions incompatible with its principles and with its authors' stated intentions. There were other features of the proposal which raised difficulties for us within our parliamentary and democratic system. But we saw this initiative with all its defects and complexities as an opportunity to explore the conditions of a final peace. These considerations prevailed above all the others. And so, on 4 August, the Government of Israel determined and formulated a policy to which it still adheres.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“It is far worse when a great Power intervenes to aggravate a regional conflict, to widen its scope, to risk counteraction by other Powers and thus to extend the perils of a local war to all mankind. The Soviet intervention does not concern Israel alone. It has other aims. Its other aims are to win predominance in the Mediterranean; to outflank the European defense system from the south; to establish a large foreign army on African soil in contempt for the principle of African independence; and to bring about a general disturbance of the international equilibrium. Thus, President Nasser's repudiation of the ceasefire and the increasing scope of Soviet intervention have results which the world can ill afford. 104. It was in the light of those conditions that my Government studied the United States peace initiative in June and July 1970.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“When this strategy failed, through Israel's successful response, the more complex SAM3 missiles, this time manned by Soviet personnel, were introduced. And by early summer Soviet pilots were flying operational missions in the battle zone. Now, this was more ominous than anything that had gone on before. This aroused a worldwide concern. Nothing of the kind had happened anywhere since the end of the Second World War, apart from the unhappy participation of Soviet pilots in the bombardment of villages in Yemen in 1963. But Soviet involvement in the Suez Canal hostilities had far graver implications. It is bad enough that regional conflicts should rage unsolved through a rejection of the normal principles of ceasefire and negotiation.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“The first choice would have meant to work with Israel for the establishment of peace; the second meant the pursuit of Soviet aid for maintaining the war at a higher level of intensity. Alas, it is clear that in the early months of 1970 the second choice was taken. 103. Thereafter, the conflict was extended with every passing month beyond its regional context. It now took on a global dimension. A system of SAM2 missiles had been erected so that the artillery bombardment of Israeli forces could be carried out without fear of aerial response. The weapons were defensive only in the narrow tactical sense; they were geared to an offensive strategy, the elimination of the ceasefire and its replacement by a constant war of attrition. The missiles stand guard in order that the guns should be free to speak.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“Above all, the attacks by regular armies and terrorist groups had not dislodged us from any point along the ceasefire lines which we were resolved and internationally entitled to hold until the attainment of peace. The war of attrition brought its authors neither victory nor honor. Indeed, it exposed the Arab States to tensions, frustrations and dangers far greater than those by which Israel was afflicted. 102. In this dilemma Arab policy faced two choices. It could acknowledge the futility of war, accept the reestablishment of the ceasefire and embark on the negotiation of a final peace; or it could appeal to forces outside the region for help to continue and intensify hostilities.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“In March 1969 President Nasser had unilaterally repudiated his country's agreement to maintain the ceasefire. The resultant warfare across the Suez Canal was henceforward constant, destructive and of growing intensity. And it was achieving no purpose whatever. Attempts to bring about Israel's collapse through attrition had totally failed. Israel was aware of the loss and waste inflicted on it and, still more, on Egypt by the war. But neither the artillery assaults on Israel's forces from the south, nor terrorist attacks on helpless civilians from the north and east, nor the arrogant violence and piracy of Arab terrorists in countries remote from the conflict had prevented our national enterprise from going forward in swift growth.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“An international representative, held in universal trust, was appointed to assist the parties in the promotion of that agreement. Moreover, a ceasefire had been proposed by the Security Council and accepted by the parties on the morrow of the war. According to its terms, the ceasefire was to be unconditional, of indefinite duration, and could not be legitimately set aside before the attainment of permanent peace. 101. In its sessions since 1967 the General Assembly has reviewed successive attempts to bring about agreement on the establishment of a final peace Now and then a prospect has glowed briefly, only W be extinguished almost before it could be discerned. But by the summer of this year the perils were great enough to compel new thinking and new effort on many sides.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“It rejected all proposals for reproducing the situation which had led to one war and which, if renewed, would lead inevitably to another. It voted down five proposals for a return to the old armistice lines, and in November 1967 it called for the establishment of a just and lasting peace, based on the total renunciation of belligerency and war, the liquidation of maritime blockade and hostile acts, and the explicit recognition by the Arab States and Israel of each other's sovereignty, independence and national identity. It also called for the establishment of "secure and recognized boundaries". These have never existed in our region; they must be established by agreement for the first time. 100. The simple theme of this international policy was that the structure of peace should be built by agreement between the States of the Middle East.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“We still recall the relief and consolation which gripped the enlightened world when Israel tore the strangling fingers from its throat. 98. Israel remembers. It cannot forget; it cannot forget the horror from which it barely escaped or the sense of salvation which came from its successful resistance. From then until now our national policy has been inspired by two central purposes: to build a structure of permanent peace with the neighboring States, if their policy makes that possible, and, in any case, to avoid a return to the conditions of anarchy and vulnerability out of which the war exploded. 99. In its tense debates during 1967, the United Nations developed the contours of an international policy designed to meet the new conditions created by the 1967 war.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“In that spirit I come to this rostrum to state Israel's views on the tensions which convulse our region and hang heavy on the conscience and concern of all mankind. 97. The point of reference is still the unforgotten drama of 1967. Forty months have passed since a resolute attempt was made to bring about the destruction of Israel's peace, sovereignty and very life through the strangling grip of belligerency, blockade, encirclement and aggressive assault. Israel's policy is still dominated by the recollection of the brief moment when its extinction was a real and vivid prospect. The defeat of that attempt by its solitary effort and independent sacrifice is inscribed on Israel's unfailing memory. Beyond its place in Israel's history, that victory was a landmark in the human journey towards justice, law and peace.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“The main international preoccupation is now focused on the region where the Arab and Israeli nations were born and in which they must forever live side by side. In the summer of 1967 the Security Council and the General Assembly were the inactive spectators of a war that they did nothing to prevent. In recent weeks, they have watched a Member State in the Middle East pass through its most destructive and agonizing ordeal. It may be that in its present strength and condition our Organization is unable to restrain violence and ensure security as its Charter envisaged. But it need not renounce its role as the central forum from which the policies of its Members may be communicated to the opinion of the world.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“But this does not absolve the Organization from the duty to analyze its own experience and to take a rational and effective view of its priorities and procedures in the coming years. This Organization is young in relation to the immensity of the vision which it serves. Yet the rhythm of change has been so intense that the world in which the United Nations was born now belongs to receding memory. There is urgent need for Governments to determine the place which the United Nations occupies in their policies, and for the United Nations itself to modernize its concepts, structures, and its methods of operation. Only thus will the gap between the brilliant hope and the harsh reality be reduced. 96.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“It exerts no more than a marginal influence on the main issues of conflict in our times, and the central currents of international thought and action flow outside its walls. There is a sharp paradox in that turn of fortune, for there has never been a greater objective need for a unitary framework of international relations to express the common interest of mankind. For the first time in history distance has become irrelevant, and all peoples are bound together in danger and opportunity. Thus, international institutions seem to be declining in the very conditions which logically favor their success. The United Nations should be asking itself with implacable candor: "what went wrong?". 95. The trouble lies, of course, mainly in the discordant policies of the States which compose international society.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“93. Mr. President, your country, Norway, has a warm place in Israel's heart. Our common sacrifice drew our peoples together in the darkness of the Nazi age, and friendship has lit up every road that we have trodden ever since. Your erudition and integrity enlarge the respect which your country's name evokes across the world. In carrying out your charge you have before you the recent example of your predecessor, Mrs. Angie BrooksRandolph, who graced henPresidency with charm, originality and deep international convictions. 94. The twenty-fifth session of the General Assembly has been chosen as a commemorative occasion. What we need most is not a festive celebration but a lucid exercise in self-criticism. The United Nations has fallen on hard days. Its resonance is diminished and its flame is burning low.”
1970-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 25 (1970)
“The world community should summon the Arab Governments to abandon a hostility which flows against the ecumenical and unifying currents of twentieth-century life. If this is done, then the Middle East will have a future even greater than its past, inspired by a new and spacious vision, a continuing hope fed by continuing achievement.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Its genius in the past and its vocation in the future lie in the diversity of faiths, cultures, tongues, societies and sovereignties which compose its life. It is a mosaic; it is not a monolith. It is the cradle and the home of more nations than one. 218. The issue is how to bring about the peaceful harmony of States which have different origins but common interests and which belong in equal logic and in equal justice to the Middle Eastern story. 219. There is room for profound disquiet, but not for fatalistic despair. There is no such thing in history as an irreconcilable conflict. In our own generation deeply-rooted, traditional animosities between nations have passed away. New forms and structures of international co-operation have evolved.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“And our neighbours speak of it as though it were some sudden eruption which might be persuaded to disappear. 216. Arab political and intellectual leaders have never tried, even in a reluctant spirit, to probe the factors which make of Israel an integral part of the past history, the present reality and the future destination of the Middle East. They must ultimately come to terms, not just with a community of Jews or Israelis, but with a sovereign Israel of marked singularity and identity, embodying a tradition and outlook which are separate from the Arab tradition and the Arab outlook. For Israel can be a good neighbour of the Arab world; it cannot be a part of it. 217. That involves the second issue, which is that of diversity. The Middle East is a concept which cannot be exhausted by Arab terms alone.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“If I close without any prediction about the prospects of peace in the Middle East it is because so much depends on the incalculable evolution of ideas. I fear that the it essence of the matter is ideological. 215. The Arab view of Israel and of the Middle East is deformed by a refusal to confront two essential attributes of our region. The first is the depth and authenticity of the historic forces which tie our people to the land of Israel. Much of human history is unintelligible unless that connexion is taken into due account. Remove Israel and all that has flowed from Israel out of Middle Eastern history and you evacuate that history of its central experiences. Here we have the only State in the world which speaks the same tongue, upholds the same faith and inhabits the same land as it did 3,000 years ago.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“I will say no more, for the Prime Minister of New Zealand—not for the first time—has been the voice of a disinterested conscience on that matter this afternoon. 213. In an older and more chivalrous period pirates on the sea were regarded as enemies of the human race: generis humani hostis. They were given no asylum or quarter. Swift justice struck them wherever they could be caught. The new pirates of the air are no different; they are enemies of all mankind and should be so treated by the international community. But would it not be a gross paradox if a State which is now in offence, in flagrant offence, against these international principles were to be received in the Security Council as a guardian of international peace and security? 214.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Other recent instances of political hijacking, especially those affecting Ethiopia, are not unknown to Members of the United Nations. Israel shares the view that has been expressed here that these developments pose new challenges to the United Nations and to the organizations charged with civii aviation. The Government of Israel is a party to the Tokyo Convention. We are following with close attention the attempts being made, both in the International Civil Aviation Organization and elsewhere, to strengthen international practices so as to ensure that whenever hijackings occur the passengers and crew are all, without exception, enabled to continue on their journey without delay and that the perpetrators of piratical acts are brought to justice.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“In their indiscriminate warfare, Arab terrorists have not passed over innocent civil aircraft far from the arena of conflict. The events of Algeria and Damascus are well known. Only a few weeks ago a foreign aircraft on an international flight was forced at gunpoint into Damascus, where the passengers and crew barely managed to scramble out of the emergency chutes before a bomb which the hijackers had placed in the flight-deck exploded. Some passengers have been released, but two Israeli nationals on board, one a professor of the Medical School of the Hebrew University, and the other a citizen suffering from chronic sickness, are still being forcibly detained in Damascus. I wonder if any Syrian representative could come and tell us on what possible grounds these two people are being detained. 212.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“In the deadlock and frustration that have attended its political work, the United Nations would have found an enhanced prestige and enlargement of its universal role if it had been given more support for its development activities. In the appropriate Committee discussions, my delegation will criticize all proposals for asking the United Nations to make studies instead of enabling it to fulfil concrete projects. Let us stop making studies. We know what the problems are; the question is not how to investigate them, but how to solve them. 211. The second point refers to freedom of aviation. The historic journey to the moon was, after all, a development of man’s earlier mastery of the air. Is it not intolerable that the year of Apollo 11 should, on earth, have been a record year for hijackers?”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“This work has brought us into close and fruitful relations with emerging societies in 70 lands with which we have concluded agreements and arrangements on development co-operation. It is, after all, in the creation of new communities that men experience their highest sense of creativity. From that vantage point I express Israel’s regret that the United Nations has not been enabled by its Members, especially the advanced States, to play a more central role in the development drama. The first United Nations Development Decade draws to an end with none of its goals achieved or approached. The rate of economic growth in developing countries is little more than 2.7 per cent instead of the 5 per cent envisaged 10 years ago.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“There is also, regrettably, a rampant anti-Semitic literature in the Soviet Union which is utterly repugnant to all who remember the Soviet role of resistance to the Nazi plague. This campaign of distortion is not worthy of the Soviet Union, and we appeal to that country to accord to its Jewish minority the same rights to cultural expression and survival that it accords to all other minorities. 210. There are two international questions already mentioned in this debate which engage Israel’s concern. Our particular international vocation is to join with other States in promoting accelerated development. We seek to share with them the social insights and technical skills which have contributed to our own economic and scientific growth.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Another situation, different in nature and scope but also characterized by relentless hostility, affects the survival of a great and ancient Jewish community in the Soviet Union. Here the pressures exerted are not those of physical persecution; rather there is the more subtle destruction of the religious spiritual and cultural life of the Soviet Jewish entity. At one time the assault was conducted against so-called cosmopolitans, and culminated in the shocking excesses of the “doctors’ trial". Today, virulent campaigns, supported by the press, television and other mass media, are directed at so-called international Zionism, as a cover to bring about the spiritual and cultural death of three to four million Jews.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“The small Jewish community there, which goes back to centuries before the birth of Islam, lives in terror and misery, unable to carry on a normal existence and refused the right to leave even though several Governments of enlightened conscience have offered them admission or refuge. The situation is little better in Syria, and in Egypt scores of heads of families are still in prison without charge or hope of release. We appeal to international opinion to intercede on behalf of these innocent and helpless people and to enable them to secure the right to leave for lands ready to receive them where they may hope to re-establish their lives in conditions of human dignity. 209.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Israel’s encounter with other sovereign States is, in the deep, historical sense, a part of the unending dialogue between the Jewish people and the rest of mankind. There are two urgent problems here which should appeal urgently to the universal conscience. The Secretary-General refers, in the introduction to his annual report, to the widely-felt concern for the plight of helpless Jewish minorities in certain Arab States [A/7601/Add.1, para. 74]. Hopes for an alleviation of the pitiful situation of the Jews of Iraq after the accession of a new régime last July have been dashed to the ground. Once again Jews as well as other Iraqi citizens have, without public trial or evidence of any kind, been judicially murdered on the basis of fabricated charges.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“This one-sidedness was compounded, after the hostilities by the rupture of relations with Israel when Israel refused to be wiped out, by a renewal of the arms race at an intensified pace after the hostilities, and by an uncritical endorsement of all Arab policies in the controversy on peace terms. Mr. Gromyko’s speech this morning reveals no intention of departing from these attitudes and he virtually promises us an indefinitely continuing arms race. 207. It seems to us that the major Powers can promote peace, if they will, by supporting the cease-fire, by advocating peace negotiations, by refraining from all temptation to globalize the conflict, by not substituting their own views for the free interaction of Arab and Israeli policies, and by separating the Arab-Israeli conflict as far as possible from their own mutual relations. 208.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Nothing has happened to refute that prediction. 206. We particularly ask all Member States to understand the anomaly and injustice of asking Israel to accept proposals and ideas which have a Soviet component; for the Soviet Union played a sinister role in the developments leading up to the 1967 war by constantly stimulating an arms race, by blind identification with Arab policies, closing the Security Council to the equal and objective examination of Israel’s interest, by giving false information Cairo on an alleged Israeli invasion of Damascus. By diffusing an odious picture of Israel’s spiritual heritage and Jewish solidarities, the Soviet Union virtually became a party to the dispute. Instead of being a disinterested source of opinion and counsel.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Surely the States of the Middle East, by virtue of the independence which they have sought and won, must see the promotion of peace as their own autonomous responsibility. It is anachronistic for them to cast their eyes outward in the hope that a peace settlement can be manufactured and imported ready-made from outside. The peace must be built by Israeli and Arab hands, for it is Israeli and Arab lives which are at stake. We expressed our scepticism and reserve about diplomatic processes which were undertaken early this year with the effect of removing the initiative and responsibility of peace-making from the Governments of the Middle East. For when the complex national interests and rivalries of great Powers are superimposed on a regional tension, the result is often not to reduce the tension but to broaden its scope.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“It should be possible to reconcile our separate sovereignties with our common regional interests. 203. We propose that a conference of Middle Eastern States should be convened, together with the Governments contributing to refugee relief and the specialized agencies of the United Nations, in order to chart a five-year plan under regional and international responsibility for the solution of the refugee problem in the framework of a lasting peace, and the integration of refugees into productive life. In view of the humanitarian urgencies, such a conference need not await the negotiation of any other issue. 204. Those are our positions. Those are the positions to which Mr. Gromyko, in an unusual expression of humour, referred this morning as Israel’s obstruction of peace. 205.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“If they interpret the difference in one direction, others can interpret it in another; and the only solution is to submit the problem to the process of negotiation and agreement. 202. In conditions of peace, the people of Israel and the Palestinian Arabs on both sides of the Jordan would be living as citizens of sovereign States in accordance with the boundary agreed to and concluded under the peace. But the inherent geopolitical unity of this region argues in favour of an open frontier such as that now emerging within the European community and in other regional structures. The freedom of movement and commerce which has evolved in that area should be confirmed and broadened under the peace by applying the community principle to the. peoples who live on both sides of the Jordan and to both of the negotiating States.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Now, there is no need to be apologetic about the doctrine that peace boundaries are different from armistice lines. The Arab Governments wrote into our 1949 General Armistice Agreements a provision stating that the armistice lines were not to be interpreted as political or territorial boundaries, and that those boundaries remained to be worked out by agreement in the transition to peace. We have now embarked on that transition. Israel in this matter is not in a position of juridical defence. Indeed, in their letter to Ambassador Jarring of April 1969, the United Arab Republic and Jordan interpreted the term “secure and recognized boundaries” as something different from the armistice lines of 4 June 1967.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Instead of cease-fire lines or armistice lines, we should establish secure, recognized and agreed boundaries as part of the peace-making process, and dispose armed forces in full accordance with the boundaries to be determined in the peace treaties. It is important to break away from the temporary territorial concepts which have prevailed since 1948 in order to develop, for the first time, a permanent structure of boundaries and security agreements. 201. A central weakness of Foreign Minister Gromyko’s assertion this morning is that he totally ignored the need—fully supported by international law—to reach agreement between Israel and each contiguous Arab State on the determination of secure and mutually agreed boundaries of peace.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“But once negotiations begin, the participants must commit themselves to its fortunes; and their task will be not merely to state positions, but also to try to bring them into harmony. 199. Israel does not claim exclusive or unilateral jurisdiction in the Holy Places of Christianity and Islam in Jerusalem and is willing to discuss this principle with those traditionally concerned. There is a versatile range of possibilities for working out a status for the Holy Places in such a manner as to promote Middle Eastern peace and ecumenical harmony. In the meantime, our policy is that the Moslem and Christian Holy Places should always be under the responsibility of those who hold them sacred. This principle has been in practical effect since 1967. 200.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Is it really beyond our will and capacity to make agreed arrangements now for meeting in order to negotiate and sign peace treaties? Let us, the Foreign Ministers of Israel and the Arab States take advantage of our simultaneous presence, and that of Ambassador Jarring, here in New York in order to begin this work here—and in order to begin it now. 198. Let me make clear that Israel is prepared to negotiate without prior conditions of any kind; it does not seek any advance acceptance by Arab Governments of its own proposals. And the word “non-negotiable” is not a part of Israel’s vocabulary. You ask what can be discussed and proposed in these negotiations. I answer: everything. You ask what is excluded from discussion. I answer: nothing. In the negotiations, we shall of course define where our vital and indispensable interests lie.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“In a communication to Ambassador Jarring on 2 April 1969 Israel included all these undertakings. It also declared that: “...it accepts the Security Council resolution 242 (1967) calling for the promotion of agreement on the establishment of a just and lasting peace to be reached by negotiation and agreement between the Governments concerned. Implementation of agreements should begin when agreement has been concluded on all their provisions.” 197. In discussing the arrangements, the venue and the agenda for negotiations, we could make full use of the good offices of Ambassador Jarring. Twenty years ago Israel and the Arab States found it possible to devise agreed arrangements for meeting in order to negotiate and sign armistice agreements.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“But the maintenance of the cease-fire requires practical measures to give it effect. I therefore propose further that authorized military representatives of the forces facing each other across the cease-fire lines should meet in order to work out effective arrangements for strict and reciprocal observance. This proposal is in full conformity with many United Nations precedents. 195. But while the prevention of war is our most urgent task, this does not exhaust our duty. The consolidation of the cease-fire should be followed, and indeed accompanied, by a purposeful effort to promote a lasting peace. The States of the Middle East should declare their readiness to establish permanent peace, to liquidate their 21-year-old conflict, and to negotiate detailed agreements on all the matters at issue between them. 196.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“The first priority belongs to the renewal and reinforcement of the cease-fire. Now, the cease-fire, as pro-posed by the Security Council, was voluntarily accepted by the Arab States as well as by Israel in June 1967. Its acceptance served an Arab interest then, just as its renewal would be in their interest as well as in ours now. The cease-fire resolution was unconditional; it was not limited in time or scope. No diplomatic effort can prosper without a complete and unconditional cease-fire. United Nations observers, for all their effort and sacrifice, cannot help to maintain a cease-fire if the leading Arab Government regards it as null and void. 194. I propose on Israel’s behalf that each of the Governments which accepted the cease-fire resolution of 6 June 1967 [233 (1967)] should now pledge anew its strict adherence to its terms.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Thus the Arab position, in our eyes, amounts to this: that Israel should give up its security, without obtaining a genuine, normal, stable, irrevocable binding peace. Now, we shall do no such thing. After 21 years of siege and thousands of years of struggle to maintain and preserve an identity, we cannot put Israel’s existence under a mark of interrogation which hovers over no other nation, least of all over the Arab nation, in its 14 States and its continental expanse. 192. The question is whether we can now break out of the deadlock into a humane and rational order of relations. To this problem my colleagues and I in the Israel Government have given renewed attention in recent days. I wish to take the General Assembly into the knowledge and understanding of our views. 193.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Nowhere is there any acknowledgement that the relations between the Arab States and Israel are governed not only by a Security Council text, which Cairo interprets as compatible with the Khartoum decisions, but also by the established norms and principles of international law relating to the duties of States and to the transition from war to peace. 190. Now, the suspension of the Jarring mission came in April this year. There has been no forward movement since then. Consultations between the permanent members of the Security Council have, predictably, given no results. The Soviet Union has not been willing to deviate from the Arab positions or to accept the view advanced by the United States that direct meetings between Israel and its neighbours are essential at some stage, if agreement is to be reached. 191.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“Jarring’s question whether it understands the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba to be international waterways open to Israel, and not merely to what Cairo calls "all States". 189. Finally, the United Arab Republic declines to conclude and sign treaties with Israel establishing peace by reciprocal consent. It is prepared to conclude agreements with the Security Council, with which the United Arab Republic is not at war, with which it does not have a common boundary, and in which Israel’s cause cannot be defended or sustained.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“It will be recalled that in October 1956, and many times thereafter, Egypt agreed to give free passage in the Suez Canal for every State in the world. Now, what did that mean? "Every State in the world" has meant every State, except for the eternal exception. 187. The Egyptian reply ignores the injunction to seek agreement with Israel—although this is the operative part of the resolution—and the United Arab Republic says that the “secure and recognized boundaries” for Israel are those which Arab violence swept away in 1947 and 1948. 188. The Egyptian reply declines to specify that the freedom of navigation prescribed by the Security Council resolution includes freedom of navigation for Israel. Egypt deliberately avoids response to Mr.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“In April 1969 the Arab Governments, led by the United Arab Republic, formally outlined their policies in written replies to Ambassador Jarring. In its text, the United Arab Republic, while professing to accept the Security Council’s resolution of 22 November 1967 [242 (1967)], refuses to abandon belligerency unless the armistice lines of 1967 are totally restored, whereas there is, of course, no resolution seeking the restoration of those lines. 185. The United Arab Republic’s reply abstains from specifically acknowledging Israel’s right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries, free from acts or threats of force. Cairo accepts that right for what it calls "every State"—a phrase which in Egyptian practice and doctrine has never included Israel. 186.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)
“When Arab Governments shelter and sponsor those who carry out or plan violent actions in the territories of Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Philippines, and the Federal Republic of Germany, or when those Governments fail to condemn and suppress those actions, they show contempt not only for Israel’s sovereignty but for the sovereignty of European and other countries as well. They also adopt methods and arenas of combat in which Israel, in accordance with its own conceptions of international civility, is unwilling to make any identical response. So much for the military story. 184. The diplomatic history can be more briefly told. In October 1968 the United Arab Republic, followed by other Arab States, broke off contact with Israel through the Jarring mission in New York.”
1969-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 24 (1969)