User talk:Harlan wilkerson/3. Shortcomings

Extract from Georgetown University Seminar on UN Security Council Resolution 242.

At the same time scores of Israeli settlements have already been established on the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan. The process of colonisation of Arab lands goes rapidly ahead in disregard of objections from nearly every Government in the world, including' even the American Government. These actions of the Israeli Government are in clear defiance of the Resolution 242. They constitute an open rejection of the policy so widely supported in 1967. They are in effect an endeavour to annex all the Arab lands of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in an expanded Israel, and to condemn the Palestinian people to permanent subjection or exile.

It is a policy which perpetuates injustice and enmity, and, if pursued further, will lead to disaster for everyone including Israel. I do not retract the phrase I used long ago about the Israeli settlements in Arab land. They are indeed "signposts to destruction." So when I come to speak of the future I shall consider what chance there can be for a reversal of the present Israeli policy of expansion and domination. I believe that there are encouraging signs of a change in Israeli opinion.

But first I wish to go back to Resolution 242 to review those criticisms which have been made, and to suggest additions of major importance. I look forward to a day when we shall have two Resolutions-Resolution 242 setting out the agreed principles and the second complementary Resolution, also unanimous I trust, setting out the means and methods of putting the accepted principles into practical effect. Now what we need is not a retraction of the principles unanimously agreed thirteen years ago but a clear lead to end the drift and show the way to a secure peace.

3. Shortcomings

While we conducted anxious and at times hectic negotiations with other Members of the Council in 1967 we were not hoping or intending to write a peace treaty, or even to set out in detail what the final settlement should be.

We were endeavouring to propose certain principles which could form the basis for the comprehensive settlement we all longed to see.

But we did not imagine that a statement of principles, however sound and fair, would suddenly result in a final peace. We relied on the appointment of a Special Representative to deal with the parties directly concerned and to promote a settlement on the basis of the principles we declared. I maintain that this procedure was right, and that we could not have found a better Special Representative than Ambassador Jarring of Sweden. We looked to him after intensive negotiations with all concerned to find a way forward - to work for agreement on secure boundaries between Israel and her Arab neighbours, to settle the detailed arrangements for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, to plan for United Nations supervision and, where necessary, demilitarized zones, and to work out a system of international guarantees.

I go back to the time when I presented the British Resolution in 1967 to the Council on the 20th November. I said then in the Council: "We have long been anxious to see the Special Representative appointed to make contact with both sides and start working for a durable peace.

"We have not wished to restrict him as to the means and methods which'he employs but we all have thought that he should be guided by certain principles. Those principles we have sought to set out in our draft Resolution. We believe that it would be a mistake and indeed a disservice to the Special Representative to endeavour in advance to specify exactly and in detail how,those principles are to be applied. If we attempted to do so in advance we would make his task much more difficult -indeed, worse than that, we might never agree amongst ourselves on the detailed instructions to be given to him.

"We have all along had in mind that there should be two stages. The first stage is the statement of principles and the appointment of a Special Representative. The second stage is the work which he is to undertake in the Middle East. We are concerned now with the necessity to take the first vital step in that direction. It will be wrong if in effect we endeavour to do the work of the Special Representative before he is even appointed." That is what I said in the Council before the Resolution 242 was adopted, and in the light of our intention at the time it would be unreasonable to complain that the original Resolution 242 did not cover every contingency and every future requirement. I emphasize again that we had in mind two stages, first the declaration of principles, and secondly the detailed negotiation with all concerned in the Middle East.

I have said earlier that the rejection of Ambassador Jarring's efforts by the Israeli Government and the subsequent failure of the principal powers to insist that the rejection of Jarring's initiative should not be tolerated, has seemed to me the most lamentable event in the sad story of successive failures.

Nevertheless it is now essential that we should go further than turn back to review the principles on which we were agreed in 1967. We must apply the tests of subsequent developments and future needs. We must urgently consider how the agreed principles can now be given effect; building on past agreement and also recognising past shortcomings and inadequacies we must find means to stop the drift and to go forward to plan effective action for the future.

(a) The boundaries Most common amongst past criticisms has been that we did not exactly specify the boundaries to which the Israeli forces must withdraw. Having stated the overriding principle of "the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war" we called for "the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." Much play has been made of the fact that we did not say "the" territories or "all the" territories. But that was deliberate. I myself knew very well the 1967 boundaries and if we had put in the "the" or "all the" that could only have meant that we wished to see the 1967 boundaries perpetuated in the form of a permanent frontier. This I was certainly not prepared to recommend.

What were the 1967 boundaries? They were no more than the cease-fire borders decided nearly two decades previously. They were based on the accident of where exactly the Israeli and the Arab armies happened to be on that 'particular night. For instance the Arab Legion was across the road at Latrun on the road from Jaffa and Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Consequently for the following twenty years an awkward detour had to be made in the road to Jerusalem. Similarly in the cease-fire lines elsewhere there were injustices and inconsistencies. For instance, two neighbouring villages in the Tulkarm District, both on the same side of the road, were on different sides in the cease-fire line. Taiyibe on one side and Qalqilya on the other. Village lands were cut in two. In Jerusalem the Jewish quarter of the old City was on the Arab side of the line and the Israelis were denied access to Mount Scopus and the Hebrew University.

Knowing as I did the unsatisfactory nature of the 1967 line I was not prepared to use wording in the Resolution which would have made that line permanent. Nevertheless it is necessary to say again that the overriding principle was the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" and that meant that there could be no justification for annexation of territory on the Arab side of the 1967 line merely because it had been conquered in the 1967 war. The sensible way to decide permanent "secure and recognized" boundaries would be to set up a Boundary Commission and hear both sides and then to make impartial recommendations for a new frontier line, bearing in mind, of course, the "inadmissibility" principle.

(b) Palestinian rights The second criticism of the Resolution 242 is that the Resolution, while calling for a solution of the problem of the refugees, did not speak of Palestinian self-determination. But it is very necessary to remember that when we drew up Resolution 242 we all took it for granted that the occupied territory would be restored to Jordan. I give my testimony that everyone, including the Arabs, so assumed. It was not till after 1967 that the Palestinians advanced their claims. This was a development of the utmost importance, and the Palestinian case for a country of their own and a government of their own and a capital of their own seems to me to be unanswerable, but it was subsequent to 1967 that the initiative for Palestinian self-determination developed and gathered strength and support.

So it is in this most important respect that the 1967 Resolution is now seriously lacking. Developments since the original Resolution was accepted have made it necessary that the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination in their own homeland should be recognised and ensured,.. - recognised not by an alteration in the principles of the original Resolution but by all important addition. It has been said that in the Resolution we treated Palestinians only as refugees, but this is unjustified. We provided that Israel should withdraw from occupied territories and it was together with that requirement for a restoration of Arab territory that we also called for a settlement of the refugee problem.

(c) Jerusalem There is a third main criticism of the 1967 Resolution. It is that no reference is made, in so many words, to the future of Jerusalem, and many would strongly and rightly maintain that without peace in Jerusalem there can be no peace in the Middle East. Why therefore did we not refer to the future of Jerusalem in the original Resolution?

We all assumed that withdrawal from occupied territories as provided in the Resolution was applicable to East Jerusalem. This was not questioned at the time and has only much more recently been raised in fierce discussion.

But, as I say, we who worked on the original Resolution, those who voted for it and indeed I think all concerned, assumed that withdrawal from occupied territories must include the area of Jerusalem which had been occupied by Israeli forces in the 1967 conflict.

Nevertheless so important is the future of Jerusalem that it might be argued that we should have specifically dealt with that issue in the 1967 Resolution. It is easy to say that now, but I am quite sure that if we had attempted to raise or settle the question of Jerusalem as a separate issue at that time our task in attempting to find a unanimous decision would have been far greater if not impossible.

It has often been said since that the future of Jerusalem is a matter of such difficulty that it should be left to the end of all negotiations.

I myself dispute this since the future of Jerusalem is a matter of such vital importance. If it were left to the end, even if everything else were settled, disagreement on Jerusalem would frustrate and destroy the whole peace effort. But, as I have said, when we passed the unanimous Resolution in 1967 we all assumed that East Jerusalem would revert to Jordan. East Jerusalem, as a matter of fact, had been occupied in the 1967 conflict and it therefore plainly under the terms of the Resolution came under the requirement for Israeli withdrawal.