S/PV.1894 Security Council

I should also like to inform the Council that I have just received a letter from the representative of Saudi Arabia in which he requests to be invited, in accordance with rule 37 of the provisional rules or procedure, to participate in the discussion without the right to vote. Provisional agenda (S/Agenda/l894) 1. Adoption of the agenda 3. If I hear no objection, I propose, in accordance with. the practices of the Council and the relevant provisions of the Charter, to invite the representative of Saudi Arabia to participate without the right to vote in the discussion. 2. Request by the Libyafi Arab Republic and Pakistan for consideration of the serious situation arising from recent developments in the occupied Arab territories: 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) At the invitation of the President, Mr. Baroody (Saudi Arabia) took a place at the side of the Council chamber. The meeting was called to order at 4.25 p.m.

The first speaker is the representative of Jordan. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement. Adoption of the agenda The agenda was adopted.

Mr. President, I extend to Lou my delegation’s sincere congratulations and highest esteem on your assumption of the presidency of this august body of the United Nations. It is a tribute to your distinguished person and to your brave and struggling country, Benin. It is of great symbolic significance that a distinguished son of Africa should preside over the deliberations of the Security Council on the grave situation in the occupied Arab territories and the struggle of the Arab people for freedom and self-determination. On an earlier occasion, last January, another prominent son of Africa, the distinguished representative of Tanzania, presided over another debate in the Council on the rights of the Arab people which are the target of continuing aggression. This is a good omen. Your Presidency symboiizes the inevitable triumph of freedom and self-determination. Request by the Libyan Arab Republic and Pakistan for consideration of the serious situation arising from recent developments in the occupied Arab territories: 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)

In accordance with the decisions which we reached this morning, at the 1893rd meeting, I shall now invite the representatives of Israel and of the Palestine Liberation Organization to take their places at the Council table. I also invite the representatives of Egypt, Jordan, the Syrian Arab Republic and Yugoslavia to take their places 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. 6. May I also on this occasion extend a word of welcome to the distinguished representative of the United States. Many of us who know him, including myself, know that he is a man’ of conviction, courage and dedication to the service of his country and to the At the invitation of the President, Mr. Herzog (Israel) and Mr. Terzi (Palestine Liberation Organizaiion) took places at the Council table, and Mr. Abdel 7. So, the Security Council meets again to discuss the plight of the people that has been under a ruthless and repressive occupation for the last nine years. Only last January the Council met to discuss the broad and general question of the Middle East, including its essential Palestinian component. At that time the Council was thwarted by ,a veto. Now the people under occupation have risen in anger and protest against the oppressive and intolerable situation, sending the Council the message of urgency it failed to grasp in January. An oppressive status quo must not be mistaken for stability. A situation controlled by force is not a situation of normalcy. A state of armed occupation cannot be treated by a section of the international community as an acceptable condition with no explosive implications. The explosion has occurred. The people of the occupied West Bank-the people of Jerusalem, of Hebron, of Nablus, of Ramallah-have revolted. They have risen in anger and courage to face, without arms or defences, the ruthless military machine of the force of occupation. 8. The most enlightened and benevolent occupation in history-as the ample apologists of Israeli racism have for years been telling us it is-has panicked and discarded all pretences. The subtlety of Israel’s repressive techniques in the occupied territories has rapidly evaporated and given way to the crudest and most blatantly cruel and abhorrent methods, which even the friendly media in our host country could not conceal sufftciently. Some of us have been warning all along against international complacency and lack of sensitivity towards an inherently explosive situation. Some of us have been warning for years that it is most dangerous and irrational to allow the state of occupation in the Middle East to last indefinitely and not expect a drift towards violence and explosion. How could Israel be allowed to continue to occupy since June 1967 an area three times its own size and inhabited by over a million Arabs? How could Israel be allowed to block every avenue to a peaceful settlement and a’peaceful evacuation? How could Israel be allowed to utilize every hour of its occupation to plant its own settlements in the occupied territories, transfer the population, expropriate vast areas of land belonging to the inhabitants, exploit and absorb the economy of the areas under its occupation, force the needy and helpless members of the Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza to be turned into cheap labour in Israel’s factories and construction projects, and, above all, annex offtcially and absorb physically the most historic and precious part of the occupied territories, Jerusalem? 10. Nowhere is the metamorphosis more radical and more painful than in occupied Jerusalem. No wonder, then, that the spark of rebellion started in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the most beautiful and precious part of the historic legacy of the Arabs of Palestine; it is unique. It is also the symbol of a deep and transcendental unity in the Islamic world. It stands for human brotherhood and common destiny. It is as universal and pluralistic in spirit and in symbolism as it is distinctly the legacy of the distinct people who inherited it and protected it and lived in and around it for many centuries. Until the advent of the invading and fanatical Zionists, Jerusalem signified tolerance, openness and the eternal spiritual values. It was the first phase of Zionist invasion which divided Jerusalem in 1948. The second phase of the invasion, accomplished in 1967, led to its immediate and forcible annexation by Israel and the gradual but systematic mutilation of its physical, cultural and demographic character. As early as July 1967 the matter was brought to the urgent attention of the General Assembly, which adopted two resolutions calling on Israel to withhold its measures and actions aimed at changing the character and status of the occupied city [resolutions 2253 (ES-I/j and 2254 (ES-k’)]; Then, repeatedly, the Security Council considered the deteriorating situation in Jerusalem resulting from the feverish Israeli measures there and adopted resolutions 252 (1968), 267 (1969) and 298 (1971). There was even a special debate and a resolution [271 (1969)] when the arson in the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque took place under Israeli occupation in September 1969;- 11. But notwithstanding these clear and explicit resolutions, Israel continued its systematic policy of physically and demographically altering the character of the city and subjecting it to Israel’s aggressive religious chauvinism. The occupation authorities continue to expropriate Arab land and property inside the occupied and annexed walled city and outside it, C 12. At the beginning of 1975 the Knesset-the Israeli parliament-approved the realization of a master planfor Jerusalem, by which 30 per cent of the total area of the West Bank of Jordan would be annexed to Jerusalem in order to be gradually absorbed. This area includes 9 towns and 60 villages, inhabited by 250,000 people; on their ruins new Israeli quarters are to be built, extending over all of Arab Jerusalem. Shu’fat, Jabal Al-Masharif, Hai Al-Magharbah, Sharafat, Beit Hanina, Qalandia, Al-Tur, Nabi Samuel, Jabal Al- Mukabir, Sur Bahir-all these ancient Arab names and areas are quickly disappearing and losing identity. When the Israeli plan in Jerusalem is completed the new quarters will comprise 35,000 housing units, accommodating 122,000 new Israeli Jewish residents living on Arab land and radically altering the character and composition of the city. 16. The same pattern has been demonstrated in another place: in the city of Hebron the occupation authorities have outraged the whole Islamic world and all enlightened humanity by their ruthless encroachments on the sanctity of the sacred Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi. The acts of desecration of the mosque gradually escalated and intensified. Muslims were obstructed in their prayers in this ancient mosque. The public call to prayer, which is essential at prayertime in the Islamic religion, was banned. Prayer for the dead in the mosque, which is also essential in the religious tradition, was banned by the Israeli authorities. -The furnishings and interior belongings of the mosque were taken away. Jewish feasts and wedding ceremonies were held in the mosque. Religious teachers and personnelof the mosque were subjected to beating, insults and often detention by the authorities. Finally, the Israeli Minister of Defence ordered the division of the whole mosque area, assigning the larger part, which includes most of the Islamic historical and holy features, as the Jewish part. The inhabitants of the area, whose ancestors had built the mosque and worshipped in it for centuries, were restricted to one entrance. 13. Various methods of pressure are used to effect this systematic displacement of the Arabs of Jerusalem. The Arab-owned hills surrounding the city have already been taken over, thus cutting off the Arab population of Jerusalem from their compatriots in the rest of the occupied West Bank of Jordan. In the meantime, the limits of annexed Jerusalem have already been expanded to constitute a substantial part of the West Bank extending to the north, the east and the south of the city and to include an expanding number of towns and villages. These most radical changes in the physical and in the demographic and cultural composition of the Holy City aim at the systematic*strangulation of the Arab inhabitants and the gradual obliteration of the city’s Arab character. 14. In this relentless enterprise Israel has infringed upon the Islamic waqf-which is the Muslim endowments and religious properties-and pulled down many of them, as well as mosques and venerated shrines. The historic quarter of Muslim saints and heroes, Hai Al-Magharbah, was 1 one of the earliest targets of demolition. The Sharaf Quarter, which contains 600 pieces of Islamic religious properties, as well as four mosques and many unique historical sites, has already been taken over. “Excavations” have been undertaken with a spirit of vengeance and provocation under and around the major Islamic sites, such as the famous Al-Aqsa Mosque, Hayit Al-Buraq and Al- Masjid Al-Umari. Regardless of all Israeli assurances and justifications, if these persistent “excavations” around the Al-Aqsa Mosque continue, they will undermine its foundations and cause its collapse. 17. While religious and cultural domination and displacement take place in the occupied areas, a parallel systematic process is taking place in the whole of the occupied territories. Since the occupation in 1967 the occupation authorities have been engaged in a policy of planting Israeli settlements in the various parts of the occupied land. Israeli sources tell us that over 60 settlements are constructed on confiscated land and in the midst of the Arab population. They represent a creeping colonization and national replacement-a fearful and inescapable national fate for the inhabitants. There is daily friction and tortured protest as the new settlers, backed by the military machine of the occupation, embark on a new displacement of the people living peacefully in their own ancestral homeland. 15. This Israeli attitude is not accidental. It fits in with the pattern of attitudes and policies of the Israeli State towards the cultural legacy and rights of the people who have come under Israeli occupation. 19. Is it any wonder that the explosion has taken place in the occupied territories? It would have been unnatural and against the logic of life and history if the explosion had not taken place. 20. The message that the spontaneous and massive uprising gives us has a clear and historic significance. It is a message to the nations of the world that the oppression of alien occupation and rule has no place in the present world order. It is a message to the nations of the third world that the struggle of the people of the world against foreign domination is indivisible. It is a reminder to the powerful and complacent supporters of the oppressor that their policy is deficient and their calculations wrong and their sense of history absent. It is an agonized call for international awakening and decisive intervention to stop the agony by ending an anachronistic and’ indefensible military domination by one powerful and powerfully backed State of a peaceful and unarmed population living in its own homeland. It is a brave and sad message from the people of the Holy Land to the world that Jerusalem, the heavenly and serene, is being mutilated and desecrated and tortured while the world watches and the powerful look in the other direction. 21. The Security Council cannot ignore the imperative of action this time. If in the past some of its members found an excuse for inaction in technical arguments and the claims that action by the Council would undercut their unilateral initiatives, ,this time such arguments and claims do not arise. The Council must act immediately to highlight the urgency and the seriousness of the situation. World opinion must know and be called upon to assist the victims of aggression. Israel must be compelled to abide by the principles of international law governing the conduct of the occupying Power in the occupied areas. It must refrain from any action which is designed to change the character and status of the occupied land, particularly occupied Jerusalem. It must rescind measures already taken in this regard. It must be compelled to respect 22. While all this is urgent, the ultimate and most essential aim of the Council must be the final and irrevocable Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied Arab territories.

The next speaker is the representative of the Syrian Arab Republic. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.

Allow me at the outset of my statement to express to you, Sir, how happy I am to deliver my contribution to this debate under your leadership. We are convinced that, under the wise presidency of a son of a brother country of Africa, this debate will come to a fruitful end. 25. Today the Security Council is considering, for the fourth time within a period of less than four months, a dangerous situation resulting from Israel’s continued ,illegal occupation of the Arab territories. In fact, the Council met towards the end of last November to consider the expiration of the mandate of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force in the occupied Syrian Golan and decided, in its resolution 381 (1975), to renew the .Force’s mandate for another six months and to reconvene on 12 January 1976 in order to undertake a full debate on the Middle East problem including the Palestinian question, with the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. 26. As Israel responded to that decision less than 48 hours later by a series of barbarous air raids against the camps of the Palestinian .refugees in Lebanon, the Council met again early in December to consider the situation and, on 8 December, voted, by a majority of 13 to 1, with 1 abstention, adraft resolution 131138981 condemning Israel’s aggression against Lebanon and the Palestinian refugees. But the draft resolution failed to be adopted in spite of its overwhelming majority because the sole negative vote was that of a permanent member, namely, the United States. 27. The Council reconvened, as decided, on 12 January 1976. After a serious and constructive two-week debate, the Council was prevented once more by another veto by the same member from adopting a widely supported equilibrated and equitable draft resolution [S/11940] incorporating all the basic elements for the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. ‘i 28. The Council is called upon once more today to consider urgently the serious situation prevailing as a result of Israel’s continued occupation, expansion, annexation and illegal measures designed to alter the demographic composition, as well as the political, cultural and religious status of Jerusalem and other parts of the occupied Arab territories. 30. In fact, for several weeks now the occupied West Bank has been the scene of violent mass demonstrations against the Israeli occupier. Thousands of young Palestinian students, workers, men, women and even children are facing Israel’s heavily armed soldiers and paratroopers with nothing more than their determination not to kneel at the feet of their alien oppressor. The latest spate of revolt against the Israeli forces of occupation was triggered by the ruling of the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on 28 January to the effect that Jews have the right to pray in Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as by the Israeli authorities’ conspiratorial attitude towards illegal Jewish settlers on the West Bank. 31. Arab students in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Al-Bireh, Tulkarm, Jenin, Nablus and Jerusalem roamed the streets of their towns and villages in protest against Zionist desecration of Moslem holy places and against Jewish settlements on .the West Bank. They raised the Palestinian flag over their schools and buildings and found nothing but stones to hurl at the Israeli soldiers who attacked them with tear gas and clubbed the young boys and girls with heavy wooden sticks and their rifle butts. 32. Israeli soldiers invaded schools and dragged young students out and beat them savagely before arresting them. What is more serious, ‘near Azaria village, the Zionist soldiers opened fire on a group of young Arab demonstrators. Three Arab youths were wounded; one of them, an 11-year-old boy, was hit in the head by the bullets of the Israeli soldiers and was taken to the hospital in very critical condition, Hundreds of young students were beaten severely’and arrested. A curfew was imposed on Ramallah, Ai- Bireh and Halhoul. The mayors and town councils of Nablus, Al-Bireh, Ramallah, Bir Zeit, Silwad and other West Bank towns resigned in protest, despite Zionist threats. Israel Defence Minister Shimon Peres threatened that “the Israel Defence Force would take the required measures and would not hesitate to act vigorously in the face of any disturbances of public order”. A few hours later Israeli soldiers opened fire’ on the young Arab students. 33. But Shimon Peres was not the only Israeli personality to threaten the young Arab students protesting Zionist violations. As we heard this morning [2893rd meeting] from the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Rabbi Moshe Levinger, leader of Kiryat Arba, the orthodox Jewish settlement implanted a few years ago adjacent to Al-Khalil, went 34. The Zionist violations of Moslem religious rights are not new or confined to this latest act of desecration. During and after the 1948 war, the Zionists destroyed hundreds of mosques and churches in the areas which fell under their occupation. Again, during the 1967 war, the Israeli forces shelled and damaged many Moslem and Christian shrines in Jerusalem and other parts of the occupied territories. The Israeli forces dynamited 135 buildings and a mosque in Old Jerusalem in order to clear the way for a square in front of Al-buraq. Since 1967 the Zionist authorities have violated Moslem rights in Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi in Al-Khalil by restricting Moslems to praying in the mosque on Fridays only. The Zionists gradually turned a great part of the Ibrahim Mosque into a synagogue, and their violations culminated in August 1975 in a decision of the Israeli cabinet to introduce new arrangements for Jewish and Moslem prayers at the Moslem mosque, which resulted in the actual division of the holy site of Masjed Al-Khalil and the altering of its institutional structure and established religious practices. 35. Since 1967 the General Assembly has adopted six resolutions and the Security Council four rcsolutions on Jerusalem and the Holy Places. After the criminal arson at the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque on 21 August 1969, the Council in its resolution 271 (1969) condemned Israel’s failure to comply with previous Council and Assembly resolutions concerning the status of the city of Jerusalem and called upon it scrupulously to observe the provisions-of the fourth Geneva Convention’ and the principles of international law governing the military occupation. The Council reiterated that request in its resolution 298 (1971) and deplored the failure of Israel to respect the repeated resolutions of the Council and the Assembly. 36. As reported by the Zionist press itself, the uprising of the Arab population in the occupied West Bank, which is spreading to all towns and villages of the occupied territories and reaching the dimensions of a wide popular revolution against the Zionist occupier, was sparked off not only by Israeli desecration of Al-Aqsa and other Moslem holy shrines but also by the Zionist illegal settlement of Arab land and Israeli oppression of the Arab population. In fact, nine years after the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the other parts of Arab territories, the Zionist regime is pursuing its inhuman oppression of the Arab population and it’s systematic policy of expansion and aggression. “(a)’ The annexation of parts of the occupied territories; “(6) The establishment of Israeli settlements therein and the transfer of an alien population thereto; “(c) The destruction .and demolition of Arab houses; “(d) The confiscation and expropriation of Arab property in the occupied territories and all other transactions for the acquisition of land involving the Israeli authorities, institutions or nationals on the one hand, and the inhabitants or institutions of : ,the occupied territories on the other; “(e) The evacuation, deportation, expulsion, displacement and transfer of Arab inhabitants of the occupied territories, and the denial of their right to return; “v) Mass arrests, administrative detention and ill-treatment of the Arab population; “(g) The pillaging of.archaeological and cultural mwp; “(h) The interference with religious freedoms and practices, as well as family rights and customs; “T(i) The illegal exploitation of the natural wealth, resources and population of the occupied territories.” 38. In a statement at the World Women’s Congress in Berlin last October, Israeli lawyer Mrs. Felicia Langer described what she had seen with her own eyes, day by day, over all those years in the occupied territory. She said that she wished to state clearly that “a policy of institutionalized terror is the official policy of the Israeli occupier in the territories occupied in 1967”. She went on to say that 27,000 Palestinians had been imprisoned since 1967 and that some 4,000 were still in Israeli gaols. She told the Congress: “The demolition of houses, the confiscation of property, the imposition of long curfews, the staging of sieges against whole villages-these are the characteristic features of the occupation. Israel has confiscated more than one and a half million dunums ‘ in the West Bank, more than one sixth of the total .area of the West Bank, one third of the Gaza Strip. “The same activity on the part of the occupiers is also seen in Arab Jerusalem-confiscation of 22,000 dunums of Arab land in the city and its suburbs and the forcible eviction of tens of thousands of’Arabs who used to live and work there. “. . . After’ the demolition of 800 Arab buildings, 10 .new Israeli sectors’ were built encircling Jerusalem, reaching Beit Jaiah and the road to Jericho-‘a ring round Jerusalem’, as the authorities are calling ‘it. A serious demographic change is the result of this’ policy, a .forcible decrease in the number of Arabic inhabitants, from 140$00 in 1948 to 70;OO0 in 1974. “. . . ‘A total of some 13,000 houses were destroyed during the occupation, and this figure ‘does not include the completely ruined Golan Heights. On the ruins of the three peaceful villages of Yaln, Beit Nooba and Arinas, destroyed by the Israeli Army in 1967,. flowers are now growing. A Canadian investor has built a recreation centre there. But under the flowers, from the depths of the earth, we can hear the cry of a life which was buried under the ruins. , “The colonization of the occupied territories by Jewish settlers is going on at this very moment. There are more than 50 new settlements in the Golan, and 18 more are planned. Near Rafah, a city is under construction.” 39. The Zionist leaders do not even attempt to hide their designs to usurp all the occupied Arab territories and to Judaize the Holy City of Jerusalem and the rest of the sacred religious Moslem and Christian sites. The New York Times reported only four days ago, on 18 March, that Mr. Teddy Kollek, the Mayor of Jerusalem, attacked in a radio interview “right-wing members of the Municipal Council who had led groups of young Jews to the Temple Mount for prayer services”, not because this was wrong and illegal but because such conduct in an explosive situation was irresponsible. Mr. Kollek added that Israel’s sovereignty over ail of Jerusalem, including “the Temple Mount”, was undisputed, which means that Israel claims sovereignty now over the Aqsa Mosque itself. The Zionist mayor concluded the interview by stating: “We must leave some things for future generations and for the coming of the Messiah. Wedon’t have to do it all today. We must consolidate what we have obtained and not invite confrontations.** 40. Thus it is evident that the question for the Zionist leaders is only one of time and opportunity. But must the international community remain hand-tied or silent in the face of this systematic Zionist policy of colo- 41. How much longer is the United Nations going to cIose its eyes and ears while every principle in its Charter is defied and violated? Israel’s occupation of the Arab territories not only is a flagrant violation of the Charter and the -Universal Declaration on Human Rights, but constitutes a continued act of aggression in violation of the Charter, the principles of international law and, in particular, the definition of aggression adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 3314 (XXIX), which affirms that “any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from... invasion or attack” is an act of aggression. 42. Even without oppression or repressive measures, military occupation is evil enough and constitutes a violation of the most elementary national rights of the people of the occupied territories; it is also an affront to their honour and dignity. However, the Zionist occupation of the Arab territories is particularly cruel and ugly because, unlike other cases of military occupation, it is designed to uproot the indigenous population and to replace it with alien settlers just because these alien invaders are Jews. ” 1 43. In this era of decolonization, the United Nations cannot remain idle while a racist colonial regime is swallowing the Arab territories piece by piece and expanding an entity based solely on racial and religious discrimination. But Israel cannot succeed in obliterating the Palestinian people. Sooner or later the Zionists have to recognize the existence of the people of Palestine, because this existence .is manifesting itself very strongly through the continued, determined and heroic struggle of the Palestinian people inside and outside the occupied territories. 44. The right of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation to resist the Zionist occupier with all means at their disposal is legitimate and is recognized by the Charter and the principles of international law. There can be no peace or tranquillity for the Zionists until they evacuate the last inch of the occupied Arab territories and recognize the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people. 45. Israel has’ always defied the international community and refused to comply with the Charter and United Nations resolutions. The Zionists have boycotted previous meetings of the Security Council, affirming that the only place where they would meet the Palestine Liberation Organization is on the battlefield. It seems that the Zionists have realized now that their absence will not prevent the Council or the members of the international family from coming to the conviction that no solution of the Middle East problem is possible in the absence of the people of Palestine and that the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In this respect, it is really 46. The tragedy of the Palestinian people has been’ going on for so long. During the last 29 years as many as 244 resolutions have been adopted by the General Assembly and the Security Council, most of which remain unimplemented because of Israel’s intransigence and its persistent defiance of the United Nations. 47. The Security Council has the clear responsibility under the Charter to take the immediate necessary measures to put an end to a racist colonial situation which, if it continues, threatens the whole region with explosion. An end must be speedily put to Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the rest of the occupied Arab territories. The nightmare in which the Middle East has been living for three decades must come to an end, and Israel must implement the reievant General Assembly and Security Council resolutions. If it insists on defying the United Nations and maintaining its illegal occupation of the Arab territories, the Council should then carry out its responsibilities under the Charter in order to compel Israel to comply with the Charter and with United Nations resolutions. 48. The people of Palestine has been prevented from exercising its right to self-determination by the forceful occupation of its territory, its uprooting and expulsion from its land and the denial of the Paletsinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and property. No people can exercise its inalienable right to, selfdetermination when, as a result of aggression, its territory is under the yoke of alien occupation, nor can any person enjoy his basic human rights or participate in deciding the destiny and future of his own people as long as that person is denied the right to return to his land and property. It is indispensable, therefore, that the national inalienable rights of the Palestinian people be implemented and guaranteed by the Security Council and the General Assembly. Resolution 3236 (XXIX) of the General Assembly must be implemented, particularly its paragraphs 1 and 2 reaffirming the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including its right .to self-determination, national independence and sovereignty, as well as the right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property. 49. Israel is in the habit of talking about nearly everything except the rights of the Palestinian people or the unavoidability of its withdrawal from all the occupied Arab territories. There is no doubt in my mind that the Zionist representative will, a while later, assault the United Nations, the Security Council and its members for directing their attention to the situation in the occupied Arab territories, where, according to him, the Arab inhabitants are submerged 50. The Security Council is called upon to adopt the necessary measures in order to put an end to Israel’s violations of the human and national rights of the Arab population in the occupied territories. There is only one way to ensure the termination of Israel’s persistent violations and repressive measures against the Arab inhabitants, and that is the complete withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the rest of the occupied Arab territories. 51. The Arab men, women, boys, girls, students, workers and youths of the occupied territories are looking to the Council with hope and aspiration, for they are unable to confront the war machine or the sophisticated arsenal of the most ruthless colonialist racist invasion in modem history. It is within the Council’s responsibility and power to respond to their appeal for liberation, national independence and selfdetermination. 52. In concluding, I should like to quote from my statement a week ago before the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. I said: “The Syrian Arab Republic is committed to a just settlement which takes into consideration first and above all the attainment of the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people and the total liberation of the occupied Arab territories. President Assad reaffhmed last October that Syria will not accept any movement on the Syrian front unless it is coupled with an identical movement on the Palestinian front. The Syrian Arab Republic stands by this commitment.“*

The next speaker is the representative of Israel, on whom 1 now call.

I have a vague suspicion that in the course of this discussion I shall not be in total agreement in my remarks with a number of the members of the Council, and above all with my Arab colleagues. All the more reason, therefore, to open them in a spirit of agreement with my Arab colleagues, 55. I should like to add a word of welcome to the representative of the United States, whose rich and outstanding background will stand him in good stand in representing the greatest democracy in the world and in being the main defender of the institutions of democracy in this world Organization. 56. I am invariably intrigued by the- Syrian representative’s propensity for so frequently attributing to others the wrongs which his regime represents. This came to mind when I read a very intriguing story in a current magazine. It’stated: “A West African assigned to the French Foreign Service for training before his country was given independence in 1960 encountered an Arab diplomat at a dinner party. The Arab was from the northern region of what was then the United Arab Republic, specifically from Damascus. He told the West African that his country should beware of the Jews. The West African said that he had never met any Jews and asked what they were like. ‘They are the people who come into your country, get a stranglehold on your commerce, move up into finance, share nothing with the natives and send their profits back home’ the Arab explained. ‘Ah, you must excuse me’, the West African replied, ‘in my country we call them Syrians.’ ” 57. I am moved by the representative’s concern for the holy places. Where was he in 1969 when, according to the daily Al-Hayat in Beirut: “No one in the whole Moslem world can ever forget 24 January 1965, the day when for the first time in history tanks penetrated into the great Ummayad Mosque in Damascus, shelling the prayers. Two hundred prayers were killed on that day. The great Mosque was closed for several days in order to enable the cleaning of its wails, fences and roofs and the mihrab, which were soiled by the blood of the slain.” 58. Words fail me as I contemplate this barren and futile discussion based on falsities and taking place with such an obvious lack of enthusiasm on the part of the participating members. The late Sir Winston Churchill when in opposition on one occasion accused the then incumbent Prime Minister of turning the Mother of Parliaments into a public convenience. I cannot escape the impression that the PLO has succeeded, if in nothing else, in converting this Organization into such a public convenience for its own purposes. The world is on fire, war threatens in a number ofareas, the issues in Africa are momentous and vital and yet, when the PLO so willed it as a function ofinter- Arab rivalry, this entire Organization is called to order 59. I have not had the opportunity till now to comment on this new and bizarre departure of seating an organization which is not a State and does not even claim to be a State, with rights equal to those accorded to Member States. This act is in flagrant violation of the Charter, which specifically allows only for the seating of States, whether Members or not, or of individuals, at the Security Council table. Nowhere in the Charter is there provision for the seating of an organization, certainly not with rights equal to those of Member States: The decision of the Council in this matter has been decried by many international jurists, such as Professor Gross of Tufts University, as a flagrant breach of the Charter. Mr. Harlan Cleveland, a former United States Assistant Secretary of State and Director of the Aspen Institute programme in international affairs, wrote on this issue but a few weeks ago: “For the Security Council to’ decide that a non-governmental organization can be seated at the Council table is hardly a ‘procedural matter’; it’s more like an unorthodox way of amending the Charter.” You have opened a Pandora’s box, and I look forward with great interest to viewing the legalistic acrobatics in which many of the representatives will indulge when dissident and dissatisfied movements challenge their authority, urged on by those who can invariably be counted upon to indulge in a little innocent and not so innocent international mischief. Yes, a Pandora’s box has been opened, and the price for this example of moral weakness and of the triumph of expediency will regrettably be paid by the Organization. There are seated here these representatives of the only so-called liberation movement in the world whose leadership does not sufficiently trust the people it is purporting to liberate to live amongst them. 60. The President of Egypt is on record in the past weeks stating exactly what he thinks of them. In-the Saudi Arabian newspa er Ukat , he expressed the hope that “I only wish the s aiestinians would give up their appearances and speak the truth for once”. Indeed, they cannot appear in any public forum in Egypt today. They are seated here, and yet it would be more than their life is worth to enter Jordan, let alone speak or be active there. The Syrian Government very rightly maintains the tightest control over them and is in the active process of turning the PLO into a Syriancontroiied organization. President Sadat, in the interview I have referred to, says that they propose to replace Mr. Arafat with their own candidate, Zuheir Muhsein, whom President Sadat characterized as a common car thief. They were free to operate in Lebanon, with what calamitous and, catastrophic results we ail know, in the face of the callous indifference of this body to the tragedy of Lebanon.

The representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization has raised a point of order. I call on him.

The Council is meeting this afternoon to discuss items shown in document S/Agenda/1894. What I am hearing now is a statement about what is happening in Lebanon, and this is not on the agenda. So may I please ask you, Mr. President, to see to it that the speakers confine themselves to the points mentioned on the agenda.

I call on the representative of the United Kingdom on a point of order.

We have listened so far to five speeches which on any view of the matter could hardly be characterized as pro-Israeli. With great respect, I think that the Israeli delegation is entitled to have its say in its own way and in its own words.

I call on the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization on a point of order.

I have not asked that the representative of the Zionist entity should. not be able to make a statement. Ail I have asked you, Mr. President, is that the statement should be confined to the item on the agenda. In this meeting we are not discussing Northern Ireland, we are not discussing the situation in Lebanon; we are discussing the serious, situation arising from the practices of the Zionist authorities against our people in occupied Palestine.

We shall now continue our discussion. I would request the representative of Israel to continue his statement.

Is there no limit to the baseness of international cynical hypocrisy as reflected in this situation? According to the figures issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ,70. Whatever the figures, we are seeing-and we in Israel see it only too clearly as the Christian refugees seek shelter in our country-a terrifying development which threatens to escalate into a human holocaust. And what has the Security Council done? Nothing. Your silence is as shattering as that of the Christian church which, gagged by expediency, contemplates in silence as their flock is threatened with extinction. Instead you have the time in which to debate an allegation based on a malicious falsehood, which is apparent to all, and demonstrations, to which I shall refer, primarily of incited teenagers in which there was one killed and two wounded and in connexion with which an Israeli soldier was arrested by the Israeli authorities on the charge of opening fire without orders and was charged in court last Friday. Surely, in the one-sided orgy of hate against Israel which is beginning to exercise the United Nations almost to the exclusion of everything else in the world, even common expediency would dictate a measure of proportion, if for no other reason at least for the sake of appearances. 71. The matter which we are discussing here is a matter sub judice in the courts of Israel.The very fact of raising the issue at this stage, therefore, focuses on a most serious development which has taken place and which must rapidly erode what little standing is left in the world to the Organization. The principle of the separation of powers whereby the executive does not control the judiciary applies in all democratic countries and is in fact also part of the United Nations system. One of the forms which it takes, or is supposed to take; in the United Nations is that whenthe conduct of a State is challenged two things follow. One is the notion of the impartiality of the United Nations; the other is that of giving the party which is charged a fair hearing in an atmosphere of impartiality. Over the years, but in particular over the past five years, both these concepts have been forgetten in United Nations practice. The idea of an impartial hearing has been replaced by the idea that the United Nations organs are both prosecutor and judge. In this very debate the charge was framed and judgement was formulated even before I had the opportunity to present my case. The assumption was simply made that whatever I might have to say would be totally irrelevant. Nothing could better illustrate the point which I am trying to make than this meeting. An allegation has been preferred against the State of Israel. 72. Under the principles of natural justice it is to be assumed that the representative of the State of Israel will appear at this table and will explain his Govem- 73. The failure of the United Nations to understand the operation of these fundamental principles of natural law in the international scene is mirrored by its failure to understand the operation of the same principles in the domestic scene of true democracies. 74. Let me address myself to the letter of,complaint dated 19 March to you, Sir, from the representatives of Pakistan and Libya.[S112017]. This letter alsorefers to the letter dated 12 March from.ther~presentative~~~’ Saudi Arabia to the Secretary-General [S/12022]. According to the statement annexed to that letter, the ruling of the Magistrate’s Court was to the effect that Jews have the right to pray in Al-Aqsa Mosque. I repeat, in Al-Aqsa Mosque. This ahegation is a lie, a damnable lie, in a mischievous and sinister attempt to incite religious feeling for political purposes. No such ruling was made by Judge. Ruth Orr in the Magistrate’s Court in Jerusalem. And it is utterly unbelievable to note that the $ecudty Coun.cll, with all the reserves whichit has at’ its: @posal in or@% to clarify facts, should agree to be sum-moned docilely to consider a ruling in a magistrate’s court in Jerusalem which was never made-1 repeat, was never made. 75. Let me clarify the facts; they are, after all, relevant. 76. Mr. President, with your permission Ishould like to distribute to members of the. Council amap of- 77. On 5 June 1967, Jordanian forces launched an attack on Israel in Jerusalem, which was then a divided city, and one of the results of the ensuing six-day war was the reunification of the city of Jerusalem. The Government of Israel, on the 28th of the same month, June 1967, enacted the Protection of Holy Places Law 5727-1967, whereby unrestricted access to the respective Holy Places is guaranteed to members of all faiths. The relevant sections of the law read as follows: “1. The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and’from anything liable to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feeelings ,with regard to those places. 80. Last year several Jews attempted to pray in the open courtyard of the Temple Mount-1 emphasize, in the open courtyard-and were expelled by the Moslem police, guards.appointed by the Islamic Wqf Bureau, who are charged with the protection of the holy places. Charges were brought against them. You can see on the map exactly where the incident took place. On 28 January this year Judge Ruth Orr, having heard the case, including the testimony, reached the conclusion that no Moslems had been present during the incident and that the prayer had taken place in an open area in the courtyard some SO metres from the Gate of Pity and far removed from any mosque. She therefore acquitted the accused on the grounds that this did not constitute a case of public disorder within the meaning of the Criminal Code Ordinance, 1936, under which the charges were preferred. On 9 February the Jerusalem District Attorney appealed-Appeal 5/7O--on a number of grounds, including the ground that the action by the respondents was consciously calculated by them to disturb the peace and they were therefore criminally liable for their actions, and the “2. (a) Whosoever desecrates or otherwise violates a. Holy Place shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of seven years. “(b) Whosoever does anything likely to violate the freedom of access to the members of different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places shall be liable to imprisonme.nt for a term of five years. “3. This law shall add to, and not derogate from, any other law. “4. The Minister of Religious Affairs is charged with the implementation of this law, and he may, after consultation with, or upon the proposal of, representatives of the religions concerned and with the consent of the Minister of Justice, make regulations as to any matter relating to such implementation. 78. The Government of Israel has to this day refrained from issuing regulations for Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount in order not to offend the susceptibilities of the Moslem population and to prevent disturbances between the religious communities. Israel is therefore confronted with a paradoxical situation in which not only have Jews refrained from exercising their inherent right, but the Government of Israel has even brought to justice those who have attempted to pray on the Temple Mount. 79. Since the unification of Jerusalem in 1967, certain Israeli groups have mounted a public and legal campaign in order to permit Jewish prayers on the Temple Mount. In 1968, an application for such permission was rejected by the Supreme Court of Israel. Supreme Court Justice Witkon in giving judgement stated: “the situation is a unique one and I doubt whether there is one like it in the history of our people, or anywhere else in the world: The situation concerning the Temple Mount is most sensitive and could greatly endanger intercommunal relationships. It would be the height of folly’ not to take full account of the implications of acceding to the plaintiffs’ applications. Indeed, at this point we have reached the limits of our legal jurisdiction. A full account of the matter before us cannot be made without considering the general political and security situation. It is in the interest of the Government to act according to these considerations. The true extent of the issue goes far beyond the narrow boundaries which the applicants have drawn. The relevant considerations are far wider than any that could be submitted to this court. I therefore believe that there are no grounds for judicial interference.” 81. Yesterday, 21 March, Supreme Court Justice Berenson, in a decision in the case of Rudolf Cohen versus the Minister of Police-High Court Case No. 99/76-rejected an application for an order nisi brought by the applicant to show cause why the Israel police should not allow him to pray on the Temple Mount. On behalf of the Court, Justice Berenson ruled that the Court will not interfere with the discretion of the police, when the police consider that there is a danger of disrupting public order. The Supreme Court on that occasion confirmed its own decision in High Court Case No. 222/68 of 1968, to which I referred previously. 82. That, therefore, is the situation today. 83. In the meantime, no change has occurred in the status quo, which has been maintained by the Government of Israel since 1967, whereby the Government does not permit Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, and the Israeli police-Jews, Moslems and Christians-in addition to the Moslem police responsible for the Temple Mount area, prevent such prayer from taking place. 84. I can readily appreciate that the representatives of Pakistan, Libya and Saudi Arabia are perhaps incapable of comprehending a situation whereby courts of law are independent of the executive. I can understand that a situation is incomprehensible to them whereby a court of law in Israel will not be dictated to by any outside body, including the Government of Israel-let alone this body. I do not expect them to know better. From where should they know better? But here you have a clear situation whereby the interests of the Moslems are being protected by the Government of Israel. Why then seek to attack the Government of Israel for protecting Moslem interests? The reason is that this false allegation has been preferred against Israel for political reasons, in an attempt to disrupt the harmony and successful coexistence of Jew and Arab in Jerusalem, which has become a model for the world. This is being done by certain Arab Moslem countries in an atmosphere of blackmail and pressure which is irreconcilable with the faith and beliefs of tens of millions of Moslems throughout the world. 85. On this-occasion might I, as the representative of acountry 10 per cent of whose citizens are Moslems, 86. The Ietter dated 12 March from the representative of Saudi Arabia to the Secretary-General constitutes nothing but a mass of fabrications 00 Iess inaccurate and untrue than the fairy tale about prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In that document reference is made, for example, to an article in the Israeli da=ily newspaper Ma’ariv on 22 July 1969, in which the Iate Chief Rabbi of Israel is quoted as talking abu~ut reconstructing the Temple in the court yard’ of Al- Haram Al-Sharif. I have here a photostatic copy of the article referred to in Mu’ariv. Here it is. I consider myself a fairly respectacle. scholar of the Hebrew language. If anybody here can find such. a statement in this article, I should be most grateful; I just cannot find it. 87. Now this would be comic, as would the entire proceedings here based on a false charge about a decision in an Israeli court that was never made, if it were not so tragic, pointing as it does to a calculated attempt by means of falsehoods to incite Moslem feeling throughout the world and to invoke racial, religious and human hatred of the basest kind, 88. Since I am dealing with. a Saudi Arabian document, I have here yet another example of Saudi Arabian literature, which is most revealing in this context. I am referring to a. document issued by the Royal Consulate General of Saudi Arabia in.New York containing this map in which the State of Israel does not exist-wishful thinking, I suppose-and in which the Persian Gulfghas become the Arabian Gulf--again, perhaps, wishful thinking. 89. Israel is accused of the attempted alienation of the indigenous Arab population from their history, civilization and culture by “Israelization of educational programmes and curricula”. That is a lie. The reverse is true. All Arab schools in Jerusalem teach only the curriculum laid down by the Jordanian Department of Education, apart from the church schools,. which, as opposed to the situation obtaining during Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967, are free is set their own curriculum. I should add, as a point of interest, that approximately 5,000 Arab teachers in the West Bank teach only the Jordanian curriculum and are considered by the Jordanian Government to be Jordanian civil 90. The allegation about-measures designed to compel the Arab population of Jerusalem to leave their homes and property is utterly false. The only Arabs removed in the Old City of Jerusalem were those who had occupied Jewish homes in the Jewish quarter after the fighting in 1948. They were obliged to return the property to their rightful owners and were indeed compensated in order to assist them in finding new accommodations. 91; The letter of 19 March refers to mass arrests in the West Bank, and we have heard moving words in this regard from representatives who have-preceded me in speaking here% Let me put the entire picture into its correct perspective. We are talking of a total of arrests in the West Bank in the past month of 48 persons, 92. Finally, we come to the utterly preposterous accusations concerning “suppression of Islamic and Christian heritage and institutions’*. This is -just malicious nonsense, as anybody who will take the trouble to visit Jerusalem can find out for himself. There has never been such an impressive expansion and development of religious life in the city for ail faiths as has occurred over the past few years. 93, Perhaps nothing could more readily illustrate the utter baselessness-of this debate than the remarks of the Jordanian representative on the Al-ibrahimi Mosque, which is an utter travesty not only of facts but of history. We are referring to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the city of Hebron, known to the Jewish people as the Cave of Machpela. The Cave of Machpela is a Jewish holy place, housing as it does the tombs of the Jewish patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their respective wives, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah-a fact conveniefllyignored’by the Jordanian representative. For. the benefit of any representatives who may not be particularly familiar with the Bible, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were Jewish and were the early Jewish patriarchs. The story of the acquisition of the land and the tomb by Abraham is told in chapter 23 of the Book of Genesis. 94. The Jordanian Government’s record in respect of holy places under its control surely denies it any moral standing in. such issues. Jewish. access to the Cave of Machpela or the Tomb tif the Patriachs in Hebron wasforbidden by the Jo:rdanian authorities, I The overriding. p,rinciples guiding Israel’s policy regarding all the holy places have. been, and are, to guarantee free access to members of all faiths and to ensure orderly conditions of-worship to niembers of every religion. This principle applies also to the Cave of MachpeIa, and the sanctity of that holy shrine is strictly observed. Nothing has been done to minimize in any way the responsibility exercised by the Moslem 95. The orderly conduct of Modem prayers has in no way been interfered with, nor has the public call to prayer been tampered with in any way. It is untrue that, as was alleged here, praye.rs for the ‘Moslem dead have been forbidden or restricted in any manner, and funeral services continue to be officiated in the large Hall of Isaac and Rebecca. The only change made has been one requiring Moslem funeral processions to leave the Cave by the south-western gate in order to spare the feelings of Jewish worshippers praying in the Abraham and Sarah Hall. 96. Moslem religious teachers and personnel of the Cave have in no way been molested. On the contrary, they have been, and continue to be, accorded the respect due to them, and all the assistance necessary to carry out their duties has been made avtilTable to them. 97. Israel is proud of its record in respect ofthe holy places of all faiths. Israel policy will continue to adhere strictly to the fundamental principle of free access for prayer and worship by all believers of all faiths to all holy places. 98. This allegation about a shrine which is visited daily by hundreds and sometimes thousands ofvisitors from ail over the world is patently untrue. It is so obviously a repetition of the tactic of the big-lie, and yet is so sinister in all its horrible implications, designed as it is to incite millions of people who are ignorant of the facts. It is but another example of the level to which we have been dragged down in this Organization by those who are rapidly taking control and turning it into a centre of uncontrollable ‘hate and irreconcilable division. 99. So much for the baseless ~lliegations, in the documents referred to. I will not-engage in a time-consuming refutation of everything that has been said. I leave it to the members of the Council to draw their own inference from what has already proved to be false as to the remainder of the allegations. 100. We have listened to the representatives of Jordan and Egypt. For 19 years. the Jordanians controlled the W&t Bank and,the Egy tians controlled the Gaza Strip For 19 -lye:ars they&a ,it in--$,he?r power if to do eve-rything. that they want fsarel~to do today. Why did they tibf do it? Were there fis‘- PaIestinian Arabs between 1948 and 1967 .in flie: West Bank or Gaza? I ask those who were discussing this problem. For 19 years two Arab States had it in their power to do exactly that. Why did they not do it? Why in the course of 19 years was not even a local central administration set up in the West Bank by the Jordanians, or in Gaza by the Egyptians? Why-in the 19 years 101. Let us look at the situation in the West Bank under Jordan. I quote from a document from that period: “In January 1966 the Jordanian authorities arrested 200 persons. In April they arrested 2,000 persons in the West Bank. In May, mass demonstrations took place in East Jerusalem, Hebron and Ramallah. The police used force, closed down schools, arrested hundreds of persons. In July, disturbances and mass demonstrations broke out in Nablus. The Jordanian police used tear gas, 12 persons were wounded, and 250 arrested. November saw a series of stormy disturbances and clashes between civilians and police and army forces, with numerous casualties. On 21 November shop and business strikes broke out in the Ramallah area. The army was called in to intervene and employed tanks. The Jordanian authorities imposed a curfew and closed all the schools. Similar events occurred through November and December in most other towns. On 24 November the Jordanian army again employed tanks and tear gas. Twenty demonstrators were killed and many more wounded. On 8 December a general business strike was put down by force by the police and the Jordanian army. On 13 January 1967 the population of Nablus rose up. Barricades were put up in the streets. The Jordanian army had ., .to surround the city and suppress resistance by force.” If you are interested in more, then I recommend, Mr. President and members of the Council, that you read the chapter, “Hussein Versus the Palestinians, 1964-1972”, in this biography of King Hussein. 102. Why is it that the major pitched battles carried out by the PLO have been waged against Arab Govemments and Arab authority-in 1970, in the so-called Black September, against the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and this year as a major element in the destruction of the Lebanese State? 103. And now to the disturbances in the West Bank. The incidents in the West Bank are a result of demonstrations by youngsters who have been incited on the basis of false propaganda, such as the fairy tale about prayer in Al-Aqsa, to throw stones and riot. The bulk of the population in the West Bank is not involved in these events, and even today, as I sit here, some 70,000 Arabs from the territories administered by Israel came over to Israel, as they do every day, to work. 104. Today Israel is administering the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Some representatives will doubtless have noted that the situation in the Gaza Strip 105. The nature of the situationin the West Bank being what it is, those elections could -well prove toybe a tour de farce for the first time amongst Arabs on the Palestinian issue. The PLO by its very nature-a grouping of terrorist organizations which rules by the muzzle of the Kalashnikov rifle and the assassin’s bullet-cannot possibly entertain free and secret elections. That is not how its leadersattained. their presentpositions. Accordingly, they are endeavouring as they did four years ago, immediately before the : previous elections, to arouse opinion, to incite, to inflame passions in order to head off the elections, the results of which might be somewhat embarrassing for them and which might well bring to the fore a new Palestinian Arab leadership of responsible nature. They have not succeeded in disrupting elections in the past. They will not succeed this time. 106. At this Council table on 12 January 11870th meeting] the representative of the PLO already launched an attack on these elections. This is what is behind these disturbances and. that iswhy they are taking place in the West Bank and not in G.aza, Here is a blatant attempt by that organization to. disrupt orderly elections and to prevent the creation of. any alternative grouping amongst the Palestinian Arabs which might give hope for a movement in the direction of peace. The Government of Israel will not be deterred from its policy of preventing thatdisruptive organization from attempting to bring chaos to the West Bank. They will not succeed, I assure the Council, in trying to do in the. West Bank what. they attempted to do. in Jordan in the bloody days. bf the; so-@led Black September in September 1970 or what they have succeeded in.doing in-the tragedy of Lebanon. 107. These disruptive elements-about which the President of Egypt said only a few weeks ago that. he does not know what they want, which, despite the fact that the representative of Jordan supports them with such moving fervour in this building, are not allowed to show their faces in Jordan and which are in the process of becoming an instrument of.Syrian policywill not be allowed by the Government of Israel to perpetrate their nefarious designagainst the constructive approach to the problem of the Middle East and of the Palestinian Arabs and will not be permitted by us in any manner to try to move towards the achievement of their aim of destroying the State of Israel. Let that be clear beyond all measure of doubt. 108. I think that it is time that the world awoke to the inherent destructiveness of the Arab purpose in 109. One cannot ignore the attitude of the Moslem Arabs to various cultural entities in the Middle East. Look at the. fate of the Syrian Christians in Iraq and of the Copts in Egypt. One has but to contemplate the sombre and gfim fate of the Kurds in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of blacks were slaughtered and oppressed in southern Sudan. And then we saw and in fact are witnessing a major move to eliminate the Christian community from Lebanon and thus to realize Yasser A&at’s avowed aim-to quote from a speech of his in Libya last year-that “there will be no presence but the Arab presence in the area”. Add to all this the fate of over 800,000 Jews who lived in Arab countries and have had to leave them in the last 25 years. 110. 8 @4?2, when the Jewish community accepted the Uniteti Nat?ons,.&mion dividing whatwas then Palestine into two &rtes, one Jewishand the other Arab, the Arab States rejected it and chose instead to try to destroy the infant State of Israel by force of arms. In the subsequent fighting, the Jordanian Army seized the eastern half of Jerusalem and the historic walled Old City, which contains religious shrines sacred to Christians,.Jews and Moslems. For the next 19 years uniil 1967~Jerusalem remained a city divided, cut in half by barbed wire and-ugly walls. For 19 years the Jordanian rule in the east-em half of the city constituted’ a record of deliberate desecration of Holy Places and confpfete disregard for an intemational agreement to provide free access to religious shrines. It is a record of hundreds of holy scrolls and books reverently preserved for generations’plundered and burnt to ashes; of synagogues razed to the ground or converted into hen-houses and stables filled with dung-heaps, garbage and carcasses. It is a record of tens of thousands of tombstones torn up and used as building materials for public lattines and army 111. In 1949 Jordan signed an Armistice Agreement with Israel.’ Article VIII prescribed “free access to the Holy Places and cultural institutions and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives”. The Jordanian Government never honoured its undertaking. For the first time in centuries Jews were completely barred from the Old City of Jerusalem and its Holy Places. They had no access to the cemetery on the Mount of Olives or any free access to their cultural institutions on Mount Scopus. The functioning of those institutions stopped until June 1967. Moslem residents of Israel were prevented by Jordan from visiting Islam’s Holy Places in East Jerusalem. 112. The Jordanian Government was not content to divide the city in two and ban any and all movement of Israelis-Jews and Moslems-to the part which it had annexed by force. It began systematically to eliminate every trace of the city’s Jewish past. The Jewish quarter was laid waste. Fifty-eight synagogues, some of great antiquity, were destroyed or desecrated. Synagogues that were not destroyed were used by the Jordanians as toilets, stables and hen-coops. In the cemetery on the Mount of Olives, hallowed to Jews for thousands of years, 38,000 of the 50,000 tombstones were tom up to pave roads, build fences and install latrines.~I myself found the graves of my grandparents and my great-grandmother on the Mount of Olives in June 1967 desecrated, their tombstones destroyed. For 19 years Jerusalem was bisected by barbed wire and concrete barriers. In May 1967 the Temple Mount which we are discussing today became a military camp for the Jordanian National Guard. . . 113. During its occupation of East Jerusalem, the Government of Jordan forbade Jewish entry and set out to Arabize the city and erase its Jewish identity; it took action against the Christian inhabitants as well. In 1958, the Parliament in Amman ,passed a law requiring all members of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre to adopt Jordanian citizenship. Since ,the fifth century members of that Brotherhood had invariably been Greek. In 1965 Jordanian legislation was passed restricting the development of Christian institutions by cancelling their right to acquire land in or near Jerusalem. In I966 Christian schoois were compelled to close on Fridays, the Moslem day of rest, Christian education was restricted, and privileges previously enjoyed by Christian religious institutions were abolished. 114. During the entire period, as these foul acts of desecration were being perpetrated against places holy to the Jewish people, the world remained silent. There was no Security Council meeting when Jewish synagogues were burnt and Jewish graves were defiled, “I heard not one expression of dismay across the entire human scene when Jordan destroyed ancient synagogues in the Old City in an orgy of hate.“4 This is what Abba Eban, Israel’s Foreign Minister, told the General Assembly on 12 July 1967. He went on: “No United Nations organ expressed any dismay when Jordan, for twenty years, refused any access to the oldest and most revered of all Holy Places: the Western Wall. Nor was there any expression of dismay when tombstones on the Mount of Olives were uprooted to build walls in secular buildings.“4 115. The city of Jerusalem is a city of unique character. It is a holy city sacred to millions of members of the three great religions, and its holy shrines and traditions are the heritage of mankind. It is this unique character of Jerusalem that makes all the considerations affecting it so difficult to limit and delineate -the demographic and the urban, the cultural and the legal, the historical and the religious, the aesthetic and the economic, the parochial and the international are all inextricably associated in the city of Jerusalem. 116. In the course of history Jerusalem has known many rulers. But only for Jews has it been the capital of the nation living in our land. At all other times Jerusalem was ruled by foreigners who treated it as a provincial town. The Jews of Jerusalem today are the inhabitants with the tongest unbroken historical association with it. The story of Jewish attachment to Jerusalem under alien domination is that of an unremitting struggle to preserve a Jewish presence in it, never allowing the link to be broken. 117. Although the Jordanian Government destroyed the ancient Jewish quarter in the Old City and barred Jews from entry even as tourists, thus preventing them from worshipping at what I have described as Judaism’s holiest place, Jerusalem today is an open city-pen to all its citizens, Jews, Moslems ‘and Christians, and to members of all faiths from all nations. It is open even to those who claim to be Israel’s enemies. To date, millions of tourists from all over the world, including hostile Arab States, have visited Jerusalem and have enjoyed freedom of access to and worship at their respective Holy Places. 118. But Jerusalem is more than a conglomeration of holy places. It is a city, a living and breathing entity, a human community engaged in all the traffic and commerce of everyday life. It is a home for over 215,500 Jews, 61,600 Moslems and 11,500 Christians of 119. In view of Jerusalem’s special~n~iversalsignificance, it was only natural that many distin@&hed personalities from all over the. worid should volunteer or be sought out to give advice on the city’s future character. Seven years ago, Mayor Teddy Kollek decided to give form. and organizatibn to this idea, and he invited some 70 outstanding international personalities-mainty non-Jews-&o join, as members of the Jerusalem Committee, a wor1d.advisor-y council concerned with the beautification and restorajion of the city. The Committee’s firstmeeting took place in 1969, and its second session was held in June 1973. Let me quote from the last report of that Committee: “... In a world of distressiug, frictions and intolerance, Jerusalem observes and encourages religious and communal freedom, full access to its holy places and shrines of worship, a deeg respect for the cultural and historical heritage of allits citizens, and beyond that, for all mankind. Attempts to break the peace through acts of terror or civil disturbance that have recently occurredor may recur. should not deflect or deter the responsible guardians of this universal city from the continued policy and practice of ever-increasing intercommuna1 cooperation. 4‘ ..* “The Committee would like-to acknowledge the successful efforts. made in the field o,f education. Everywhere we observed the building of new schools, appropriately located.;. servin all ethnic and religious groups. Especially doest e Committee a applaud the action within the educational system of Jerusalem, permitting schools,, Christian and Moslem alike, to allow their students to choose a cui‘@~~lum that gives them. the.oppo-rtunity ofchoice to continue their education in Israeli uuiverslties as well as universities in Arab countries. “The Committee finds it necessary to express its convi_ction that Jerusalem. is and should remain a united city, humane and universal. In the views of the Committee, those at presem respousible for administering the city have proved th.emselves conscious of the trust to serve the best interests not only of-its inhabitants but ofall mankit@ “Firially, the Committee calls upon the. peoples of the world and on all international orgamzations to recognize their responsibility to assist those 120. Finally, in the past 2,000 years the city of Jerusalem has not known a more enlightened admin- \ istration than today’s, dedicated to the principles of human tolerance and peaceful coexistence between the various communities which comprise the human mosaic of that unique, immortal and beautiful city. Our Jewish sages said, “Ten measures of beauty were given to the world; nine of them belong to Jerusalem’*. 121. Under Mayor Kollek’s dynamic and imaginative leadership-and here I should mention in parentheses that he received more votes in the Arab section in East Jerusalem than any Arab mayor before him had received in that part of the town-the city has become a place of beauty in which the cultural, religious and aesthetic mingle together to give Jerusalem its peculiar and unique character. Since the days of King David, when the city was established as the capital of our nation, it has continued to be the centre of Jewish life, hope and yearning. Three times a day for thousands of years Jews have prayed, “To Jerusalem thy city shall we return in joy”. For thousands of years, Jews have re-echoed the Psalmist’s oath, “If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, may my right hand f&get its cunning”. 122. I offer no excuse for our presence in Jerusalem. I owe no apology. We are there as of right-a right that has been hallowed by our Bible, a right which has been sanctified by our history, by our sacrifice, by our prayers and by our yearnings, a right which has been strengthened and vindicated by virtue of our creating the only liberal administration giving complete freedom of worship to all faiths which the city has known for the first time without any restraint whatsoever in 2,000 years. 123. Before the capital cities of the countries represented here-with the possible exception of Chinaexisted, Jerusalem wassthe capital city of the Jewish commonwealth. While wild herds roamed on the sites of what are today the great capital cities of the world, the prophets of Israel were walking in the streets of Jerusalem and prodaiming in their immortal words the great principles of humanity to mankind for the first time. When many of the great civilizations of today were but primitive societies, the judges of Israel were dispensing justice in Jerusalem on the basis of one of the most advanced and enlightened codes of law in history. 124. We are proud of Jerusalem and all that it stands for. We are proud of the trust we hold in respect of the two other great religions in our capital city. We are proud of the manner in which we carry out this trust before history. It is all there in the open for everyone to. see.

The next speaker is the representative of Yugoslavia, whom I invite to take a place at the Council table and to make a statement.

Mr. President, I am gratified to have this opportunity to greet you in your capacity as President of the Security Council for the month of March as well as representative of Benin, a friendly African and non-aligned country which, like my own, is lending assistance and support to peoples and liberation movements that are fighting for freedom and independence. 128. We also welcome the arrival of Mr. Scranton in his new capacity as the United States Permanent Representative, and we hope to have fruitful cooperation with him. 129. The most recent aggressive and repressive acts of the occupation forces of Israel in the West Bank, in Jerusalem and in other occupied territories are directed against the Palestinian population living in those territories, with the aim of drastically altering their demographic structure. The changes that the Israeli occupier is trying to introduce into those territories, concerning their demography and administration, in the domain of the economy and in the field of religion, constitute a short-sighted and hopeless continuation of Israel’s annexationist policy. The annual reports of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population of the Occupied Territories, as well as the reports of the International Red Cross, testify to a constant worsening of the situation of the civilian population as a result of the prolonged occupation and the policy of annexation pursued by Israel through the establishment of Israeli settlements in the Sinai, on the Golan Heights and also in the West Bank; through the constant intensification of mass persecutions and arrests, administrative detentions. and trials by military courts; through the persecution of intellectuals, collective punishment, the destruction of houses, the closing down of stores and forcible transfers of population; through failure to respect the religious feelings of the population and through the illegal exploitation of the natural resources of the occupied territories. The deliberate destruction of Quneitra, in spite of the passage of time, is still fresh in our minds and constitutes a warning. 13 1. The current situation shows once again that the Security Council and the international community should take urgent action in order to compel Israel to withdraw from all the Arab territories occupied since 1967 and to implement the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in accordance with the General Assembly resolutions which recognized and defined those rights. Only in such a way is it possible to establish a just and lasting peace and security for all the countries and peoples in the region. 132. It should, at long last, be clear to Israel and to all that the Palestinian question constitutes the very core of the problem of the Middle East and that, without its solution on a just basis and without the full implementation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinians to selfdetermination, independence and their own State in Palestine and of the right to return to their homes for those who were forcibly expelled from them and who wish to do so, there can be no peace and no solution in this region, which has been the object of an acute and most dangerous international crisis for so many years. Israel should realize that there is no force that can annihilate the Palestinian people and eradicate. it from the soil of Palestine and the Middle East through the use of any method of de~mographic or cultural denationalization, ensiavement or forcible expulsion or the holding of people in a state of constant terror and fear. The Palestinian people has proved in a convincing and lasting manner that it wishes to achieve its freedom and to establish its homeland and that, in fighting for these aims, it does not shrink from any sacrifice. It has also proved that any people which is prepared to make maximum sacrifices for the defence of its being, its freedom, its dignity and its independence and an equal place among the peoples of the world cannot be defeated. Israel should realize that the occupation and annexation of foreign territories could never be a basis for peace. It is in the best interest of Israel to relinquish its 133. We feel that this time we should-draw the attention of those who have always sided with Israel to the grave responsibility they will bear for all that may occur if Israel persists in its arbitrary behaviour in the occupied territories and if no serious efforts are made to establish peace on the basis of Israel’s withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since 1967 and on the basis of the impIement8tion of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. 134. We cannot subscribe to the attitude which consists in ignoring the problem of Palestine. We cannot condone attempts at boycotting the consideration of this question, attempts at pushing it aside or relegating it to the periphery of ef%rts to establish peace in the Middle East. Has is not yet become clear to everyone that such stands cannot contribute to the consohdation of the initial and partial results achieved so far, in the same way as we are convinced that a way out of thesituation cannot be sought in artificial attempts to reach an illusory solution of the problem of Palestine through procedural or some other frameworks, which have proved to be totally ineffective? 135. In this concrete case, the Security Council-must condemn Israel for the acts perpetrated by it recently in the occupied territories and with regard to the civilian population. Besides, the Council should demand that Israel put a stop immediately to the oppression of the civilian Arab and Palestinian population by its occupation forces, that it desist from mass arrests, curfews, administrative detention and trials by military courts, from the persecution of intellectuals, collective punjshments, destruction of houses, forcible transfers of population and closing down ofstores and commercial establishments. Further, the Council should condemn the Israeli policy of the establishment of any settlements in the occupied territories. The Council shouId brand such practices as illegal and fix. a time-limit for Israel to withdraw those settlements unconditionally and to pay compensation for the damage inflicted thereby upon the population of the occupied territories. 136. However, the Council shouldnot be content in doing only that. During the debate held in the Council in January many positive elements and trends emerged. Unfortunately, Israel, in keeping with its known intransigence, boycotted that. debate of the Council, while the constructive action of the Council was interrupted by the veto of a permanent member. 137. What is now happening in Jerusalem and: throughout the West Bank provides proof that the real development. of. real events in. the rea1 troubIed-,area. does not wait for anyone’s tactical. and political schemes or time-tabies, nor for the interests that find everything else more important than to come genuinely

Mr. President, the reasons which impelled the delegations of Libya and Pakistan to ask you to convene this meeting of the Security Council were explained in our letter to you of 19 March [S/12017]. It was not ,our intention that on this occasion the Council should go over the ground covered in the recent debate on the Middle East and the Palestine question, although of course what has been happening in recent days in cities and towns of the occupied West Bank and in Jerusalem cannot be divorced or viewed in isolation from the larger context. There would be no clashes occurring in the West Bank and Jerusalem if Israel’s occupation had ended and peace established in the Middle East. 139. My delegation remains convinced that the principles laid down in the draft presented to the Council at its January meetings [S/ 119401, for which regrettably we could not obtain the unanimous support of the permanent members, contain the essential and interlinked erements for a settlement which would protect and restore the. legitimate rights and interests of the peoples and parties concerned., and on the basis of which necessary negotiations c,an and must be held. The basic question is the universalrecognition and speedy implementation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. My delegation remains convinced that a peaceful settlement in the Middle East on the basis of the principles o.utlined in that draft resolution is attainable and that the time has come to make a decisive effort towards that end. 140- We shall have to return to these questions when the Council once again takes up the issue of the Middle East and Palestine. Our objective today is more specific. The representative of the Palestine Liberation Grganization has given an account [1893rd meeting] of what has happened in the West Bank generally, and in Jerusalem in particular, in the wake of a ruling given by the local magistrate which had the effect of permitting Jews to pray in the premises of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. This, I would say, is not a “damnabIe lie” nor a mischievous attempt to inflame religious feelings but is a fact because, as the representative of Israel said himself, the,mosque is situated on what he calls Temple Mount and what we call Al-Haram Al-Sharif, 141. I come to the matter of the ruling of the Magistrate and the decision of the Supreme Court. The representative of Israel spoke with disdain of the capacity of the Pakistani representative to understand the proper judicial procedures which prevail in Israel. The representative himself is a general, but I am sure that he has on his stafflawyers who, ifthey care to do so, can study the legal procedures-and laws under which our country is governed, and I am sure they would reassure him about my capacity to understand how the laws of a country run. 142. Be that as it may, the decision rendered by the Israeli Supreme Court overruhng the magistrate, despite its tardiness, is a good thing as far as it goes. But, as one of the speakers said this morning, these matters cannot be left to the judgement, good or bad, of judges of the Israeli occupation. 143. Actions which inflame religious sentiments might in ordinary circumstances be treated as acts of intolerance, or of arrogance or of folly. However, we are not concerned only, or even mainly, with the religious aspects of the present situation but with the larger issue of Israel’s presence and intentions in Jerusalem and the West Bank and in other occupied territories. If there is to be peace in the Middle East, then Israel will have to withdraw from all the Arab territories it occupied in 1967, and this requires above all, if not first of all, withdrawal from occupied Jerusalem and the restoration there of the TOO-year-old Arab sovereignty. 144. Jerusalem is indeed a beautiful place. It arouses the sentiments and emotions of people all over the world. But it cannot be awarded on emotional, sentimental or esthetic grounds to IsraeI, It is a city sacred to the followers of the three great world religions -Judaism, Christianity and Islam. That the followers of each must have access to their respective holy places at all times and in all conditions goes without saying, and such access must be provided for in any peace settlement. 145. However, because of its special status, and because Israel has declared its intention to annex the occupied portion of the city and has taken a variety of actions to that end as well as measures to change its demographic and cultural character, the General Assembly and the Security Council found it necessary to adopt resolutions and decisions dealing specifically with Jerusalem. As early as 4 July 1967-only a month 146. Subsequently the Security Council, reaffirming that acquisition of territory by military conquest is inadmissible, called on the Israeli authorities to desist from measures to change the status ofJerusalem and to rescindtho.se already taken, and deplored and strongly censured all such measures. Resolution 298 (1971), in its paragraph 3, confirmed “inthe clearest, possible ferms that all legislative and .administmtive actions taken by Israel to change the status of the City of Jerusalem, including exproptiation of land and properties, transfer of populations and legislation aimed at the incorporation of the occupied section, are totally invalid.** 147: The Security- Council rksolutions were adopted witlioutid&sent and are, as everyone knows, binding on~all.Mtmber States under Article 25 of the Charter. Israel has nevertheless consistently ignored them and has continued in all’ sorts of ways-open as well as insidious-to bring about a change in the legal status and other characteristics not only of Jerusalem but of other cities and towns in the West Bank as well as of the Golan Heights, Ixi short, it has sought and is seeking to turn occupation into absorption. 148. This morn&we heard the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization tell us in detail what this has involved for the local inhabitants of the occupied territories. It should surprise no one that in the exprop.riation of their lands and in the forcible establishment of Jewish settlements in their areas the local inhabi@nts.see.a repetition of the pattern by which they were ejected from their homes and properties after the United.Nations decided to establish a Jewish State in parts of Ptilestine. 149. The Israeli representative made mock of the crisis which prevails today in the West Bank and its cities; He clismisseaqhe Uprising as a Ibt of teenagers’ demonstratfons. He thougtt it was comic that the Security Council was meeting to discuss this issue. The afarm and desperate anger ivith which the inhabitants of the o‘ccupied territories have reacted can be measured from the. fact that curfews had to be declared in almost all major cities df the West bank and Jerusalem andcthat fet’trsalem, in the words of a newsreporter-fiot;a “damn8bie lie” from this deiegatiopbut the Daily News, which is tlot tmsympathetic to‘ Israels’was-saturated,with Israeli paratroopers”. 150. So in the&cumstances what shauid the Council do? The Coundi has, as I said, already adopted a “The real significance of. these incidents is: to demonstrate the time-bomb nature of perpetuating Israeli military rule over a million alienated Paiestinians-a political anomaly that: is. unsati’sfao tory”-a euphemism, I should think-“overthe long run to Arabs and Israelis alike.” 152. My d&gz$ion believes that: the. Council must act to defuse. the time bomb by calling for an end to the decade of military. occupation by IsraeLI use again the ianguage. of, The New York Times. Peace will not return to-the Middle East unless and-until all the terrltoriesaccupied since 1867, including the Holy City of Jerusalem, are vacated b Israel. No Middle- East settlement wiII be just, T viab e ar.. durable @@XL the legitimate national-tights of.the PaJestinian p<opie. are recognized and translated into reality. Whate?!er the means or mechanisms adopted to achieve these ends, it has to be. recognized .that t.he mo.vement in that direction. must be initiated now and the process of negotiation must be accelerated, 153. In the view of my delegation it is the primary task of the Security Council to e.ncourag$ t-he apro@e,cts of pea_cer which, notwithstafRlii¶g. the bitter and emutiof@ thiags we have @ear21 taday, are not nonexistetit, Oth&&e, the thre.@ of war is certa.in to increase w&B thepassage of tir@& Th:egresent turmoil is a wa&ng signal whlcfi shoUld.not I& ignored, 154. I& PESIDE~T {inrPrprt?lMion&ofrom FreKch): The next speaker is the represent‘ative of Saudi Arabia. I-now ask him to tari6 a seat at the Council table and to make his statem&. 155. Mi. BAROODY (Saudi Arab& Mr. President? I am in$eetl heartened to see a strti of Benin assume the Presidency of the Security Council, since not too long ago #iis country was no more than-a mere cbloniti Territory in Africa. It wasnot in vain that a. littl‘e over two decades ago a few of as initiated the ci-&boration of-the principle of self-determination into a.fi@ fledged right a.fidfinally succesed&l in having th% priffXn$&i~ rlglit spelt out in t$e, tWp Ihterna_ti:snai 1 CoioenaM~ on Human Rights. Hen=* it behoves QS to congtatulate you and, et@&, ourselves in tEie, emergence of erstwhile African Tetifories, incl@lirig your country, as sovereign States Members af th‘e: United Nations. . . . 157. But at this stage I would not like to let the opportunity pass without referring to the automobile accident which hurt our good friend and colleague, Ambassador Yakov Malik, and his good spouse. Although I am a monarchist and I believe that Mr. Malik is a Communist, and we may sometimes find ourselves poles apart in our respective Governments’ policies, this has not deterred either one of us for the last quarter century or so from developing friendly personal relations, although there is not what is called detente between Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union. However, it is humanism that, binds us, as it should bind people of all ideologies. We should not have a relationship that is spurious, and we never did, thank God. I wish to tender through: my good friend, Mr. Richard Ovinnikov, occupying the Soviet seat, my best wishes for the speedy recovery of Mr. and Madame Malik, and my hope that it will not be long before the former resumes his duties amongst us. 158. I come now:‘to the pith of the whole question. I do not want to cite incidents and catalogue what happened in the year 1967 or the year 1947--or, for that matter, in the year 1922, when I was a youth of 17, the year when it dawned upon us that the erstwhile colonial Powers had ‘put us under mandate, a form of colonialism in disguise. 159. The representative of Israel said that King David had founded the first capital of Judaism. That is true. But I wouId refer him to a book by the late Mr. Robert Feiffer, a professor of the Old Testament at Harvard University. I think. that that book would enlighten him. I shall paraphrase, from memory, parts of that book in order to present the historical facts. . . 160. Mr. Herzog referred to King David as a prophet. Of course, King David was a prophet of the Jews, a son of Solomon. But I would go back to the days of 161. Mr. Herzog said something about lies being contained in the letter of the Saudi Arabian representative. He did not dare mention the name Baroody, because it is known that Baroody never tells lies; he may be wrong and, if so, he stands to be corrected, but he does not tell lies. I feel pity for Mr. Herzog because I think that, as a Jew, he has been brainwashed by the Zionists. 162. Mr. Herzog spoke of the Jew Abraham. Abraham was a patriarch who lived in Ur of the Chaldees. The word “Jew” came into being during the days of Abraham’s son Jacob, when he moved with his sons to the land of Canaan. The whole story is in Genesis. The fourth son of Jacob was named Judah, and that is where the word “Jew” came from. 163. For the information of the Israeli delegation-I see one member of the delegation sitting here; I do not know why Mr. Herzog could not stay here and look me in the eye, although, of course, it is his privilege to leave the room if he wishes to-1 would say this. These people were called “Habiru”. The word “Hebrew” is derived from that word: the people who had donkeys instead of camels for transporting their crops and their goods from one place to the other. Some people think that the word comes from “Habara”, an ancient Semitic word, but that is not the case. 164. Abraham was a patriarch. He had not one wife but many, many wives, as was the custom of the patriarchs of yore. He had many wives and concubines, for that matter. A concubine also begets children; many of them beget many children. This is what would be called in the United States a “common law marriage”. Now, many of Abraham’s wives and concubines were Canaanites and related to the Arameans, from whom Jesus descended. 165. Who does Mr. Herzog think he is fooling? He comes from Ireland, and perhaps from Poland, from the Khazars of the northern tier of Asia. Those were the ancestors of this gentleman called Mr. Herzog. He does not know anything about our area. There was no quarrel between our Jews and us. They spoke Arabic; they ate the same food and worshipped the same God. The only difference was that they did not recognize Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. They thought he was a false Christ. They are still waiting for their Christ; that is their privilege. 167. Herzl decided that there could be no life for the Jew in Europe, that he should have a land of his own. I have done research about Mr. Herzl’s family. I could not find out anything about his male forebears. I do not know about the women. Of course, the Jews put the emphasis on the mother as the important partner in the marriage. That is why, when a Jew marries a Gentile they have almost a funeral at home, because the mother is important. That is their privilege; they are entitled to their rituals. 168. In any case, Herzl was most likely a Khazar, and his ideology gained credence among the Khazars. He wrote The Jewish State in Paris. If you go to the Rue St. Honore in Paris and take a left turn into the street which leads to the back of the Ritz Hotel, you will see a plaque-at least I think it is still there; I saw it about 30 years ago-saying that that is the place where Herzl did his writing. He said that the Jews should have a home of their own; otherwise they would be persecuted. It is a fact that some Jews were persecuted in Europe. But Christians persecuted Christians, even before Protestantism came on the scene. What about the Inquisition? That was the age of religious intolerance. I say that in fairness to the Christians. 169. As a home for the Jews they thought of Uganda; they thought of Argentina. And before the war there were negotiations between Hitler and the French about making Madagascar a haven for the European Jews. Hitler did not want them, for some reason or other. That was his business. He killed himself. We shall not go into the history of Hitler now. We do not want to digress. 170. In sum, who were the adherents of that ideology of Zionism? The eastern European Jews and the central European Jews that were converted to Judaism in the 8th century A.D. They lived in what today is southern Russia, at one time called Bessarabia. Then, when there was a confrontation in the eighth century between Islam and Christianity-Byzantium and Islam-they said: “Let us have detente” -just as Mr. Kissinger today has detente with the Soviet Union. “Let us not fight each other for the time being, and in order not to upset the balance of power we will not let these tribes” -pagan tribes which settled in the first century A.D. in what today is southern Russia-“become 171. ,These are facts; this is not Baroody inventing things, as did our colleague Mr. Herzog. And you know what happened when the British and the French were losing the war in 1917: it was the Zionists who railroaded this country, the United States, into the First World War, in 1917. Mr. Woodrow Wilson-I did research on his work, when I lectured for one year at Princeton in 1943-was an isolationist, like the father or uncle of Henry Cabot Lodge. It was the Zionists who railroaded this country into the, First World War, because Balfour saw that there was no victory in sight: the Germans were more efficient in war, it seems, than the British. And then the Balfour Declaration came into being. 172. Why am I repeating all this? To show you the genesis. Those Khazars, those converted Jews among whom this ideology grew, had no title to Palestine even on spiritual grounds. It iS not the ideology of our own Jews. We -respect spiritual Zionism. Zion is the mountain where, allegedly, King David was buried. So they held what you call territorial Zionism, Zionism based not on the spirit but on territory. And, ironically, after the destruction of the Templi: in 70 A.D. by the Romans, many of the Jews became Christians. Even St. Paul, as you know, was a Jew, and he became one of the greatest apostles of Christianity. Who was St. Peter? They-were all Jews-r Arameans; they were all related, the same Semitic people-but the forebears of those Khazar Jews, who were converted to Judaism in the eighth century, ,had never laid eyes on Palestine. And when, across this table, none other than Mr. Abba Eban used to say, “God gave us Palestine”, I said: “Since when is God in the real estate business? Since when? Show us the title deed and the seal thereon.” And you British and Americans-because, after all, it was after 1947-when did God give you a power of attorney to give populated land to Khazars who hailed from eastern and central Europe and whose forebears never laid eyes on Palestine? He fails to mention all’this. 173. All right, what about Christianity? There are a billion Christians; there are 700:. million Moslems. Jerusalem is as sacred to them, if not more so, as it is to the Jews. Pope Urban II, in- 1087, initiated the first Crusade, and then there were other Crusades. They failed. We, the Moslem nations-we Arabstried to use the Caliphate in order to have supremacy over Moslems who were not Arabs. We failed because people want to have their own irationality, their own customs, their own traditions-+ghtly or wrongly; I do not know. I r , 174. Now it is the turn of the Khazars, who use a noble religion, which is Judaism,, as a motivation for political and economic ends. T&y wiil fail, and I feel sorry for them. This is the beginning of the end; 175. I am a student of comparative religions, particularly of the religions of our area. This is a hoax. And this is not the first time that those European colonialists, whether they are Jews or Gentiles, have perpetrated a hoax. Do you not know what the British said about the Germans during the First World War and in the post-war’era-that the Germans had Belgian babies for breakfast, and that they threw the Belgian babies up in the air and caught them on their bayonets. And when I was in England I was told that after the First’World War the Foreign Secretary had to apologize to the Germans about what was labelled “war propaganda’.‘. So do not believe everything. 176. This gentleman may be brainwashed himself. I do not say he is”trying to lie, nor do I talk as he does of “lies”. I thought we were through with such appeliations during’ the last session. Our “professor” was here: I liked him; he was not a bad sort, but he used words such as “the big lie”. You know whom I am referring to: Moynihan. We are not used to such things in our part of the word. If somebody calls you a liar in public, you hit him. What is the idea of calling it a “big lie” and t‘obscene” and certain other things? We do not accept,‘these things. There are 144 nations represented here. They may be misled, but Mr. Herzog certainly does not know what he is talking about. 177. And we, theyArab world, are to accept that the Palestinians should be scattered to the four comers of the world. Why? The Palestinians are in our area. Forget that they are Arabs. What did our American friends do here to the Red Indians? Suppose some Red Indians came.and said they had a sacred mountain here in Manhattanithat Murray Hill was a sacred mountain-would yo’u give it back to them, my good friend Governor Scranton? I do not think’you would. You are so good that they call a place in Pennsylvania after you. You would not give it to the Indians now. And these people say, “because we were there 2,000 years ago”. ‘I have done research. Both Israel and Judah were there only for several hundred years. The Canaanites had been there before our own Jews, the Oriental Jews, took Jerusalem-2,500 years. It 178. The motivation used to be religion during the Middle Ages; then came the Bourbons, and the vassals of the Pope became independent; then it became nationalism, especially after the French Revolution; and then it became ideological-and representatives see how sometimes our Communist friends, without naming them, throw mud at each other. Motivations; but this is passe; you cannot use religion as a motivation for a political end. 179. Does this gentleman mean to tell me that he believes in that eloquent serpent that gave Eve the apple which she took to ‘Adam when they were ‘in Eden? That is all right,‘because we lived in tribes in those days. There had to be allegories, parables. If one studies the Bible, the Old Testament and the New, it is all poetic, in parables. 180. Many gullible Christians, here and elsewhere, are fundamentalists, and I respect them. I respect fundamentalists. They take the letter, and “the letter killeth”. They believe everything. Tell me, did Noah also have a microscope when he took male and female into the ark? That is all mentioned in the Bible. There were such small creatures that he,could not see whether they were male .or female. They had no microscope then ‘and they had no time. .And there are certain people today in the twentieth century who believe in every .word in the holy books. It is the moral, the pith. You talk about religion; it has been ritualized, and so has democracy been ritualized. 181. I& us come to the truth: Baroody tells you the truth as he knows it. Do not go back and say “God gave us Palestine”. They took exception because we said that those European Zionists are behaving in a way that may be equated with racism. So were our British friends before they lost the empire. I lived amongst them in the 1920’s and 1930’s. They had their noses up. Now they are so nice without the empire. They thought they were a superior race, the Anglo-Saxon race. And if we only knew. I did not know there were Celts, the people. of Norfolk, “the capital of William the Conqueror, and the Celts from which our friend Mr. Richard is descended. We have no such thing as race; it is the attitude that is racial. There is no such thing as “Jewish blood”, “Arab blood” or “Russian blood” --;unless you want it for transfusion, in which case one labels it .A,. B, C, D as the case might be. 183. Do not try to fool anyone, Mr. Herzog. You are fooling yourself. Seek acceptance in the area. I was talking about this subject 53 years ago, probably before you were born, although I do not know how old you are. Seek acceptance in the area, adjust and adapt, and you will see the people of the Middle East accept you with open arms. And they are the real people of the land. They were Jews-I do not kno-w whether this man was a Jew before. Ethnically, many embraced Judaism, and then Byzantium began to lord it-over whom? Over the people of the land. Again, Byzantium used Christianity as a motivation for political and economic ends, and people got fed up. So when a new religion came they embraced Islam. 184. And for your information, Sir, we have some families who are more Arab than any Arab that are descended from the Crusaders. We assimilated them. Do you not think that we can assimilate those Eastern and Central European Jews who converted to Judaism? If they want to assimilate they will not give us indigestion. But they are causing us indigestion by the way they are acting as if they are the lords and as if God gave them Palestine. That is the hoax. 185. Mr. Herzog mentioned Lebanon. I tell him, “I come from that part of the world. Do not poke your nose in. If you do so, you will find it is a hornets’ nest.” What created this trouble in Lebanon but the partition of Palestine? 186. I do not want to be hard on our British and American friends. But what right did our British and American friends have to partition the land there and transport people from one place or another? It is sad that they were persecuted by Hitler, but why should the people of Palestine pay the price? Why did they not give them part of Texas or Australia? And why did not those who support them tell them that the people of Palestine have the inalienable right of self-determination? Those Palestinians are scattered all over the world, and they have caused ferment among the youth not only of the Arab and Moslem world but of the whole world, even the Japanese. It was some Japanese youths at Lod. I felt sorry for those who died, and I felt for the Japanese who killed them. After all, we do not believe in terrorism. But 187. Three years ago I saw a young man near Madison Avenue. He said, “Good morning, Ambassador Baroody.” I said, “Good morning. Who are you?” He said, “I am an Israeli.” I said, “What are you doing here?” He said, “I emigrated. I want to become an American.‘* I said, “Why?” He said, “We have had enough. Those people are tenacious, and they think-“. I said, “Who do you mean by ‘they’?:.’ He said, “The Zionists. I am no longer a Zionist. I want to be an American.” Do not think I am making up this story. I said, “Where ‘were you born?” He said, “There. My uncle was one of those”+ither the Stem Gang or the Zvai Leumi-“and he has come here also; he is’in Michigan”. 188. You have no future if you do not adjust and adapt. There have been Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Mongols, our brothers the Turks. And then, after the First world War, our British and French Mandatory Powers. And where are they now? Crumbled. Where is the British Empire? Where is the French Empire? Crumbled. And you think you are going to survive there, by the might of the United States? The United States has a .$90-billion deficit in its budget. Why should it be involved? 189. I am talking frankly, around the table, in an unorthodox manner. I do not believe in writing a text. 190. They built houses from tombstones. But you destroyed the houses of Palestinians whenever someone was accused-before the judge could pronounce him guilty or otherwise. You destroyed the houses of the living, and you are talking about a few vandals who may have removed tombstones? Good Lord. You blew up the King David Hotel. You slew Count Bemadotte and Lord Moyne. The Palestinian Arabs learned violence from you. They were peaceful. It is a land of pilgrimage. A land of pilgrimage is usually inhabited by peaceful people, because they make money by being peaceful. So we again return to money. “Peaceful”! You demolished houses. What did you do? Good Lord, what did you not do? 191. There was a hopeful note at the end of Mr. Herzog’s statement. He said he hoped that one day-1 am paraphrasing-the muezzin would pray in Jerusalem and the Christian bells would chime and the Jew would worship in the synagogue. Yes, that is possible, if you seek acceptance bythe Arabs-120 million, from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. If one draws a line from the Atlantic, at Morocco, to the confines of China, one has a mass of Moslem countries. They are one in their reverence for Jerusalem. And you want to challenge them. You play on the emotions of the wealthy Jews and you rally numerically the other Jews who want to identify themselveswith 194. And let God be my witness: if at any time the Jews, as a minority, become the scapegoat in any country and I am alive, I shall be among the first to defend them as human beings. We have no hatred. But you talk with hatred. You talk as though you are exclusive-the chosen people of God. 195. I think I must go to the Tunisian reception tonight, otherwise I would keep you until 10 o’clock. I have a lot of material I have not used. But in the event of the gentleman from Israel’s asking for the floor, please list my name immediately after his, Mr. President, and I shall refute what he says in the hope that I may shed some light-historical, political and social-on the matter and that he will see that light. And then, as he hopes, Christian, Gentile and Moslem can live in peace and harmony with the Jews, who are our brothers in humanity. 192. By what yardstick of justice is this done? You will fail, and miserably so. The United States will get tired of you. But I will not get tired of you. I shall keep trying to tell you to seek acceptance again and again and again. And I think you will be happy. Oh, how happy! You are very adept in trade and industry. You were foolish to ask for a flag and a land. You would have permeated the whole Arab world, you Jews, had you gone there without a flag, because you would have had the receipts. 193. From the days of the Caliphs the Jews controlled the industry and commerce of Baghdad. And you malign those Iraqi Jews. When the chief rabbi went to the synagogue in the days of the Caliphs, the royal guard was sent to accompany him out of respect. And as for the Syrian Jews, yesterday my son said, “Come and see, Dad, come and see.” I said, The meeting rose at 7.50 p.m. Notes HOW TO OBTAIN UNITED NATIONS PUBLICATIONS United Nations publications may be obtained from bookstores and distributors throughout the world. Consult your bookstore or write to: United Nations. Sales Section New York or Geneva. COMMENT SE PROCURER LES PUBLICATIONS DES NATIONS UNIES Les publications des Nations Unies sent en vente dans les libtairies et les agences depositaires du monde entier. Infortnez.vous aup& de votre libraire ou adressez-vous P : Nations Unies, Section des ventcs, New York ou Genh. KAIC IIOJIYYHTb RBAAHHIi OPPAHEi 3AqHR OG’bEANHEHHhIX HAUHTi COMO CONSEGUIR PUBLICACIONEZS DE LAS NACIONES UNIDAS Las publicacioncs de Ias Naciones Unidas esdn en vcnta en librerias y casas distribuidoras en todas partes de1 mundo. Consulte a su librero o dirijase a: Naciones Midas, Secci6n de Ventas. Nueva York o Ginebra. Litho in United Nations, New York 00400 83-60801-August 1984-2900