S/PV.2123 Security Council

Mr. President, the United States deiegation.asks that you’put to the vote the question of the character of the Council’s invitation to the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in the discussion of the question before us. l7te meeting was called to order at 4.10 p.m. Adoption of tbe agenda The age& was adopted. The situation in tbe occupied Arab territories: Letter dated 23 February 1979 from the Permanent Representative of JOrdan to the United Nations addressed to the President of tbe Security Council (S/13115)

I wish to inform members of the Security Council that I have received letters from the representatives of Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Somalia, the Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, Yemen and Yugoslavia in which they request to be invited to participate in the discussion of the item on the agenda. In accordance with the usual practice, I propose, with the consent of the Council, to invite those representatives to darticipate in the discussion without the right to vote, in conformity with the relevant provisions of the Charter and rule 37 of the provisional rules of procedure. At the invitation of the President, Mr. Nuseibeh (Jordan) and Mr. Blum (Israel) took places ft the Council table and Mr. Elaraby (Egypt), Mr. Jaipal (India), Mr. Shemirani {Iran). Mr. AI-Ah (Irae), Mr. T&i (Lebanon), Mr. Naik (PakFrtan), Mr. Hussen (Somalia), Mr. El-Choufi (Syrian Arab Republic). Mr. Era& (Turkey), Mr. Al-Had&d (Yemen) and Mr. Komatina (Yugoslavia) took the places reserved for them at the side of the Council chamber.

The Security Council has before it document S/13150, containing a letter dated 8 March from the Permanent Representative of Kuwait; in which he requests that the representative of the Paiestme Liberation Organization be invited to participate in the discussion. 6. The United States has consistently stated that we would not oppose a hearing for the Palestine Liberation Organization under the traditional rule 39 of the Security Council’s provisional rules of procedure, but we cannot agree that it should participate in this debate with the same rights as those of a Member State.

As no other member of thecouncil wishes to speak at this stage, I take it that the Council is ready to vote on the proposal. A vote was taken by show of ham&. Infavour: Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Czechoslovakia, Gabon, Jamaica, Kuwait, Nigeria, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Zambia. Against: United States df America. Abstaining: France, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The proposal was adopted by 10 votes to 1, with 4 abstentions. At the invitation of the President, Mr. Terzi (PaZestine Liberation Organization) took a place at the Council table.

I should also like to inform members of the Council that I have received a letter dated 9 March from the Vice-Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian 9. On previous occasions, the Security Council has extended invitations to representatives of other ‘United Nations bodies in connexion with the consideration of matters on its agenda. In accordance with past practice in this matter, I propose that the Council extend an invitation, pursuant to rule 39 of its provisional rules of procedure, to the Vice-Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Bights of the Palestinian People. At the invitation of the President, Mr. Roa-Kouri (Vice- Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People) took the place reservedfor him at the side of the Council chamber.

The Council is meeting today ‘in response to a request from the representative of Jordan. That request is contained in document S/13115. Members of the Council have before them the following other documents: S/13132, containing a letter dated 2 March from the .Acting Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Bights of the Palestinian People addressed to the President of the Council; S/13145, containing a letter dated 5 March from the Charg6 d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of Senegal addressed to the Secretary- General; S/13 149, containing a letter dated 7 March from the representative of Jordan addressed to the Secretary- General. 11. The first speaker is the representative of Jordan, on whom I now call.

As this is the first occasion on which I have spoken before the Council this month, I wish to extend to you and to friendly Nigeria my most sincere congratulations on your assumption of the presidency of the Council for the current month of March and to wish you every success in your lofty office. I am confident that your seasoned diplomacy will stand you in good stead. 13. I cannot miss this occasion to extend my heartfelt appreciation to your predecessor, Ambassador Abdalla Bishara of Kuwait, for his exemplary performance as President for the month of February, which witnessed one of the most turbulent, gruesome and dangerous challenges in the annals of the Security Council. Astronomers. of old attributed such turbulence to over-activity of sunspots. With a steadily compromised ozone layer, we seem to be getting more vulnerable to their impact on our mother earth. 14. As I look around this prestigious chamber I feel a very deep and heartfelt sense of sorrow that an illustrious colleague, an elderly and wise statesman to whom the Council has listened and whom it has seen around more than any ‘15. DitEcult and long are the paths which we tread, dark and hidden are our pathless destinations. These sober verses most succinctly and pointedly portray the systematic martyrdom of the occupied territories and their indigenous Palestinian and other Arab victims. I can think of no issue in the entire broad spectrum of Middle East conflict that is as loaded with potential and inevitable disaster as the subject of our current complaint and debate-the systematic, ruthless, heedless and ongoing policy and practice of Israeli colonization and despoliation of the West Bank, whose heartland and immortal soul is Holy Jerusalem, as well as the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, in forcible bargaining ransom and captivity. 16. The issue involves, fundamentally, the very survival of the Palestinian people or their eventual perdition in the remnants of their homeland. It is literally a sinking ship signalling an SOS before it descends irretrievably into the rocky sea-bed. The mast of the ship on the horizon of the occupied territories is fast fading away into the distant twilight, and it has reached the point where it is vanishing to the point of invisibility and surgical metamorphosis. 17. I am’circulating a few maps as well as a few explanatory papers which portray, better than any words ever could, the terrifying dimensions and the magnitude of the lsraeh occupation authomies cannibaiization, erosion and dismantling of the Palestinian people’s dwarfed and remaining enclaves in their Palestinian ancestral homeland. The members of the Council will immediately grasp that the little maps are studded with signposts and numbers of settlements which have already been constructed on confiscated Palestinian lands. These signposts and numbers cover the period ending 31 December 1978. Since continuing Israeli colonization is almost a daily occurrence, it is overtaxing for laymen at the Mission to make a timely updating, in appropriate aggregate clarity, of the emasculation which is continually taking place. 18. In the month of January my Government’s instructions were to initiate the complaint with the three new additional settlements: Nuwei’meh, a suburb of Jericho and a major water resource; a new settlement in the Kfar Etzion _ complex, between Bethlehem and Hebron; and Huwwara, a few miles to the east of Nablus. In the interim these have been superseded by newer ones either already constructed, under construction or in the offing. But the map circulated to the Council, even without the additional signposts, is as sordid, horrendous and dark as malignant out-of-control cancerous cells, rashes of bubonic plague which have eaten away and continue to erode any viable or meaningful existence for the Palestinian people in their occupied homeland, and, indeed, any future tenable existence at all. 20. The Security Council and other United Nations bodies have been consistently responsive to our pleas in words and resolutions, for which we are most grateful, but incredibly ineffectual and paralysed in actions and deeds. Their masterly inaction and complacency have already created an untenable and impossible situation which renders any talk about a peaceful resolution of the over-all conflict chimerical, meaningless and downright deceptive. We may well have reached a point of no return geared to the abyss of a collision course towards disaster. It is perfectly understandable to talk about Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) in the abstract as a feasible framework for bringing about a peaceful resolution to the Middle East cot&t. But what is not understandable is the failure to recognize. in spite of repeated warnings that the Israeli occupation authorities have over the past 11 years preempted and torpedoed the letter and spirit of the said resolutions on the ground. 21. The Israelis are undiiguisedly determined to seize the land and resources and to dispose of the Palestinian people when there is nothing left for them to survive on. T’he resolutions have for all intents and purposes been butchered, as have all previous United Nations resolutions, notably General Assembly resolution 181 (II) and 194 (III), upon whose inherent and iegal validity Israel was conditiontiy admitted to membership in the United Nations after ;olernnly pledging to honour and to implement them, only :o renege having achieved its objective of being admitted to he United Nations. 22. When the very survival and continued existence of the remnants of the Palestinian people on the remnants of their ancestral homeland stand in the gravest jeopardy, when an uninterrupted historical and treasured legacy dating back to at least 8,000 years of recorded history is committed to demise, and when one of Islam’s three holiest places has been committed by the Israeli invaders to strangulation prior to destruction, then our response is that when it reaches the point of “to be or not be”, the whole Arab world and the 800 million adherents of the Islamic faith, as well as all peace-loving peoples everywhere, will see to it that in God’s measured time those fiendish and retrogressive policies of blatant aggression will not be countenanced or allowed to pass unredeemed, no matter how long or how much it takes to undo them. 23. It is becoming clearer every day that it is well-nigh impossible to reason with a politically and emotionally 1 United Nations, Z’reu~y Series, vol. 75, p. 287. 24. I turn from generalities to specifics. What, exactly have the Israeli occupation authorities perpetrated up to the end of 1978, and beyond7 25. Israel has so far expropriated, according to my Government’s statistics, 1~62$000 dunums ofland-i dunum is 1,000 square metres. Israeli statistics concede the confiication of 1.5 million dunums. Even accepting Israeli figures, we see that the confiicated lands constitute 27.3 per cent of the total area of the tiny West Bank. Our own figures would, of course, come to 29 per cent. 26. The confiscated lands, buildings and properties fall into the following categories. 27. First, the so-called State domains, which are, in fct, the communal possession of the various town and village centres and which have been utilized by them for countless centuries. Thus the 60,009 dunums confiscated at Khan ul-Ahmar, 10 miles from the River Jordan and where the Israeli occupation has constructed an industrial complex with complete infrastructure and housing, belong indisputably to the villagers of Eizariyan, Abu Dees and Silwansuburbs of Jerusalem. It is there that the villagers have been cultivating and grazing for centuries. 28. Secondly, co&cation of the lands and properties of the so-called absentee owners. These are all Palestinian West Bank inhabitants who happened to be outside the country when the June 1967 war broke out. They have been denied repatriation to their homes and homelands, and yet the Israelis call them absentees. 29. Thirdly, foreclosure and confiscation of lands in the West Bank, even when the owners are right there, on the spurious, notorious and inimical grounds of so-called security and military needs. What security or military grounds can be served by depriving a villager of his life-sustaining livelihood is a question that only the Mafia-Israeli military commanders can answer. 30. It is noteworthy to recall that when recently the villagers of Nabi Salih-to the west of Jerusalem-whose lands had been expropriated by the military dictatorship on the ground that the villagers did not possess title deedsbrought an action before the Supreme Court, thev produced documentation and evidence of uninterrupted possession, documentation that included tax payment receipts. When the villagers won the case, the Israeli Government ceased the confiscation of other lands on the ground of validity of possession. All its notices of expropriation to the victims have since been based on grounds of security of military needs, over which the courts have no jurisdiction whatsoever. I believe that one of those old military decrees are in the files that we have distributed to the members of the Council. They are in Hebrew, and we ma& a brief translation of the orders. 32. Fifthly, there have been instances of outright forgeries in collusion with the occupation authorities, where individuals who neither owned nor had any entitlement to a piece of land had sold it on false pretences. The Arab and Israeli newspapers published several instances of such calculated fraud. It was really a scandal. 33. The close to one third of the West Bank that has so far been expropriated has not spared a single area or location. Upwards of 79 settlements-today, we discovered that there are 80 with the establishment of Matityahu on 500 dunums-and residential areas colonized by the Israelisof which there were 68 up to the end of 1978-have been constructed on 347,874 dunums of private lands, and their breakdown is indicative, beyond any shadow of a doubt, of the over-all strategy and strategic plans that the Israeli usurpers are bent on achieving, time and the availability of sufficient immigrants being the only constraints. Money is evidently abundant from outside countries in the clutches of Zionist distortion. 34. The geographic breakdown of coionization on parts of the 1.5 million dunums of land is as follows: Jerusalem and its environs: 94,564 dunums. The Israeli settlers in Arab Jerusalem are estimated at 40,000 to 50,000 intruders. But numbers, ominous though they may be, fail to convey the full tale. 35. I show the Council a map of Jerusalem as it was in 1948, and it shows conclusively that West Jerusalem-apart from the Jerusalem of. 1967-belonged predominantly to the Palestinian population. This is a map that was drawn under the supervision of the then British Chief Justice Fitzgerald. I request that this be circulated among the members of the Council. 36. By Israeli colonization, Palestinian Arab East Jerusalem, merely a small portion of Palestinian Arab Jerusalem of 1948, which included over 70 per cent of western misnamed “Israeli Jerusalem”, has been expanded fifteenfold. It stretches at present from the doorstep of Bethlehem in the south to the twin towns of Ramallah and Bireh in the north-a stretch of 40 kilometres. 37. As if that were not enough, General Sharon has disclosed his designs to increase Jerusalem’s population to 1 million. Where will this avalanche of people settle? General Sharon reckons on the following possibilities. 38. First, the compulsive fading away of the 100,000 Palestinian Arab Jerusalemites, weary and exhausted by the strangulation of an untenable and ghetto-like existence, or so he calculates. Furthermore, if East Jerusalem’s boundaries have been expanded with impunity to Bethlehem and Ramallah, the difficulties should not be insurmountable to expand them much further to Hebion in the south and to Nablus in the north, incorporating the lands, residential quarters and villages of an ever-more depleted and stagnant 39. Racist and religious exclusiveness is best proved by the fact that after the 1967 war the Israeli authorities advised that no construction or settlement should take place in the western parts of Jerusalem, which are far more spacious but which are already usurped and under Israeli control, but should take place in the Palestinian Arab Eastern sectors in order to close the ring and choke the Palestinian inhabitants. 40. Secondly, in Ramallah and Bireh townships there are 35,600 dunums upon which 12 settlements have been constructed. 41. Thirdly, in Hebron, in the towns of Bethlehem and Jericho 116,000 dunums have been colonized in 12 settlements. 42. Fourthly, in Nablus, in the cities of Tulkarm and Jenin 20,860 dunums have been colonized in 14 settlements. That represents part of the Likud policy of Israel’s creeping expansion from the west into the Palestinian Arabs’ remaining habitat in the east. I shall elaborate later on the strategic plans of both the labour coalition and the Likud. 43. Fifthly, in the Jordan Valley 80,700 dunums have been colonized in 19 settlements. I should add here that but for the town of Jericho and a few adjacent agricultural Palestinian Arab villages such as ‘Uojah, the whole af the Jordan Valley in the West Bank from south to north, from Beisan to the Dead Sea is firmly settled by Israeli colonizers. Not only have they bored deep water wells which turned-the existing Arabs wells dry or excessively saline but they have also been pumping as much water as they needed to maximize their exploitation of thii fertile off-season valley at the expense of the Palestinian farmers. My Government’s tigures indicate that there are already over 90,000 Israeli colonizers in Arab Jerusalem, its environs and the rest of the West Bank. 44. I have spoken about land and people in as broad and as abridged a presentation as I possibly could to convey the message without imposing excessively on your precious time. 45. I feel in duty bound, however, to acquaint the Council with another dimension of the plight of our people under occupation, and one which many believe goes a long way towards explaining one of the ultimate aims of Israeli coloni&ion. The sickening repetition by the Israeli aggressors that it is on security grounds is not even worth replying to because one of the foremost objectives of Israeli planners is to exploit the water resources of the West Bank which amoun’s to 895 million cubic metres. 46. Considering that the consumption of water in the West Bank did not exceed 120 million cubic metres in 1977 because of Israeli control of Palestinian wells by the installa- 47. In 1977 the water resources from various sources in the 1948 Israeli-held territories were estimated at 1,650,000,000 cubic metres according to the figures presented by the Israelis to the United Nations Conferenceon Desertiflcation held at Nairobi in September 1977. Thirtysix per cent, or the equivalent of 610 million cubic metres is procured from Lake Tiberius and the fountainhead of the Yarkun Riverin Palestine, both of which derive water from the watershed of Syria, the River Jordan and its tributaries. The confluence runs in two lines across the centre of the country to the south and thence to the Negeb at a capacity of 290 million cubic metres per annum. The remaining 64 per cent is derived from water wells bored in the mountainous regions, the coastal area and other accumulations. 48. With the manifold increase in the Israeli population as a consequence of vast immigration and the expansion of agricultore and industry, the consumption of-water for agriculture, industry and domestic uses of Palestine-tumed- Israel, has increased from 426 million cubic metres in 1948 to 1,600 million cubic metres in 1977. 49. Consequently, since the early 1970s Israel has been consuming all the available water resources. This year water consumption will approximate 1,820 million cubic metres. In 1985 consumption is expected to reach between 2 billion and 2.1 billion cubic metres. With an expected deficit of between 400 and 500 million cubic metres-assuming that agricultural consumption remains constant-the Israeli authorities decided long ago to carry out a massive hijacking of the water resources of the West Bank, together with the land and the people, and to suck the blood and water of the Palestinian people in order to satisfy their own avarice and expansion. 50. Anyone in his senses who is beguiled into thinking that the Israelis will ever voluntarily relinquish the occupied territories must be either ignorant of their plans and mtentions or simply glossing over them pretending that they do not exist and timidly refusing to confront their implications for the survival of the Palestinian people. The Israelis are behaving like vampires and vultures which prey on the remains of the victims. The last thing that they want is to live and let live. As the Palestinians adamantly refuse to fade away, the Israeli occupation authorities have devised an over-all strategy to contain what they regard, not as fellow human beings but as impediments to be removed. 51. I shall try to explain the strategic objectives of the policy of settlement and colonization. 52. First, there are at present three substantial belts of settlements. The first and one of the earliest is almost the whole of the Jordan Valley on the West Bank, with the aim 53. The second belt at present comprises nine agricultural and industrial complexes, the biggest being the Khan ul- Ahmar industrial town, 10 miles from the Jordan River. Those colonies are located on the highlands of the Jordan rift, starting at the Jerusalem-Jericho road and connecting with the first belt of settlements at the West Bank’s northern armistice line with Israel. A new so-called Allon Plan Road was constructed to connect the colonies on the highland with those in the Jordan Valley. Large water pipes are bringing water down the hills to those colonies from the EinFara water spring which used to supply Jerusalem’s water needs when our main source up to 1948, Ras el-Ein in the plains of Palestine, was cut off from us. 54. A primary objective of those two belts-apart from sheer colonization and economic exploitation-is to contain the Palestinian population by completing their encirclement from the north, west, south and east. 55. The third belt of colonization. in accelerated imnlementation by the present Likud Government, is the e&blishment of a chain of colonies along the entire length of the western highlands of the northern, central and southern parts of the West Bank. This is designed to meet the terrorist Herut Party’s strategic objectives on the West Bank, which Begin, the alien from another continent, never tires of calling part of “greater Israel”, in speaking of the liberated terrritories. That third belt is moving the former Israeli armistice line right inside the Palestinian populated areas and hinterland. It is also designed to vivisect the populated areas of the West Bank into smaller areas. The containment , of the Palestinians would be facilitated by enclosing them from all sides. 56. To supplement this plan of control several lateral highways have been constructed or are under construction to connect 1948 Israel with the three belts. One highway connects Latrun on the Jaffa-Jerusalem road with Qalandii, 15 kilometres from Jerusalem, where a 61-industry complex has been constructed. Another, in the southern region of the West Bank, is already open and asphalted half-way to the Dead Sea. A third highway called “Trans- Samarian Highway” would bisect the northern regions of the West Bank and is at present under construction. Another lateral highway farther north is still in the planning stage. 57. On 18 January 1979 Begin’s Government allocated some $40 million for expanding and speeding up the settlements, as well as for constructing power, water,‘sewage and telephone lines in that third belt of colonies. 59. The Israeli Government coalition blocs on 29 January 1979 approved a special draft legislation to compel all foreign embassies to transfer to Jerusalem. We are confident that none will comply with that illegality, whose consequences would result in fundamental reappraisal of many countries’ relati&hips with those which may comply, in violation of solemn resolutions of the United Nations. But Zionist blackmail has no limits and no regard for other States’ national interests. They have already started a campaign which will be intensified in May in this host country to achieve their end. 60. In the meantime, their desecration of Al-Haram al- Shareef area, and particularly the endless deep diggings below the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Holy Mosque, the fmt Qibla in Islam, threatens that most sacred Islamic sanctuary with eventual collapse-and the process is continuing. 61. Similarly, the holy sanctuary of Al-Haram al- Ibrahimi in Hebron, which for 14 centuries has been an Islamic mosque and was never for one day a Jewish synagogue has, for all intents and purposes, now been transformed into a Jewish synagogue. Almost daily, night and day, the settlers at Kiiat Araba and Israelis from other parts of Palestine break into the mosque, molest worshippers and shout obscene language at the Moslem worshippers and attendants. During the past two months an intensified campaign was begun by the Jewish colon&s, under the protection of the occupation authorities, to complete the transformation of that 14-century-oId mosque into a synagogue and to deny the Moslems even the right to worship, especially on Saturdays. The main and spacious prayer court of the mosque has already been occupied. The head of the Supreme Islamic Council has described the situation as intolerable and has launched an urgent appeal for action. 62. It is the butcher’s knife operating systematically and relentlessly to vivisect, isolate and cut into bits and pieces what used to be a contiguous West Bank and an Arab Jerusalem. 63. I have confined my remarks to the all-out colonization of Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. Our latest reports indicate that 27 new additional settlements are being planned-the only impediment to implementation being the lack of people and time. General Sharon’s target is to achieve parity in the occupied territories between the Palestinian population and the Israeli settlers. As I said, money is abundant from other nations’ taxpayers and exploitation. 64. My colleagues, the representatives of Syria and Egypt, would be better qualiied to acquaint the Council with the magnitude of Israeli colonixation in the Gaza Strip, Sinai and the Golan Heights. According to my Government’s 65. The Israeli indulgence in these aggressive and reprehensible policies mirrors the manner in which the Israeli aggressors view the occupied territories and their inhabitants as objects to be exploited, and not as human beings whose inherent and inalienable worth must be respected in spite of their temporary adversity. 66. Even the environment and ecology-God’s great creation-are viewed with disrespect and derision, which only usurpers and aliens to the land are prone to perpetrate. 67. How would the Council react ,if I were to recall to members-I am ‘sure they have read about it-that the Israelis have already drawn up a notorious plan to bring the Mediterranean Sea to traverse and inundate regions of the occupied West Bank and downhill to the River Jordan, sacred to hundreds of millions, and thence to the Dead Sea for dumping. The Israelis are seriously studying this ecological crime to generate electricity and bring Mediterranean saline waterways and ports to the Jordan Valley. Does it very much matter to them if in the process large areas of the occupied West Bank are laid to waste, if the River Jordan becomes so saline as to be unfit for human, animal and plants, and if the Dead Sea bursts its shores and drowns large areas of the East Bank? It may seem like fantasy or clever engineering-but at what cost to the Holy Land and its Palestinian and Jordanian people? 68. Having outlined to the Council the magnitude and manifold aspects of this cursed Israeli aggression, what a pale and futile mockery becomes any talk about live and let live-coexistence is possible only if one of the two parties does exist-about peace and stability in the Middle East and far beyond, how shallow and meaningless become references to Security Council resolutions, General Assembly resolutions, let alone other magical frameworks for peace. 69. Holy Jerusalem will never be alienated from the hundreds of millions who revere it as an integral part of their religious and historical legacy; the Palestinians will never forsake their ancestral homeland. Elemental justice, the rule of law in international relations and a scrupulous observance of Security Council and other United Nations resolutions. are the only guarantee of regional, as well as world, peace and security. 70. It is for these compelling reasons that my Government urges the Council to act forcefully and in unison to compel Israel to desist from any further cannibalization of the Palestinian and. other Arab occupied lands and people. Furthermore, we urge the Council to serve notice on Israel that continued failure to heed the Council’s resohnions would be met by the application of Chapter VII of the Charter, which provides for appropriate sanctions against deftint and recalcitrant Members. 72 MY delegation urges the Security Council to agree on three steps which are consonant with its own resolutions and solemn responsibilities and which should therefore be acceptable. 73. First, the Council should resolve that an immediate moratorium be imposed and meticulously observed by the Israeli occupation authorities on further Israeli colonization and expropriation of Palestinian and other Arab occupied lands. This is indeed an acid test of whether or not the Council is seriously concerned about the survival of the Palestinian people. The Secretary-General should be entrusted, through an already existing United Nations presence in the old Government House in occupied Jerusalem, which can be augmented by a few personnel, with day-to- &y monitoring and reporting, to ensure compliance with the resolution of the Council. This would be just a preliminary first-aid effort to stop the blood-letting. We must emphasize within this context that the occupied territories have no *‘protecting State” and are totally at the merciless whim of the occupation authority. 74. Secondly, the Council should resolve to send a threemember or live-member commission from amongst its membership to investigate the situation on the spot, and to report back to the Council, not later than 1 May or the end of May, on the authenticity or otherwise of our complaint. No courts, national or international, worthy of their name, should shy away from at least investigating a very grave and genuine complaint by an aggrieved party gripped with alarm over its survival and destiny. 75. Thirdly, if the findings of the Council commission should confirm the authenticity and substance of the complaint, it should become logically inescapable that the Council should exercise the powers vested in it by the Charter, including Chapter VII, to ensure compliance. 76: I am certain that the Security Council will one day be seized of this most alarming problem, but under conditions more dangerous and sanguinary. Perhaps a timely intervention now would be preferable to such an eventuality. After all, we are all seeking a just, comprehensive and lasting peace. And besides, has it not been the Council’s responsibility to implement Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) and other United Nations resolutions in all their aspects? It is 11 years since the former resolution was adopted. What has come of that? Or are we to assume that there is an invisible omnipotent power-it is becoming more visible every day-which seems to carry more weight than the collective power and will of the highest executive organ of the United Nations? 77. Perhaps it is enlightening in this context to convey to the Council excerpts of what I heard on the CBS evening 78. I must say, I was nonplussed by this-blatant and open indiscretion and, I would say, travesty. Here is the Prime Minister of a foreign country enticing American citizens to go over the heads and subdue the legitimate decision makers of a super-Power, or even if it was not a super- Power, of any foreign Government, if that Power did not conform fully with Begin’s tune. 79. If an ordinary American citizen like Billy Carter is hounded by various agencies of the United States Govemment, including a grand jury, is it not pertinent for an onlooker, a foreign observer-and I can even be regarded as a journalist-who has no right to meddle in the affairs of other countries to ask: why is it that those investigative bodies have not seen tit to probe the great and undue influence which a relatively small segment of the American people evidently wield, as Mr. Begin boastfully asserts in Washington? The revelations might well be stunning. Is it all innocent, legal and totally consonant with the established laws of the land? Are there people above the law and immune to its provisions? Does Mr. Begin claim to possess extraterritorial historical rights in this great country, as he always claims he has over the tiny West Bank and other occupied Arab territories? I am sure that millions of people all over the world are eagerly awaiting an answer to this unique puzzle. 80. Incidentally, only yesterday afternoon I received a copy of a letter from one who seems to be one of those millions who are awaiting an answer to the puzzle I have just posed. The letter is from an American citizen of Palestinian extraction and was addressed to the President of the United States. With the Council’s indulgence, I shall read it out. [ne speaker read out the letter contained in document S/13149, annex IV.] 8 1. The PRESIDENT: The next speaker is the representative of Israel, on whom I now call.

Mr. President, let me begin by paying my respects to you as President of the Security Council for this month. 83. We stand today at a sensitive stage of the negotiations towards the attainment of peace in the Middle East. Israel has clearly demonstrated the earnestness of its commitment to the peace effort. Last September, a framework for peace in the Middle East, based on Security Council resolution 242 (1967), was agreed upon at Camp. David, and, since then, remarkable progress has been made in the direction of peace, showing that the principles contained in the framework are constructive and sound, indeed more fruitful than any peace effort which our region has known in the last 30 years, 85. That is the reason whv Jordan has reauested the debate which is taking place-here to&y. For ihe last few weeks it has publicized its intentions in the Jordanian press, radio and television. Even the most cursory monitoring of its media reveals that it has made no secret of the fact that it wants a debate calculated to throw difIiculties in the way of the peace initiative in the Middle East. The sudden urgency which it has claimed for the debate this week has been occasioned only by the momentous talks which it knew would be held .in the Middle East now. It is no coincidence that the Council was pressed into meeting on the very eve of the arrival in Jerusalem of the President. of the United States. 86. Jordan’s intentions can only be deemed subversive to the promotion of international peace and security-antithetical to everything that should guide the Council in the fulfilment of its mandate under the Charter of the United Nations, its principles and purposes. 87. There are some, no doubt, who recognize the significance of this moment in the peace process, but none the less may find it diicult to resist the temptation to try to gain certain political advantages by participating in this debate. Such tactics can scarcely be regarded as helpful and hence can only be regretted. 88. <The Jordanian initiative is mischievous and obstructive to the cause of international peace. The acrimonious and scurrilous style of the statement just delivered by the representative of Jordan-not to speak of what I would term, for the sake of courtesy towards him, gross inaccuracies-only confumed what was evident in advance; that is, the real intentions underlying this initiative. Israel will not lend a hand to Jordan’s transparent design. 89. It should be within the power of the Council to resist manipulation and to allow the current peace processwhere all the issues will find their rightful place and appropriate solution-to succeed. 90. Israel will follow the deliberations of the Council closely. It reserves its right to participate and will set out its position fully at a less inopportune moment in an altogether inopportune debate.

The next speaker is the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, on whom I now call.

“The Hebrew homeland, on both banks of the Jordan River, is a historical and geographical whole.” ‘The partition of the homeland is an illegal act and does not bind the Jewish people.*’ “ The task of this generation is to reunite the divided parts of the homeland and establish on them 93. Mr. President, on behalf of the Palestinian people and its representative the Palestine Liberation Organization, I wish to thank you, and through you, the members of the Council who voted in favour of inviting us to participate in the deliberations of this Council. To you, a devoted militant in the struggle against all forms of racism, particularly apartheid, I should like to express our sincere hope that under your guidance the Council will reach a decision and find the means ta put an end ta the prolonged illegal accupation and the ensuing misery, an end to the denial of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people which engenders legitimate resistance, including armed resistance, an end ta bloodshed and the explosive situation that is not only a threat to peace and security in occupied Palestinian towns and villages, but also a threat that reaches out ta the entire Middle East and the world. Yes, the Security Council is dealing with a very explosive situation. The Zionist racist forces of occupation are set upon a course leading ta the elimination of the Palestinian from his homeland-virtual genocide. From the outset let me make it clear that what has really been happening was the vision-ta us the nightmare-of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl. In his teachings, he predicated the “spiriting away” of the Palestinians. Thus, what the Council will be considering is a constant in the racist Zionist ideology, policy and practices. 94. It is not my intention to recall all that the United Nations, in its different organs and agencies, has been through as a result of Israel’s persistent policy and practices, and its complete disregard of and contempt far the United Nations. The Council has been seized of this situation several times. In March 1976 it considered a draft resolution which read, inter aI& [ZXe speaker read outparagraphs I to 3 of draft resolution S/12022.] At the end of the deliberations and voting, the result of the vote was as follows: 14 votes in favour and one against. Since a permanent member of the Council cast a negative vote, the draft resolution was not adopted [Z899th meeting]. Obviously, the negative vote was that of the United States of America. This definitely encouraged Israel ‘to ‘pursue its policy and practices. The Council convened again in May 1976 to consider the situation. No resolution was adopted. 95. As a result of the persistent Israeli policy and practices, the Council had ta canvene once again to consider the same matter, in October 1976. During the consultations it transpired that the United States would maintain its solidarity with the forces of illegal occupation. Instead of adapting a resolution, the Council, at its 1969th meeting, authorized the President to make the fallowing statement: “Fallowing the request submitted by Egypt an 20 October 1976, the Security Council held four meetings between 1 and 11 November to consider the situation in the occupied Arab territories, with the participation of “1. To express its grave anxiety and concern over the present serious situation in the occupied Arab territories as a result of continued Israeli occupation. 99. The situation was further aggravated. At its thirtysecond session the General Assembly decided to consider, as a matter of priority and urgency, an item entitled: “Recent illegal Israeli measures in the occupied Arab territories designed to change the legal status, geographical nature and demographic composition of those territories in contravention of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, of Israel’s international obligations under the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and of United Nations resolutions, and obstruction of efforts aimed at achieving a just and lasting peace in the Middle Past”. By an overwhelming majority of 131 positive votes to one negative vote-that of Israel-the Assembly adopted resolution .32/5, reading in part as follows: “2. To reaffirm its call upon the Government of Israel to ensure the safety, welfare and security of the inhabitants of the territories and to facilitate the return of those inhabitants who have fled the areas since the outbreak of hostilities. “3. To reaffirm that the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Therefore, the occupying Power is called upon once again to comply strictly with the provisions of that Convention and to refrain from any measures that violates them. In this regard, the measures taken by Israel in the occupied Arab territories which alter their demographic composition or geographical character, and in particular the establishment of settlements, are strongly deplored. Such measures, which have no legal validity and cannot prejudge the outcome of the efforts to achieve peace, constitute an obstacle to peace.” “Derermines that all such measures and actions taken by Israel in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction of efforts aimed at achieving a just and lasting peace in the Middle Past; “ . . . “Calls upon Israel to comply strictly with its intemational obligations in accordance with the principles of international law and the provisions of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949”. 96. At that same meeting the then representative of the United States made the following statement: I shall limit myself to reading that part of the President’s statement. “Mr. President, the United States has joined the other members of the Security Council in the consensus statement which you have read out because we believe that statement affirms several important principles in regard to the occupied territories. First is the principle that the fourth Geneva Convention applies to the present situation in the occupied territories. Under that Convention and under international law the occupying Power has rights as well as responsibilities. Secondly, we have supported and we continue to support the principle that persons displaced in the 1967 war should be permitted to return to their places of habitation at the time of that war. Finally, we welcome the concern in that statement for the sanctity of the Holy Places, which we consider to be a particularly sensitive and important matter.” Naturally, the United States could not decide whether what the international community considered to be illegal was also illegal according to the jurists and politicians of the Government of the United States. It just abstained-again, a gesture of encouragement to Israel. 100. I shall spare the Council the long list of resolutions of the General Assembly on Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the population of the occupied territories. The reports of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population of the Occupied Territories are self-explanatory and portray the reality. The Committee has repeatedly been denied access to the occupied territories. 101. As if the United Nations was not really ample enough, international and different national organizations sought to find out the truth. l?ze Sunday Times of London in-depth study is a very well known document. The reports of Amnesty International are also very well known. The Swiss League for Human Rights visited the occupied Palcstinian territories in June and July 1977 to form a concrete idea concerning the situation of the inhabitants of the occupied territories. The Swiss delegation reported that forms of torture in Israeli prisons included, among other things, the following: burning by applying lighted cigarette butts to any part of the body, beating with sticks, canes or bludgeons, forcing bottles or other objects up the rectum or the vagina, pulling fingernails, forcing an individual to lap his food directly off the floor. All these things were reported by the, Swiss League for Human Rights. I still cannot understand why the representative of the United States could not have voted in favour of a resolution embodying the same text, but of course it is beyond me to judge the action of a sovereign country and a permanent member of the Council. 97. Be that as it may, the attitude of the United States did encourage the so-called hard-liners in Israel-the hawkish hawks; I know of no Zionist doves in the Zionist movement. This encouragement was to a certain extent reflected in the elections held in Israel, elections that brought Menachem Begin and his Fascists to power. 98. It had become clear that through the despotism of the veto the United States had rendered the Security Council ineffective. Although the United States fully agreed with the “Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the violations there being committed of the civil and political rights of the Palestinian people, including: geation of settlements by citizens of Israel in the West Bank and Gaxa; numerous incidents of torture committed by police, military and intelligence authori: ties of detainees during interrogation”-of which the Lawyers Guild had substantial evidence-“demolition of houses and other forms of collective punishment for the acts of individuals; numerous instances of deportation of detainee inhabitants from the West Bank and Gaza; detention of persons without charges for long periods; operation of severely overcrowded prisons; failure to allow reunion of family members’*. 103. The Lawyers Guild sponsored a visit to the Middle East in July 1977. Adelegation of 10 members examined the conditions of the Palestinian people living under Israeli military occupation. A report was consequently prepared. It represented the conclusions of all the members of the delegation except one, and may I say here that the delegation was composed of a cross-section of American citizens, some of the Jewish faith, some of Arab ancestry, some with no such linkage. And, on the issue of illegal Israeli settlements, the report reads as follows: “Israeli promotion of settlements’ in the West Bank and Gaxa constitutes a violation of article 49 (6) of ‘the fourth Geneva Convention. Although settlement policy must be evaluated in the light of various motivations, ultimately Israel’s policy must be evaluated and condemned in the light of repeated assertions by its leaders that the settlements are intended to establish the new borders of Israel. The annexation of East Jerusalem, in violation of article 47 of the Convention, is representative of Israel’s desires . . . “Beyond that, the settlements represent a serious obstacle to peace, since the Palestinians perceive them as Israel’s attempt to create permanent institutions.” 104. In 1969, 10,000 Bedouins were dispossessed of 250,000 acres in the southern Gaza region by Israeli forces. On 22 December 1977, that is, eight years later, the Israeli daily AI-Hamishmar described the situation of the Bedouins in the Gam region as follows: “North of Yamit.. . Bedouin families are being chased away. They were forced to take apart their huts and move to the palm-grove, close to the sea. Bulldozers have covered the Bedouins’ plantations and blocked up water-holes. . . The Bedouins then were forced to the other side of the fence and are now enclosed by this fence on all sides . . .*’ -some sort of a concentration camp- “It seems to be the authorities’ intention to concentrate the Bedouins along the beach so-as to expel them later more easily. . .‘* -and that would be sending them out to sea. 105. Now, on the issue of local institutions in theoccupied Palestinian territories, the report of the American National Lawyers Guild concludes: 106. It is no secret that the racist Zionists control the occupied Palestinian territories by military rule. Foreign domination and repression engender resistance by the victims, who exercise their inalienable right to resistincluding armed resistance. In occupied Palestinian territories, the forces of occupation still apply a set of laws called the Defence (Emergency) Regulations which were first imposed in Palestine during the British Mandate in September 1945. Dov Yosef, a Palestinian Jewish lawyer, and later an Israeli Government minister, had the following to say: “With regard to the security regulations, the question is: Will we all be subject to official terrorism?“. Another Palestinian Jewish lawyer, Yaakov Shimshon Shapirah, who la,ter became Israeli Minister of Justice, had the following to say: ‘The regime built in Palestine on the defence regulations has no parallel in any civilized nation. Even in Nazi Germany there were no such laws . . . It is our duty to tell the whole world that the defence regulations passed by the Government of Palestine destroy the very foundations of justice in this land.” Yes, it is our duty as Palestinians to tell the whole world, and particularly the Security Council, that Israel applied the Defence (Emergency) Regulations against the Palestinian Arabs in the territories occupied in 1948 until 1966, and soon after the 1967 aggression it put those regulations into effect in the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories, namely, the West Bank and Gaxa. 107. I do not wish to cite all atrocities. Let it suffice for me to quote the following as reported on 25 May 1978 in The New York Times by Anthony Lewis: “Every family on the West Bank has its stories of arbitrariness on the part of the occupation authorities: the doctor humiliated by soldiers on the steps of his hospital, the students detained without charge just long enough to miss their exams and lose a year of school, the lawyer forbidden without explanation to publish verbatim reports of judges’ decisions. Israelis.say they have to act firmly for security reasons . . . ‘6 . . . “Some West Bank Palestinians think the occupation, with its frictions and humiliations, is really designed to make the intelligent and sensitive among them want to get out-end ease the way for a permanent Israeli hold on the territory.‘* I believe that Anthony Lewis has pinned the point exactly. 108. Even the United States Department of State has admitted violations of human rights by Israel. A member of 109. If I have described the attitude of the Government of the United States as being an encouragement to the racist Zionists so that they are enabled to pursue their persistent policy and continue to be a threat to international peace and security, to prolong their illegal occupation and to deny the inalienable rights of almost 4 million Palestinians, it is because the Government of the United States admits that it has paid Israel from United States federal funds more than $US 12,815 million during the period 1949-1978. Naturally, the United States is free to spend the taxpayers* money the way it chooses. But when the financial crisis of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East becomes acute, the Government of the United States demands that its so-called contributions should be matched by equal sums from other sources. It is when the victims of aggression need help until their injustice is redressed and they regain their rights that the funds of the United States are “depleted”. 114. What is really saddening is that these orangecoloured spots on the map are not Jaffa oranges. No, they are high-rises, fortresses that the Zionists have built around Jerusalem to strangulate Jerusalem and to isolate it from the rest of the Palestinian territories. As if these high-rises and these two belts were not enough, Menachem Begin’s Government, which is now talking about peace of courseand on one of the signs I saw in Cairo yesterday the word “peace” was written “piece”, and I am sure they were really thinking of the pieces into which Palestine was being tomhas made this new bluish belt. That bluish belt would minimize the Palestinian Arab territories here. It would prevent the physical expansion of the Palestinians from the inhabited areas here on the map from going a little further to the west and that eventually would enlarge the purely Judenreich. I am sorry I have to speak in that language but this is a racist ideology I am discussing. This would be the purely Jewish area all the way to the sea. This will be a mixture with these settlements and some Palestinian Arabs, #those who really can survive. 110. Let us review the pattern of the stalled assistance by the United States to Israel. Of the almost $US 13 billion, $US 177.5 million were granted to help settle immigrantsnew hordes of invaders who will colonize the territories occupied since 1967-since the item “immigrant assistance” was introduced in 1972-if I am not mistaken. To another item, entitled “Aid housing guarantee”, there was allotted the sum of $US 175 million-of which $150 million was definitely granted after 1972. Minimal sums, some might think, but not really so when almost $US 8 billion were granted as “foreign military sales credit*‘. They call it credit, but the truth’is that about 50 per cent of those loans are “forgiven”. Those $US 8 billion are in addition to another $US 3 billion labelled *‘security supporting assistance”, given mostly in the form of grants. 115. In addition to all that, they have constructed the roads you see on the map to connect the territories from the coastline all the way to the Jordan River. 116. There is something still more alarming. The map shows you how it looks now. The water resources in the Jordan valley have all been expropriated. Only a few days ago at the Nuweimeh camp, which was a refugee camp, the Israelis authorized the establishment of a new colony. By controlling the water resources at Nuweimeh and Ain el- Sultan the plain of Jericho, where 200.000 Palestinians and more have lived, would be left without any water. That is what we call the process of strangulation, of eliminating the Palestinians by thirst. You see here some black squares on the map. The black squares are deep wells, deeper than the original wells that the Palestinian Arabs had. By digging deeper wells, the Arab well, which is relatively shallow, will dry up and will be saline. 111. The Government of the United States is subsidizine an illegal occupation and “lactating” it. The United State; Government is creating the explosive situation that we have at hand. The Government of the United States is equally responsible; it is a partner of the Israeli Zionists. 112. The representative of Jordan has presented a comprehensive, detailed report on the creeping expansionism and annexation of Arab territories by the Zionist racists. To this end, the World Zionist Organisation, from its offices in New York, has budgeted 850 million Israeli pounds to strengthen the settlements, and 15 per cent of that sum is earmarked to strengthen the illegal settlements in Yamit. Are we to recall Hitler’s Zebensraum or the invasion of Poland for “security reasons”? I shall facilitate the task of members of the Council and use visual aids. 1 lx’ That is what I thought I should bring to your attention in order to facilitate our deliberations and explain exactly what is the so-&led future of the Palestinians under Israeli rule. 118. The complete disregard for United Nations principles and resolutions is consistent with Zionist ideology, policy and practices. humour: these are not beauty spots but are mines called “settlements”. They are mines on the road to peace. They 119. As has been explained, territorial expansionism conare mines that are provided by the United States, in particuflicts with the demographic imperatives of zionism. Nazism 113. As you can see on this map, this is the West Bank and you see those black spots here. Sometimes I like to use 120. In November 1977 the General Assembly determined that measures taken by Israel in the Palestinian and other Arab terrritories occupied since 1967 had no legal validity. It called upon Israel to comply strictly with its international obligations in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. In the same month of the same year, President Sadat of Egypt visited occupied Jerusalem and the world was traumatized and left under sedation while the Israeli forecs of occupation proceeded with their plans to annex the territories and to entrench themselves therein. 121. Instead of the plan to achieve the “final solution” of the Palestinians as proposed by Koenig, an Israeli officialnamely by engineered emigration, or “thinning out” or “spiriting away” of the Palestinian Arab population- Begin devised a plan in December 1977. In accordance with that plan, which later became part of the Camp David talks, the fate of the population would be separated from that of the land: the population would have some “‘self-rule”, but the land would continue to be effectively controlled by Israel. Continued military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza would be ensured. The question of sovereignty would technically be “held in abeyance”, but Israel would meanwhile reaflii its claims and reserve its “right” to reassert them in the projected negotiations on the future of the territories, and would stand ready in those negotiations to veto any competing claims. The spectre of admitting the Palestinian population of those territories into the social and political body of Israel would be exorcized, and the burdens and costs of maintaining direct Israeli military rule 124. The Israeli Government requested an interdepartmental commission to study the implications of Camp David. According to the blueprint, published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on 12 February: 6‘ . . . the Israeli military government would continue on the West Bank and Gaza and would be the legal source of authority for the autonomy authorities. The military government would retain control of ‘State lands which comprise. . . one ftith of the combined area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and would also control the water sources for those territories. The military govemment and the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service, would continue to be in charge of internal security. The autonomous councils would be barred from printing currency, issuing passports or levying customs duties, but would be empowered to levy local income taxes. over the daily life of a hostile population would be alleviated. “The blueprint also recommended firmly that certain basic elements should not be open to negotiations. These include that the autonomous authority would apply only to Arabs, not to Jewish settlers in the occupied territories, and that Jewish settlement activities would continue under Israeli supervision. It made clear that the autonomous authorities would be barred from any moves that could lead to the evolution of a Palestinian State.” “Let us say that Jordan demands that we remove the settlements or that we split up Jerusalem or that we hand over East Jerusalem to its sovereignty, and if Israel does not want to, then it will not do so. . . . Then, one of two things: either Jordan will agree to give up this demand, or we will not sign a peace agreement with it. If we do not sign a peace agreement with it, the situation now prevailing will continue.. . 122. False hopes were entertained to the effect that through bilateral negotiations peace would be achieved. Those hopes were dispelled immediately after the Camp David encounter. On 20 September 1978, Dayan made a statement in which he said: “If we hold negotiations and do not arrive at a new agreement, the existing situation will remain valid. . . . “It is not inconceivable that, during the negotiations, the Arabs will put forward such proposals or demands of the sort that we will not be prepared to accept. If we do not accept them, there will be no agreement. If there is no agreement, the situation will remain as it is now. . . . “What was agreed upon’*-at Camp David--“was that there would not be an independent Palestiniaa State. If they propose any Arab sovereignty, it was stated that Israel would demand full Israeli sovereignty over those 123. In-November 1978, Begin made it clear when he told the Knesset: “We left no doubt, and we stated, that after the fiveyear transition period, when the question of sovereignty comes up for decision, we shall assert our right to sovereignty over Judaea, Samaria and Gaza. If an agreement is reached against the background of counter-claims,---; very well. If no agreement is arrived at, the result will be that the autonomy arrangements of Israel’s security will continue to remain in force.” That is the Zionist mentality with which we are dealing. 125. The leaked portions of the blueprint recommended that the army pull back to specified areas, as called for in the Camp David framework, but that training exercises would be continued in all parts of the West Bank in accordance with the army’s needs. The military government’s oftices would be withdrawn from its present location in accordance with Camp David, but the military government would continue its over-all presence and would function as before in all areas outside of the autonomous localities. 126. I just thought I would let the Council know what is meant by this “process for peace”. To us that process is one of elimination by strangulation. 127. In 1967 the Israeli militarists attacked the neighbouring Arab countries and occupied Arab territories-in addition to the occupation of Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine. The Security Council met and a special session of the General Assembly was convened; a number of rcsolu- 128. However, the General Assembly has defined and affirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in its resolution 3236 (XXIX). Those rights are the right to self-determination without external interference, the right to national independence and sovereignty, and the right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted. 135. My people are determined to resist all attempts to eliminate them. We are determined to ensure and guarantee our survival. We shall adopt all legitimate means, including those of armed struggle, to that end. We sincerely hope the Council will help us by eliminating the cause of our plight. It is within your power, Mr. President, and that of the Council to implement the provisions of the Charter and compel the Israeli forces of occupation to withdraw completely and immediately from all the occupied territories and to enable the Palestinian people, under the leaders-hip of their-m-. sentative, the Palestine Liberation Organization, freely to exercise their inalienable national rights in their homeland-Palestine. 129. A formula has also been approved by the General Assembly for a comprehensive and just peace in the Middle East. That formula appears in resolution 3375 (XXX). 130. The General Assembly went even further when, in its resolution 33/2& it pronounced its dictum on the “behind the scene” attempts to liquidate the question of Palestine and to trespass on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. In part A of that resolution, the General Assembly:

The next speaker is the representative of Egypt. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement. “Declares that the validity of agreements purporting to solve the problem of Palestine requires that they be within the framework of the United Nations and its Charter and its resolutions on the basis of the full attainment and exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of return and the right to national independence and sovereignty in Palestine, and with the participation of the Palestine Liberation Vrganization.“.

Mr. President, I should like at the outset to associate my delegation with the previous speakers who extended to you their warm congratulations on your assumption of the presidency of the Security Council during this month. We do hope that the Council, under your wise and able leadership and with your long and distinguished diplomatic experience, will reassert its Charter-prescribed responsibilities and rise to the challenge, thus proving to the world that despite previous shortcomings it is the best guardian of international peace and security. 13 1. The General Assembly has endorsed the recommendations of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. 132. In all its conferences and at all levels, the non-aligned movement has repeatedly emphasized the prerequisites for a comprehensive peace. They are: first, the question of Palestine lies at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East;. secondly, the Palestinian people should be enabled to exercise freely its inalienable rights in Palestine, including the -rights of return, selfdeterminatton and the establishment of the Palestinian independent sovereign State; thirdly, Israel should unconditionally withdraw all its forces from all territories occupied at least since June 1967. 138. I should also like to extend my delegation’s heartfelt appreciation to the representative of Kuwait, Ambassador Abdalla Bishara. Last month he admirably presided over the deliberations of the Council during a serious and grave crisis. He earnestly and energetically strove to reach an accepted resolution of the conflict in South-East Asia, but that was not attainable because, as he stated in his closing statement, it was an attempt to square the circle. 139. The Security Council is meeting again today to consider the situation in the occupied Arab territories. The representative of Jordan has presented in a lucid and comprehensive manner the gravity of the wide-ranging dimensions of the Israeli policy in Jerusalem and in the occupied Arab territories. He advanced facts and figures. His well documented presentation depicts a gloomy picture, yet, it merely reflects and reflects accurately the ordeal and plight of the Palestinian people, who have been denied their inherent inalienable rights. 133. The inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by force is not merely a principle; it should be sacrosanct. And inview of the serious deterioration of the situation in the Middle East, on 7 March the Co-ordinating Bureau of Non-Aligned Countries issued a ,communiquC [S/Z3151] reiterating the belief of the Foreign Ministers as expressed in the Belgrade declaration. 134. Finally, it is our earnest and sincere conviction that the Security Council will be involved in such deliberations as this dealing with derivatives for as long as it does not deal with the core of the matter and resolve it. Israel and its main supporter, the Government of the United States, will continue to treat the Council and the United Nations with 140. Indeed, what the Council is considering today transcends all man-made geographical and political boundaries. The Council’s actions, deliberations or inactions, will affect 141. Several organs in the United Nations have dealt with the various aspects of the item under discussion. The General Assembly adopted numerous resolutions concerning the settlements, human rights, and the applicability of inter-. national conventions in the occupied territaries. Likewise, the Council dealt from the very beginning with these issues, starting with its resolution 237 (1967), when it called on the Government of Israel to ensure the safety, welfare and security of the inhabitants of the areas where military operations had taken place and to facilitate the return of those inhabitants who had fled the areas since the outbreak of hostilities. The Council also, in its resolution 248 (1968), called again on Israel to desist from acts and activities in contmvention of resolution 237 (1967), a call which was repeated in resolution 259 (1968). Concerning Jerusalem, the Council was very clear and firm. In resolution 252 (1968), the Council deplored the failure of Israel to comply with General Assembly resolutions concerning Jerusalem and then considered that all legislative and administrative .measures and actions taken by Israel, including expropriation of land and properties which tended to change the legal status of Jerusalem were invalid and could not change that status. The Council also urgently called upon Israel to rescind all such measures and to desist forthwith from taking any further action which tended to change the status of Jerusalem. In fact, the Council went even further in its resolution 267 (1969), when it censured “in the strongest terms all measures taken to change the status of the City of Jerusalem”, and in its resolution 271 (1969), when it condemned the failure of Israel to comply with past resolutions. All those resolutions and condemnations went unheeded. This led the Council again to put Israel on notice in clear and unequivocal terms in resolution 298 (1971). 142. It is clear that the Council has pronounced in no uncertain terms the will of the international community. The Council adopted resolutions, sometimes unanimously and without a single dissenting vote, affirming the unique legal and spiritual character of Jerusalem and urgently calling upon Israel to desist from all such measures and actions, and declared all Israeli measures as totally invalid which could not change the juridical, political, and demographic status of the Holy City. Those resolutions were all disregarded. Resolutions which carry the weight and the authority of the Security Council, the organ vested with the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, were never implemented. What is even more alarming is that the Council is acquiescing in the face of non-compliance with its long list of repeated resolutions, a matter that directly affects its authority and seriously erodes its credibility. 143. This is a long and sad record of non-compliance and defiance. It is regrettable that Israel did,not heed the decisions of the Security Council and alter its policies. Israel continued to establish more settlements, expropriate more land, arbitrarily detain more inhabitants and encroach further on Arab rights in Jerusalem, in an attempt to change thii situation. Egypt raised this question in the Council twice, the first time in May 1976 [S/l206q and the second 145. In this context Egypt also continued its efforts in other competent United Nations organs. Only last month Egypt’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs addressed an urgent message to the Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, in which he drew the, attention of the Commission to recently published reports describing torture inflicted on Arab detainees in Israeli prisons. The Commission addressed a strong message to Israel.z The Commission also adopted two resolutions condemning Ismeli policies and practices in the occupied Arab territories.3 . 146. Notwithstanding the stream of resolutions by tne Security Council, the General Assembly and other competent organs, the situation in the occupied territories is rapidly deteriorating. Every day the Israeli authorities are systematically carrying ‘out their well-planned, and even well-publicized, designs to build new. settlements, expand existing ones, expropriate lands, demolish houses and expel inhabitants and render them homeless. If we apply the principles of international law to those Israeli measures, we ’ O@ciaI Records C$ rhe Economic ad Social Council. 1979. Supplemeni No. 6, chap. XXIV, sect. B, decision 2 (XXXV). ‘Ibid, sect. A, resolutions 1A and B (XXXV). 147. Binding international instruments universally accepted by all civilized nations strictly prohibit theexpropriation of properties, thedemolition of homes and the transfer of population. It might be relevant at this juncture to recall certain provisions of the regulations annexed to The Hague Conventions and the fourth Geneva Convention. Article 55 of The Hague regulations stipulates: “The occupying state shall consider itself merely as the administrator and usufructuary of the public buildings, real estate, forests, and farms belonging to the hostile government and situated within the occupied territory. It shall protect this property and administer it in accordance with the rules governing usufructs.“’ 148. Turning now to the fourth Geneva Convention, we find that, though Israel is a party to the Convention, and the General Assembly has affirmed in many resolutions the applicability of the Geneva Convention to the occupied Arab territories, the Israeli Government refuses to abide by its provisions. Article 49 stipulates, inrer alia, that:

The next speaker is the representative of Lebanon. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement. “The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” 154. Mr. TUl?NI (Lebanon): Mr. President, I wish at the outset to thank you for calling on me and to associate myself with those who have congratulated you on your assumption of the presidency of the Security Council for this month There are many ties between our country and Nigeria, and we are confident that in dealing with the difficulties facing us this month we shall find your guidance very precious to us all. 149. Egypt’s position w$h regard to Jerusalem and on the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied Arab territories is a matter of record. No further elaboration on my part is required on this point. It is evident to us that the entire world is fully united in its opposition to these Israeli practices. 155. There can also be a holocaust of the land. Yes, a holocaust. That must be the expression to use, since we are still addressed in terms of “Judaea and Samaria”. For what else, if not a holocaust, is the bulldozing of the Holy Land, and particularly the beloved citv of Jerusalem? 150. Conditions in the occupied Arab territories are worsening;‘tension is rapidly mounting and the whole area is fraught with danger, with far-reaching and ominous implications for world peace and security. The Council is once more called upon to face its responsibilities and to act in a decisive.manner. Egypt fully realizes that the injustices and sufferings throughout all the occupied Arab territorieswhether in Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank or Gaza-emanate from one source: Israeli occupation. To bring a prompt and urgent end to occupation in accordance with the principles of international law and justice and consistent with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and resolutions is Egypt’s paramount objective. Egypt is committed to the achievement of a just, durable and comprehensive peace. Egypt is committed, as President Sadat only yesterday reaflirmed, “to enable our Palestinian brothers to realize their national rights and regain their freedom*‘. President Sadat also stated yesterday that “Egypt is determined to build peace based on a solid edifice of legitimacy and the rule of law”. 156. My colleague from Jordan has presented the case in a manner that leaves us all with very little to add. Indeed, I have no specific facts or figures to add to what he has contributed to this debate, or to what has been brought to the attention of the Council by various sources, and particularly by the represenative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. 157. We know that this debate is going to be long, tedious, and probably acrimonious. Yet this question remains, as a constant challenge: Can we, through this supreme instrument of peace, the Security Council, save the land and the people? This question of course acquires particular importance as our debate happens to coincide-a fact we cannot ignore-with intensive efforts at reaching a peaceful settlement df what is now called the Middle East question. 158. It is our firm belief that, however worthy those efforts may be, and even if they are successful, the whole issue will ultimately have to return to this very body. For are we not unanimous in saying that peace in the Middle East is indivisible and must therefore, in the words of my Egyptian colleague, be comprcnensive? And where else, outside the United Nations, can we hope to reach a comprehensive settlement? 151. Egypt has no illusions and fully realizes that the road to peace is no easy task. It is long; it could be protracted, arduous and many times very frustrating. Yet, we are not discouraged. Egypt has embarked on a peace process with full-knowledge that to wage peace is more difficult than to ’ &me@ Endowment for International Peace, The Hague Conventions cmdDec1ararion.t of 1899 and I907fNew York, Oxford University Press, 1915). 1.5 lg.’ Given the verv snecial character of Jerusalem. I should like to speak now as a Christian, a Christian Arab from Lebanon, a citizen of a country and a member of an ancient church for whom the faith of Jerusalem has the dimension of an’ encounter between the human and the divine. I speak not to contribute further arguments or facts to a case already too well known, but only in testimony. “How can we forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, when thou art humanity’s Mehraje to God, and the symbol of the spiritual values that descended upon us from His holy inspiration? “In thee, 0 Jerusalem, Moslems and Christians and Jews, in their common yearning for eternal peace, find, each according to his religion, a sacred community in their obedience to God and their concern for man.” 161. Such were the words of the Patriarch of Antioch, His Beatitude Elias IV, to the Islamic summit conference convened at Lahore on 23 February 1974. The Patriarch, leading a unique delegation of prelates and laymen from all churches, addressed that historic conference in the following terms: “To your esteemed conference we have comefrom the ancient churches of the East, prompted by the spirit of friendship and amity which has bound us to you, generation after generation. For, by God’s mercy and providence, there has developed in our countries more than a common humanity: a oneness that cannot be destroyed. Hence, we are conscious that it is our destiny to carry to the Christian world abroad the message of Palestine, to kindle its sacred fire wherever it is fading, voicing this message loudest where people deafen their ears or close their eyes to its reality and truth. ‘Need we say how nostaglic we all are for this particular beauty and nobility of Jerusalem, which emanated from a holiness that no other city has ever had, the holiness of the Word which was given her and which she has always sought-a holiness which had been the blessed custody of her Arab inhabitants, who are now subjected to tyranny and many of whom have been forced to emigrate from the most beloved city7 “The continuity of the tradition which the Palestinians have kept as a cherished trust is an imperative call-a call for a Jerusalem delivered, which will be again the home of its people. For to us the preservation ofstones, be they sacred shrines, cannot be more important than the living presence of people. For the presence of God is where people live in constant devotion. “To us in particular, the significance of the Holy Places has acquired its plenitude by the fact that through- 162. That was not, of course, a call for holy war-which some may consider very fashionable nowadays-but, on the contrary, in the very words with which the Patriarch concluded his address, an invitation to brotherly love: “There-in Jerusalem-shall we lay the foundations of a new civilization for all the peoples of the world, a civilization based not on exploitation but on peace and justice, which alone can ensure a fruitful and brotherly meeting of nations.” 163. There have been many resolutions which the Security Council and other bodies of the United Nations have examined, approved, rejected or forgotten-and there will be more. But whatever may be the fate of resolutions, Jerusalem will survive. So let us all join in the one act of peace which can bring us all nearer to God and to the best of humanity.

The next speaker is .the Vice- Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. I invite him to take a place at the Council table and to make his statement.

I am grateful to you, Mr. President, and to the other members ,of the Council, for allowing me to speak at this time, which is fraught with peril and threat for the Arab peoples of the territories illegally occupied by Israel, including Palestine and the city of Jerusalem, whose international status is being gravely diminished brutally and deliberately by the authorities of the Zionist State. 166. As is borne out by the countless complaints of Arab and Palestinian citizens living in the usurped territories, the Israeli authorities have adopted increasingly repressive measures against the Palestinian inhabitants since 1967 in accord with their declared intent to establish permanent domination over those territories. 167. Our Committee, like the General Assembly and the Security Council, has received repeated complaints of illtreatment, torture and other forms of persecution in&ted upon Palestinian detainees in the occupied zones. The Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population of the Occupied Territories has heard the testimony of victims of these vicious acts, which have been confirmed by Israeli lawyers, and there have been numerous reports of concrete cases of violations of human rights in the occupied Arab territories. 168. In the letter I addressed to you, Mr. President, on 2 March of thii year [S/Z313zJ, I referred to the recent press releases based on official documents of the State Department of the United States which confirm those cases of torture and ill-treatment in the territories illegally occupied by Israel. The reports clearly refute the assertions of the Israeli Government that such practices represent isolated incidents. The Palmach leader went on to cite, as the second-state aim of maintaining isolated outposts in enemy territory, the mounting of an offensive to connect the settlements. The Israeli military historian Colonel Larch also described the outlying settlements as “defensive barriers and potential offensive bases of the State which was about to be established”. As lawyers might say, “Confession makes proof unnecessary”. 170. The Zionist State, which since it came into being has trampled underfoot the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country, expropriating their goods, homes and lands and expelling them from them, is now trying to annex, per saecda saecuhum, the territories occupied illegally, manu milirari, in 1967. In this respect the interview granted to the reporter Dov Goldstein of the Hebrew newspaper Ma’ariv on 26 January of this year by the Minister of Agriculture of Israel, Mr. Ariel Sharon, is revealing. It reads: 172. Members of the Security Council have before them three maps and other documents annexed to the letter that I ’ sent to the President which give full testimony of Israel’s plans to establish its permanent dominion over the occupied territories, thus denying the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. As reported in that communciation, such actions are a violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, and in violation of resolutions of the Security Council and General Assembly, and thus represent a grave threat to international peace and security. “Question: What decisions must the Government adopt before it can sign the peace agreement? “Answer: It must decide upon the establishment of belts of settlements in Judaea and San+ia. I am speaking of three belts yf settlements. We visited one today. Israel has no strategc depth at all on the coastal strip. Twenty kilometres to the east of the green line we must establish cities and settlements: Haris, a city of 150,000 inhabitants; Kaddoun, a city of 50,000 inhabitants; Kamei Shorn&n, a city of 30,000 inhabitants; live and flourishing settlements in Reihan, Sanour, Ma’aleh Nahal, Haris, Elkana, Tapuah, Nabi Salih and others. And not settlements alone. Also, roads and highways that will ensure territorial continuity between the cities and the settlements. And not highways alone, but an extensive infrastructure, military barracks, firing ranges, and areas for combat exercises. A second belt, deployed against the eastern front, Israel established a series of settlements in the Jordan Riit. The Jews are too few, far too few to be able to survive. We must add many settlements and send many people to them. The settlements must likewise be interconnected and connected with the first belt. A third belt. Jerusalem will not be the capital of Israel unless it has a Jewish majority. The answer is to build satellite cities around Jerusalem-in Gush Etzion, Tekoah, Maaleh Adumim, Rimonim, Kohav Hashahar, Beit El, Givon. In the course of 20 or 30 years we must be in such a position that metropolitan Jerusalem and the towns in its environs will have a population of 1 million Jews. This decision must be taken now. It & not a matter for idle speculations, nor even of the sites I should like. I am referring to questions that are vital for the survival and security of Israel. There must be a decision to take the lands that are needed to implement this plan without any delay whatsoever.” 173. In addition, the Zionist State continues to undermine the legal status of Jerusalem-as we have said. This situation, which has been repeatedly denounced before world public opinion and in this lofty forum, has been the subject of a special condemnation by the orthodox inhabitants of Jerusalem. In a letter addressed to the Secretary-General on 26 February last [see S/Z3Z3Pl, Rabbi Uri Blau, Neturei Karta of Jerusalem, made the following dramatic appeal: 174. I hardly believe I need go on quoting facts and violations perpetrated by the Israeli Zionists against the inhabitants of the occupied Arab territories and the legal status of Jerusalem. What I have already reported is sufficiently eloquent and it all comes from unimpeachable sources. Furthermore, the Council has a vast inventory of the illegal acts committed by the Zionist occupiers since 1967. 171. Those intentions were stated as early a+ 1948, when Yigal Ailon, the Palmach leader, revealed the strategic importance of the settlements. At that time he said: 175. Yet I believe it essential to recall that, despite several resolutions adopted by the General Assembly and despite the overwhelming support given by the international community to the cause of the Palestinian people, no just solu- “The strategic considerations which had underlain the plan of Zionist settlement decided, in large measure, the fate. of many regions of the country, including areas largely or entirely settled by Arabs, such as Tiberias, “As citizens of Jerusalem, who have never accepted the annexation of the Holy City into the Zionist State, we implore you to call upon the Zionist authorities to cease immediately the construction of this stadium and the highway, which can irrevocably change the innate character of Jerusalem, which is a holy city to all mankind, and to desist from its campaign of terror and intimidation against the religious community, permitting them to enjoy the elementary human rights which they have had for hundreds of years and which certainly antedate the establishment of the Zionist State in the Holy Land.” 5 Quoted in English by the speaker. 176. Our Committee sees it as obvious that it is not possible to establish a just and lasting peace in that region unless, among other things, there is a just solution of the problem of Palestine on the basis of the exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to return and the right to independence and national sovereignty in Palestine, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. 177. We likewise consider that every effort and all deliberations and conferences on the Middle East held under United Nations auspices to resolve the existing conflict must have the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, on a footing of equality with the other participants. Accordingly, any agreements that might claim to resolve the problem of Palestine must be within the framework of the United Nations and of its Charter and resolutions, on the basis of the exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, in the manner and conditions that I have mentioned. 178. Had the recommendations of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People been applied,6 included as they are in various resolutions of 6 Official Recod of the General Assembly, nCirt~-first Session Supplement No. 35, part II: 179. At the present time, and considering the particularly objectionable and alarming aspects of Israeli actions in the occupied Arab territories against the Palestinian people and against the international status of the city of Jerusalem, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People entertain the sincere hope that Council members will implement the recommendations and measures contained in General Assembly resolutions 3 l/20 and 32140 A in the aspects that concern it. 180. The United Nations cannot remain impassive before a situation that vitally affects an entire people whose inalienable rights we have justly recognized and which constitutes an affront to human dignity and to everythingthe United Nations represents. It is up to the Security Council to prevent a repetition of such vicious acts by Israeli rulers and to see to it that the inherent rights of the Palestinian people are restored. The meeting rose at 7 p.m.