The Meaning of Resolution 242

Jewish Virtual Library

On November 22, 1967, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242, establishing the principles that were to guide the negotiations for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. This resolution was a tortuously negotiated compromise between competing proposals. By examining what was discarded as well as the language that appears, it is possible to discern the Security Council’s intent.

The first point addressed by the resolution is the “inadmissability of the acquisition of territory by war.” Some people read 242 as though it ends here and the case for requiring a total Israeli withdrawal from the territories is proven. On the contrary, this clause does no such thing, because the reference clearly applies only to an offensive war. If not, the resolution would provide an incentive for aggression. If one country attacks another, and the defender repels the attack and acquires territory in the process, the former interpretation would require the defender to return the land it took. Thus, aggressors would have little to lose because they would be insured against the main consequence of defeat.

The ultimate goal of 242, as expressed in paragraph 3, is the achievement of a “peaceful and accepted settlement.” This means a negotiated agreement based on the resolution’s principles rather than one imposed upon the parties. This is also the implication ofResolution 338, according to Arthur Goldberg, the American ambassador who led the delegation to the UN in 1967. That resolution, adopted after the 1973 war, called for negotiations between the parties to start immediately and concurrently with the cease­fire.

Withdrawal from Territories

The most controversial clause in Resolution 242 is the call for the “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” This is linked to the second unambiguous clause calling for “termination of all claims or states of belligerency” and the recognition that “every State in the area” has the “right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

The resolution does not make Israeli withdrawal a prerequisite for Arab action. Moreover, it does not specify how much territory Israel is required to give up. The Security Council did not say Israel must withdraw from “all the” territories occupied after the Six-Day war. This was quite deliberate. The Soviet delegate wanted the inclusion of those words and said that their exclusion meant “that part of these territories can remain in Israeli hands.” The Arab states pushed for the word “all” to be included, but this was rejected. They nevertheless asserted that they would read the resolution as if it included the word “all.” The British Ambassador who drafted the approved resolution, Lord Caradon, declared after the vote: “It is only the resolution that will bind us, and we regard its wording as clear.”

This literal interpretation was repeatedly declared to be the correct one by those involved in drafting the resolution. On October 29, 1969, for example, the British Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons the withdrawal envisaged by the resolution would not be from “all the territories.” When asked to explain the British position later, Lord Caradon said: “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial.”

Similarly, Amb. Goldberg explained: “The notable omissions-which were not accidental-in regard to withdrawal are the words ‘the’ or ‘all’ and ‘the June 5, 1967 lines‘….the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal.”

The resolutions clearly call on the Arab states to make peace with Israel. The principal condition is that Israel withdraw from “territories occupied” in 1967, which means that Israel must withdraw from some, all, or none of the territories still occupied. Since Israel withdrew from 91% of the territories when it gave up the Sinai, it has already partially, if not wholly, fulfilled its obligation under 242.

The Arab states also objected to the call for “secure and recognized boundaries” because they feared this implied negotiations with Israel. The Arab League explicitly ruled this out at Khartoum in August 1967, when it proclaimed the three “noes.” Amb. Goldberg explained that this phrase was specifically included because the parties were expected to make “territorial adjustments in their peace settlement encompassing less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories, inasmuch as Israel’s prior frontiers had proved to be notably insecure.”

The question, then, is whether Israel has to give up any additional territory. Now that peace agreements have been signed withEgypt and Jordan, the only remaining territorial disputes are with Lebanon and Syria. Israel’s conflict with Lebanon is a result of fighting after 1967 and is therefore irrelevant to 242 (Israel has said it would withdraw to the international border if a treaty is signed and the central government takes control of northern border areas currently in the hands of terrorist groups).

The dispute with Syria is over the Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin expressed a willingness to negotiate a compromise in exchange for peace; however, President Hafez Assad refused to consider even a limited peace treaty unless Israel first agreed to a complete withdrawal. Under 242, Israel has no obligation to withdraw from any part of the Golan in the absence of a peace accord with Syria.

It is also important to realize that other Arab states that continue to maintain a state of war with Israel, or have refused to grant Israel diplomatic recognition, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Libya have no territorial disputes with Israel. They have nevertheless conditioned their relations (at least rhetorically) on an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders.

Although ignored by most analysts, Resolution 242 does have other provisions. One requirement in that section is that freedom of navigation be guaranteed. It is important to remind people this clause was included because a principal cause of the 1967 war wasEgypt’s blockade of the Strait of Tiran.

Israel’s Obligations to the Palestinians

The Palestinians are not mentioned anywhere in Resolution 242. They are only alluded to in the second clause of the second article of 242, which calls for “a just settlement of the refugee problem.” Nowhere does it require that Palestinians be given any political rights or territory. In fact, the use of the generic term “refugee” was a deliberate acknowledgment that two refugee problems were products of the conflict-one Arab and another Jewish. In the case of the latter, almost as many Jews fled Arab countries as Palestinians left Israel. The Jews, however, were never compensated by the Arab states, nor were any UN organizations ever established to help them.

In a statement to the General Assembly October 15, 1968, the PLO, rejecting Resolution 242, said “the implementation of said resolution will lead to the loss of every hope for the establishment of peace and security in Palestine and the Middle East region.”

By contrast, Amb. Abba Eban expressed Israel’s position to the Security Council on May 1, 1968: “My government has indicated its acceptance of the Security Council resolution for the promotion of agreement on the establishment of a just and lasting peace. I am also authorized to reaffirm that we are willing to seek agreement with each Arab State on all matters included in that resolution.”

It took nearly a quarter century, but the PLO finally agreed that Resolutions 242 and 338 should be the basis for negotiations with Israel when it signed the Declaration of Principles in September 1993.

December 13, 2013 | 4 Comments »
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  2. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242

    Interpreting its Meaning and Relevance for the State of Israel

    “In this paper, I will posit not only that Israel has fulfilled her obligations as required by the Resolution, but also that Israel has adhered to the Resolution above and beyond what was required of her, by international law (and, indeed, by common sense). Moreover, as a result of violations by the other parties involved, Israel has been legally and morally absolved of any further obligation to this Resolution.”

    Read Full analysis here

  3. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242

    Interpreting its Meaning and Relevance for the State of Israel

    “In this paper, I will posit not only that Israel has fulfilled her obligations as required by the Resolution, but also that Israel has adhered to the Resolution above and beyond what was required of her, by international law (and, indeed, by common sense). Moreover, as a result of violations by the other parties involved, Israel has been legally and morally absolved of any further obligation to this Resolution.”

    Read Full analysis here

    ·

    The territories of Gaza, Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights are all part of the original Mandate for Palestine, and came into the possession of Arab countries (namely, Egypt, Jordan and Syria) illegally. The State of Israel, representing the Jewish People, continued to hold the legal title to these lands from the issuance of the Mandate in 1920 until these lands were liberated in 1967.

    · The 1949 Armistice Lines were never intended to be final, recognized borders between Israel and her Arab neighbors; rather they were explicitly stated to be mere ceasefire lines.

    · The circumstances leading up to the outbreak of war on June 5, 1967 were such that Israel launched a preemptive defensive strike against the Arab armies which had surrounded it and had announced their intention to launch a war of aggression and annihilation against the Jewish State.

    · While it is true that Resolution 242 is a Security Council Resolution, because it was passed under Chapter VI and not under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, it is a non-binding directive. It is merely a recommendation, even if a strongly-worded one.

    · Even if Resolution 242 was a binding Resolution, it would be a bilateral agreement between Israel on the one side, and Egypt, Syria, and Jordan on the other. Egypt and Syria violated the Resolution’s insistence on negotiations leading to final borders by launching a surprise attack on Israeli forces in October 1973. Such a fundamental violation of the Resolution by these two countries absolved Israel of any obligation to honor the Resolution with regards to these two countries. Regarding Jordan, the peace agreement signed in 1994 between Israel and that country renders Resolution 242 irrelevant, as that peace agreement settled the major issues of secure and recognized borders and put an end to the state of belligerency between them.

    · Resolution 242 does not require Israel to withdraw from all of the territories captured in the 1967 War. It states that Israel should exchange territories for Arab recognition of secure and recognized borders. The Resolution also implies that Israel’s borders prior to June 5, 1967 were neither secure nor recognized. The 1979 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, which returned 90% of the territory captured by Israel in the Six Day War, surely satisfies this non-specific withdrawal component.

    Thus, Israel was never under any obligation to abide by Resolution 242, because the lands it liberated in that war always legally belonged to the Jewish National Home envisioned by the Mandate for Palestine, which is embodied by the State of Israel. Yet while Israel is not legally obligated to abide by Resolution 242, it has certainly fulfilled more than its part. The Arab states, specifically Egypt and Syria, while also not legally obligated to abide by the Resolution, nevertheless grossly violated it in 1973, and continue to allow terrorist proxy organizations to operate from their territories to attack the Jewish State. Arab countries purposely perpetuate the Palestinian refugee issue, denying citizenship and integration to these Palestinians, in order to use them as a dangerous political and terroristic weapon against Israel. And, to this day, Arab recognition of Israel does not recognize Israel’s right to exist; rather only the unfortunate fact that Israel does exist. This includes Egypt and Jordan, the two Arab states with peace treaties and tepid diplomatic ties with Israel.

    The authors of Resolution 242 attempted to create a different type of Resolution after the Six Day War. The Resolutions which ended the 1948 and 1956 wars were concerned solely with the cessation of hostilities between Israel and her neighbors. Resolution 242, in contrast, attempted to address the core issues which could lead to a lasting peace in the region.[72] However, the United Nations ignored three main issues, mainly because it was and still is unable to deal effectively with any issues relating to Justice and Truth. First of all, the two sides in the 1967 war were not morally equal. One side was the aggressor, while the other was the victim. The victim, Israel in this case, triumphed in the final outcome; however that triumph does not retroactively convert Israel, as the victor, into the aggressor. (Might does not make Right, but it does not necessarily make Wrong.) Even though Israel emerged victorious from the war, this fact has no ameliorative bearing on the guilt of the Arab parties in commencing hostilities against the Jewish State. Secondly, requiring the victim of aggression to return territories captured in a war of self-defense only encourages future aggression. Why should an aggressor fear embarking on another war of aggression if it is allowed to return to the status quo ante that existed before its failed attempt at conquest and annihilation? Lastly, a dangerous naïveté exists in assuming that something intangible (namely, recognition and peace) can be honestly bartered with something tangible (territory). Once a tangible object, such as territory, has been transferred, it can only be retaken by force. It is either in the possession of one side or the other. However, an intangible thing such as “recognition” or “peace” can be granted one day and rescinded the next, with little or no risk involved. The equation thus created by Resolution 242 is not only naïve, but it enhances the main weakness of democracies when dealing with dictatorships. The democracy, in this case Israel, is required to trust the promises of dictatorships, that once recognition is granted and territory transferred, the agreements signed will be honored. Echoes of the 1938 abandonment and subsequent conquest of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany while the nations of the world stood idly by would do well to remind the leaders of Israel the fate that awaits those countries who subordinate their national interests to the will of the international community and to the promises of dictatorships.

    The United Nations as an organization is ill-equipped to solve the existential nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead, it confuses cause and effect, morally equates the aggressor and the victim, and treats the issue as a mere territorial conflict between neighbors. It should be noted that because the United Nations treats democracies and dictatorships as equals, it is inherently unable to make decisions based on Truth and Justice, since these two issues are foreign to dictatorships. Moreover, whereas democracies reach agreements through compromise, dictatorships reach agreements through the use of force and threats. Because the international stage is one of anarchy, agreements between nations must be reached through compromise, often between democracies and dictatorships. Compromise and Justice are certainly not synonymous. The language of Resolution 242, including its ambiguities, was a deliberate political act in order to ensure the consensus necessary to secure the Resolution’s passage in the Security Council, which automatically implies that the language of the Resolution had more to do with Expediency than with Justice. Yet, several times the word “just” is mentioned in the Resolution, specifically in regards to achieving a “just and lasting peace” in the region, and to finding a “just settlement of the refugee problem.” Both of these mentions of justice are pitiful considering that the Resolution goes on to morally equate the victim Israel with her Arab aggressors. Yet the UN’s moral cowardice is even more evident in its mention of only Israel by name in Resolution 242 (and, then, only in the context of the Resolution’s withdrawal component), despite having a war of annihilation thrust upon it by the combined armies of three Arab states, thus implicitly labeling Israel as the aggressor. Moreover, the adjective “just” in regards to the refugee problem is grossly hypocritical considering the facts presented regarding the clear favoritism shown by the UN towards UNRWA over UNHCR, despite the latter organization’s greater and far more complicated responsibilities, and the international community’s hypocrisy in refusing to expect the Arab countries to properly integrate the Palestinian refugees residing in their respective countries.

    Resolution 242 endangers the State of Israel. The UN illegally attempted to divide the western portion of the Mandate for Palestine between a Jewish State (authorized by the Mandate) and an Arab State (not authorized by the Mandate) in its 1947 Partition Plan, and failed when Israel finished its War of Independence controlling those lands allocated to it by the plan and more. The UN shirked its responsibility and raison d’être in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of warfare in 1967, not only failing to prevent the outbreak of war, but contributing significantly to the war’s inevitability by withdrawing UNEF from the Sinai Peninsula. Resolution 242 is a continuation of that first attempt in 1947 at diminishing the lands to which the Jewish People are entitled under the Mandate for Palestine and international law.

    Resolution 242 was unable to prevent the outbreak of war in 1973. The only peace in the Middle East that succeeds is peace through strength and deterrence. Peace will come from security and not security from peace.[73] The real root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the Arab refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist within any boundaries. Therefore, no treaty or peace settlement and no UN Resolution will provide Israel with security. Only Israel’s deterrent ability prevents war from erupting. Therefore, Israel should exercise its sovereign rights over Judea, Samaria and Gaza, without fear of causing another regional war. The Arab dictatorships surrounding Israel will go to war when it suits them, only needing a pretext, not a true moral justification. The UN is no different, as it has always found a pretext for criticizing and condemning Israel. Thus, Israel should cease fearing these inevitabilities, as it is condemned regardless of its behavior or the legality of its actions, and exercise its true, legal rights in its Land.

    · Israel should annex Judea, Samaria and Gaza, under its legal right to these lands as sanctioned by the San Remo Peace Conference and the Mandate for Palestine.

    · Israel should publicly declare that it has no responsibility to find any settlement for Palestinian refugees, as their status has been purposely perpetuated by Arab countries and the United Nations, in order to be used as a powerful demographic, political and terroristic weapon against the Jewish State. The Arab states have more than enough land and resources to adequately incorporate the several million Palestinian refugees into their countries.

    Israel should not only state its case and its rights under international law, but it should realize that it will never receive fair and unbiased treatment in an organization such as the UN, which is based on Bargaining and not Justice. Israel would be better to withdraw from that organization rather than to continue being unjustly disparaged, criticized and condemned for daring to defend itself. There is no excuse for Israel’s having allowed Resolution 242 to gain the international standing and legitimacy which it has over the years. Israel should have exposed that Resolution, as it should have exposed so many others, as unjust and irrelevant. Israel’s leadership must begin to properly, proudly and forthrightly defend Israel’s right to exist and protect itself. While this surely won’t solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, it will allow Israel and her citizens to not only dwell more securely, but know that they have the right to.

  4. The fundamental premise upon which the Resolution 242 has been adopted, namely the “inadmissability of the acquisition of territory” is questionable from a legal point of view.

    If we proceed chronologically, there is a basic premise of the greatest importance, ie the treaties international law (San Remo and the Mandate) which granted from the very beginning all the territory of Palestine to the Jewish People.

    As a reminder, Resolution 242 requires Israel to withdraw from the territories designated to be included in the National Home for the Jewish People.

    Any resolution which may contravene the rights granted under the treaties of international law, as confirmed pursuant to Article 70(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969, is ipso facto illegal and have no legal application.

    Contrary to what the international community seems to think, Israel did not acquire any territory by war but certainly by law.

    In addition, the United Nations are also legally bound to such law, especially in virtue of Article 80 of the Charter of the United Nations which stipulates that “nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.”

    While debating and arguing about the false premise of the Resolution 242, Israel shoots itself in the foot and weakens its position.