For the occupied and oppressed Palestinians UN means Useless Nations.
(This was despite the fact that he was privately furious with the Israelis. He had given them the green light to attack only Egypt and their attack on Syria to take the Golan Heights for keeping provoked the Soviet Union to the brink of military confrontation with the U.S. Johnson was also fully aware that when Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan gave the order for his forces to attack the U.S.S. Liberty his intention was to sink the American spy ship and send all on board to a watery grave. As it happened on 8 June the Israeli attack on the Liberty with bombs, napalm, torpedoes and machine gun fire killed 34 members of the vessel’s crew and wounded171, 75 of them seriously. The Liberty was attacked to prevent it sending an early warning to the Johnson administration that elements of the IDF’s ground forces in Sinai were being turned around to reinforce an attack on Jordan and Syria. The full story is told in The Liberty Affair – “Pure Murder” on a “Great Day”, Chapter 2 of Volume Three of my book. Who described the attack on the Liberty as “pure murder”? Israel’s chief of staff at the time, Yitzhak Rabin. The “great day” comment was made by Dayan in a note to Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol.).
Though it did pay lip service to “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”, the final text of Resolution 242 (less than 300 words in all) gave the Israelis the scope to interpret it as they wished. It did so by stating that the establishment of a just and lasting peace should include the application of two principles
QUOTE
(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.
(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.
UNQUOTE
This wording enabled Zionism to assert that withdrawal was conditional on the Arab states recognising and legitimising Israel.
In addition Resolution 242 gave Israel the freedom to determine the extent of any withdrawals it might make. This freedom was secured by immense pressure from Israel and the Zionist lobby in all its manifestations which caused those responsible for the final wording of the resolution to drop the definite article “the” in (i) above. The wording of the draft text was (my emphasis added) “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories occupied in the recent conflict.” The meaning of that draft text was clear. Israel had to withdraw from ALL the Arab territory it grabbed in the Six Days War. But when Israel’s leaders and the Zionist lobby said that was unacceptable, those responsible for the final version of 242 replied in effect: “Okay. We’ll do it your way.”
So the question without an answer in the final text of 242 was – WHICH Israel were the Arab states required to recognise? An Israel withdrawn to its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war or a Greater Israel – an Israel in permanent occupation of at least some Arab territory grabbed in that war?
Incredible though it may seem today, Resolution 242 did not mention the Palestinians by name. It affirmed only the necessity for “achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.” Mentioning the Palestinians by name was unacceptable to Israel’s leaders and the Zionist lobby because it would have implied that they, the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, were a people with rights – rights far greater than what might be called the begging bowl rights normally associated in the public mind with refugees.
But there was more to it than that. At the time the Security Council was agonising over the text of 242, the three major Western powers, the U.S., Britain and France, were united on one thing – the view that the Palestine file was not to be re-opened because, if it was, they might one day have to confront Zionism.
Put another way, in November 1967 the major Western powers were hoping that re-emerging Palestinian nationalism could be snuffed out by a combination of Arab-and-Israeli military action (it was the security forces of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon which made the first attempt to liquidate the authentic Palestine liberation movement led by Arafat) and compensation for refugees as necessary.
Security Council Resolution 242 was a disaster for all who were seriously committed to working for a just and lasting peace because, effectively, it put Zionism into the diplomatic driving seat.
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