United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 - Interpretations

Interpretations

Israel interprets Resolution 242 as calling for withdrawal from territories as part of a negotiated peace and full diplomatic recognition. The extent of withdrawal would come as a result of comprehensive negotiations that led to durable peace not before Arabs start to meet their own obligations under Resolution 242.

Initially, the resolution was accepted by Egypt, Jordan and Israel but not by the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Arab position was initially that the Resolution called for Israel to withdraw from all the territory it occupied during the Six-Day War prior to peace agreements.

Israel and the Arab states have negotiated before the Israeli withdrawal. Israel and Jordan made peace without Israel withdrawing from the West Bank, since Jordan had already renounced its claims and recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians. Egypt began negotiations before Israel withdrew from the Sinai. Negotiations ended without Egypt ever resuming control of the Gaza Strip, which Egypt held until 1967.

Supporters of the "Palestinian viewpoint" focus on the phrase in the resolution's preamble emphasizing the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war", and note that the French version called for withdrawal from "des territoires occupés" - "the territories occupied". The French UN delegation insisted on this interpretation at the time, but both English and French are the Secretariat's working languages.

Supporters of the "Israeli viewpoint" note that the second part of that same sentence in the preamble explicitly recognizes the need of existing states to live in security. They focus on the operative phrase calling for "secure and recognized boundaries" and note that the resolution calls for a withdrawal "from territories" rather than "from the territories" or "from all territories," as the Arabs and others proposed; the latter two terms were rejected from the final draft of Resolution 242.

Alexander Orakhelashvili cites a number cases in which international tribunals have ruled that international organizations, includuing the Security Council, are bound by general international law. He says that inclusion of explicit clauses about the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war and requiring respect of territorial integrity and sovereignty of a state demonstrates that the Council does not intend to offend peremptory norms in these specific ways. The resolution also acknowledges that these principles must be part of an accepted settlement. That is confirmed by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties which reiterates the prohibition on the use of force and provides that any settlement obtained by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations or conflicting with a peremptory norm of general international law is invalid. According to Hans-Paul Gasser, ‘doubtful’ wording of the Council’s resolutions must always be construed in such a way as to avoid conflict with fundamental international obligations.

The USSR, India, Mali, Nigeria and Arab States all proposed that the resolution be changed to read "all territories" instead of "territories." Their request was discussed by the UN Security Council and "territories" was adopted instead of "all territories", after President Johnson told Premier Alexei Kosygin that the delegates should not try to negotiate the details of a Middle East settlement in the corridors and meeting halls of the United Nations, and Ambassador Goldberg stipulated that the exact wording of the resolution would not affect the position of any of the parties. Per Lord Caradon, the chief author of the resolution:

It was from occupied territories that the Resolution called for withdrawal. The test was which territories were occupied. That was a test not possibly subject to any doubt. As a matter of plain fact East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan and Sinai were occupied in the 1967 conflict. It was on withdrawal from occupied territories that the Resolution insisted.

Lord Caradon also maintained,

We didn't say there should be a withdrawal to the '67 line; we did not put the 'the' in, we did not say all the territories, deliberately.. We all knew - that the boundaries of '67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier... We did not say that the '67 boundaries must be forever; it would be insanity.

During a symposium on the subject Lord Caradon said that Israel was in clear defiance of resolution 242. He specifically cited the "annexation of East Jerusalem" and "the creeping colonialism on the West Bank and in Gaza and in the Golan."

However, British Foreign Secretary George Brown said:

I have been asked over and over again to clarify, modify or improve the wording, but I do not intend to do that. The phrasing of the Resolution was very carefully worked out, and it was a difficult and complicated exercise to get it accepted by the UN Security Council. I formulated the Security Council Resolution. Before we submitted it to the Council, we showed it to Arab leaders. The proposal said 'Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied', and not from 'the' territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories.