An editorial in the Witness on Friday was remarkably sympathetic to Israel concluding that Israel may have no choice but to move ahead unilaterally given the leveraging of violent symbolism and populist rhetoric by Hamas.
But the editorial makes an important error:
| This, [convergence plan] coupled with an immense barrier, is the price of national security. It signals realism and some compliance with international law, although Israel remains in defiance of UN Security Council resolution 242 requiring the return of all occupied land. |
The resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of the withdrawal. Resolution 242 demands Israeli withdrawal only from “territories,” not “the territories” or “all territories.”
Alan Dershowitz has argued this point almost to exhaustion.
| This is no legal technicality; the definite article was omitted quite intentionally, and after extensive discussion, so that Israel would be free to negotiate reasonable and mutually secure borders with the defeated states that had threatened it. The Soviet Union has insisted that the resolution demand the return of “all” or at least “the” territories but that view was rejected. During the Un debate, Ambassador Goldberg argued, as described as Security Council records, that “[t]o seek withdrawal without secure and recognised boundaries…would be just as fruitless as to seek secure and recognised boundaries without withdrawal. |
The New York Times even printed a correction of its coverage of the resolution.
| An article yesterday about peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians referred incorrectly to United Nations resolutions on the conflict. While Security Council Resolution 242, passed after the 1967 Middle East war, calls for Israel to withdraw its armed forces ‘from territores occupied in the recent conflict,’ no resolution calls for Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders.” (Corrections, New York Times, January 2001). |
Will the Witness also issue a correction?
It must be noted that the French version of the Resolution does include the definite article “the”.
The absence of the word "the" in the English version was the result of a deliberate amendment made by the U.S. government. The drafting process was made on the English version and therefore the English text of the Resolution takes precedence. The French version was merely a translation of the English final draft. Many opposing the French text argue that the nature of the French language requires the use of an article in places where English does not, so the inclusion of a definite article in the French text does not imply what the inclusion of the definite article in the English text would.
Lord Caradon U.K. Ambassador to the United Nations (1964-1970) and author of the draft resolution that was adopted as U.N. Resolution 242 is on record as saying:
| "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." (MacNeil/Lehrer Report - March 30, 1978) |
The Russians fiercely opposed the omission of the definite article “the.” The Russian delegate Vasily Kuznetsov acknowledged before the adoption of Resolution 242:
| ... phrases such as 'secure and recognized boundaries'. ... there is certainly much leeway for different interpretations which retain for Israel the right to establish new boundaries and to withdraw its troops only as far as the lines which it judges convenient. |
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