The Zionists’ Fictional Rendering of UN Resolution 242

The Zionists’ Fictional Rendering of UN Resolution 242

Jeremy R. Hammond

May 28, 2013

Dani Dayan in Haaretz offers a standard summary account of Israel’s unilateral interpretation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242:

It was not just the Israeli position that Israel would not withdraw to the armistice lines or provide any compensation for the territory it won. In practice, it was the position of the international community. United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 demand that Israel withdraw from “territory,” not from “the territories.” The Arab and Soviet attempts to force Israel into a full withdrawal were rejected. Even people who think the resolutions apply to each front separately must admit that Israel has no obligation to render “compensation” at an Arab aggressor’s behest for territory that remains in its possession.

This is pure fiction.

In fact, it was just the Israeli position that Israel would not withdraw from the territories it occupied during the June 1967 war, which was emphatically not the position of the international community.

Resolution 242 does not demand “that Israel withdraw from ‘territory’”. The word in the Resolution is “territories”, plural. It is true that there is no definite article “the” before this plural noun, but this has no bearing on the meaning of the clause in which it appears or on the intent of the Security Council. The absurd logic of the Israeli argument presented here by Dayan is that since the resolution did not say “all of the territories”, then we must interpret it to mean “some ofthe territories”.

The Arab and Soviet position that Israel must withdraw fully to the armistice lines were not rejected. This was the position of the entire international community at that time,including the U.K. and the U.S. Dayan would have readers believe that the will of the Council was that it was permissible that Israel acquire Palestinian territory by war. Yet the resolution explicitly emphasized the principle of international law that the acquisition of territory by war was inadmissible.

Finally, Dayan argues that this principle only applies to the “aggressor” nation, which is false, and that in this case Israel was the non-aggressor, which is also false. The 1967 war began on the morning of June 5 when Israel launched a surprise attacks against Egypt, obliterating most of Egypt’s air force while it was still on the ground. Israel justifies this launching of the war by declaring it to have been “preemptive”, which is also false. It was not a preemptive war, by definition. While Israeli apologists like to claim that this was a necessary act of self-defense to protect Israel against an imminent Egyptian invasion, the fact of the matter is that Israel’s own intelligence assessed that Nasser would not be so foolish as to start a war with Israel. U.S. intelligence agreed, assessing that war was imminent on the grounds that it would be started by Israel with an attack on Egypt, whose military positions in the Sinai were recognized as being defensive.

After starting the war with its attack on Egypt, Israel proceeded to invade and occupy the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. In accordance with the principles of international law emphasized under Resolution 242, the International Court of Justice has observed that every inch of Gaza and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, is “occupied Palestinian territory”.

The moral of the story is that facts just don’t matter to apologists of Israeli aggression and occupation of Palestine. Zionists have created entire histories that while almost universally accepted in the West as accurate narratives are completely fictional. The above is just one common example.

http://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2013/05/28/the-zionists-fictional-rendering-of-un-resolution-242/