United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 and the Controversy Over Varying Interpretations of the Withdrawal Clause

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Historical Context: The June War of 1967

3. The Making of Resolution 242
a) Draft Resolutions
b) Weeks of Intensive Diplomacy

4. The Withdrawal Clause
a) “The” of not “The” – About the Absence of the Definite
Article
b) The Withdrawal Clause in other UN Languages
c) The Intended Meaning of the Withdrawal Clause

5. Conclusion

6. Bibliography

7. Appendix

1. Introduction

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 remains to this day, almost 36 years after it was adopted unanimously, the only internationally-agreed framework for a peaceful settlement of the Middle East conflict. The principle of exchanging land for peace, as expressed in resolution 242, has been the foundation of US, Western and Arab peacemaking efforts.

Yet it has also been the subject of a heated debate. Notably the centrepiece of resolution 242, calling for “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”, has been interpreted in significantly different ways by the parties concerned. While to the Arabs this means the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces to the positions they held before the outbreak of hostilities – a return to the status quo ante - the proponents of the Israeli position assert that the omission of the definite article before the word “territories” is aimed at enabling territorial revisions or aggrandizement, particularly in connection with the resolution’s second operating paragraph and the mentioning of “secure and recognized boundaries” therein.

The aim of the following essay is to analyse the meaning of UN Security Council Resolution 242. It will start by describing the historical context it is embedded in, namely the events surrounding the June War of 1967. In chapter three, the circumstances preceding the adoption of resolution 242, notably the diplomatic efforts prior to the voting, will be depicted. The next section deals with the differing interpretations of the withdrawal clause. In subchapter 4 c) it will be argued that the adoption of resolution 242 was only made possible due to a number of assurances, given to the Arabs in general and to King Hussein of Jordan in particular, about the intended meaning of the withdrawal clause. Finally, in the conclusions, results shall be summarised and future prospects of a successful implementation of resolution 242 outlined.

2. Historical Context: The June War of 1967

The June War of 1967, also known as the Six Days War, was the most far reaching of all Israeli-Arab confrontations, with the Arabs badly defeated and their Israeli adversaries experiencing an unprecedented victory, almost tripling the territory under their control.

Mounting tensions between Syria and Israel marked the beginning of the Arab-Israeli crisis of 1967. What was initially perceived as minor and sporadic confrontations in the demilitarised border zone between the two countries soon turned into an alarming situation. On 7 April 1967, a serious aerial clash occurred in which six Syrian planes were shot down, one of them over Damascus.^[1]

In the following weeks, the likelihood of a war in the Middle East increased dramatically. Israel employed sharp rhetoric against Syria, threatening to overthrow the Damascene regime.^[2] The United Arab Republic, as Egypt was then called, having entered into a military alliance with Syria the previous November, was compelled to react. Backed by reports of an imminent Israeli pre-emptive strike, president Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened to destroy the state of Israel once and for all.^[3]

However, this was not enough for his Arab neighbours. Under high pressure, both domestic and regional, to respond with more than just fiery rhetoric, Egypt moved its troops into Sinai on 14 May and requested the removal of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF). Within a matter of days, UNEF had completely withdrawn and the UAR took control over the Straits of Tiran, overlooking from Sharm-El-Shaykh the naval passage to the Gulf of Aqaba. On 22 May 1967, Nasser announced that Israeli ships would be excluded from passage through the Gulf.^[4]

The closure of the Straits of Tiran was regarded by Israel as an act of aggression it was not willing to tolerate. Despite intensive diplomatic activity to prevent a military confrontation in the Middle East, both by the great powers and the UN Security Council, the situation got out of control. On 30 May Jordan and Egypt signed a mutual defense agreement under UAR command and King Hussein proclaimed the opening of his borders to Iraqi forces in the event of an outbreak of hostilities.^[5]

On 3 June, however, it was announced in Egypt that Nasser would allow his vice-president Muhieddin to travel to Washington on a diplomatic mission starting on 7 June. The intended purpose of this visit was to explore the possibilities of a peaceful settlement of the crisis over the Straits of Tiran, since Nasser had indicated his willingness to consider arbitration by the World Court. The negotiations in Washington never took place. On the morning of 5 June 1967, Israel launched a large-scale military attack against the United Arab Republic.^[6]

It was a short war. On the first day, Israel virtually destroyed all of Egypt’s air force. Syria and Jordan entered the war soon after and were equally defeated. By the end of the hostilities, on 11 June, Israel had occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, the Westbank and the Golan Heights.

Who cast the first stone?

Considerable attention in the scholarship on the Israeli-Arab June War of 1967 has been paid to the question about who started the aggressions. Did the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, by closing the Straits of Tiran, provide a casus belli to the Israeli leadership? Could the closure of the Gulf of Aqaba be considered as an aggression against the State of Israel, or even an act of war? Opinions on this issue are obviously deeply split.

The closure of the Gulf of Aqaba could not be considered an act of aggression. Indeed, it was closed once before, in 1951. At that time, it was not regarded as an act of aggression, let alone an act of war. However, it seems the actions taken by Nasser in late May 1967 should have been legally arbitrated on an international level in order to obtain clarification about the issue.^[7]

Muhieddin’s planned visit to Washington was an auspicious development to work towards this end. While his prospects of succeeding were not overwhelmingly promising, there was still a small chance for a peaceful settlement of the crisis that should have been seized. Israel’s decision to launch a pre-emptive strike against Egypt encountered a lot of criticism, even by its closest ally, the United States. Indeed, Secretary of State Dean Rusk is quoted by Quandt as having said that he was “’angry as hell’ that the Israelis launched their surprise offense just before the Egyptian vice-president was to arrive in Washington.”^[8]

3. The Making of Resolution 242

In the weeks and months following the conflict of June 1967, the urgent need for a strong, meaningful and comprehensive United Nations Security Council Resolution arose. It lay in the in the nature of things that the parties concerned and the powers supporting them had different ideas about the context of such a resolution. In the following section, the drafts that were considered shall be introduced.

a) Draft Resolutions

A total of five draft resolutions were presented between July and November 1967. The first was the joint proposal by 22 South and Central American countries and was presented to the United Nations General Assembly on 13 June, 1967. The text used a strong language, urgently requesting “Israel to withdraw all its forces from all the territories occupied by it as a result of the recent conflict.”^[9]

The draft found support in the United States, indeed the American delegation voted in favor of the proposal. Interestingly, as David Korn reports, “there was a consensus in Washington in mid-summer 1967 […] that peace between Israel and the Arabs […] could be had only on the basis of full Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 lines.”^[10] In the following months, however, there was a shift in the US position that would later prove to be of crucial significance.

The Latin American draft was rejected by the Arab countries. The reason for this was that it drew a connection between the withdrawal clause and an end to the state of belligerency between the parties concerned. The decision by Egypt and the other Arab countries to vote against the Latin American proposal would, in the following months, prove to have been a case of political short-sightedness.^[11]

Another draft resolution was introduced by India, Mali and Nigeria and was referred to as the non-aligned draft. The authors of this document used the Latin American draft resolution as a “basic document of reference.”^[12] However, it would seem that the non-aligned draft employed a slightly stronger language, affirming in its first operating paragraph that “Occupation or acquisition of territory by military conquest is inadmissible under the Charter of the United Nations…”.

The third draft was submitted by the United States. Concerning the strength of the language used in reference to withdrawal, this was certainly the weakest of all proposals that were introduced, loosely calling for “withdrawal of armed forces” and not mentioning the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”. In parallel, there was a relatively strong emphasis on an end to claims of belligerency and mutual recognition by the parties concerned.

The fourth proposal was the text submitted by Great Britain. Lord Caradon, the British delegate at the Security Council, presented a draft that called for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces”, but explicitly mentioned in its preamble the “inadmissibility of acquisition of the territory by war”. On the other hand, it emphasised the right of every state in the area “to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries”, an element which was pivotal for US support of any draft. Caradon himself, presenting the text, emphasised that it belonged to neither side, saying “It belongs to us all.”^[13]

The fifth and last proposal was handed in by the Soviet Union only three days before resolution 242 was finally adopted. Its submission at a time when a consensus about the British proposal was in the offing was surprising to all parties concerned, or, in Arthur Lall’s words, “an unforeseen development”.^[14] The Soviet draft was balanced compared to previous suggestions, however its language was still to strong to find the support of the majority of delegations in the Security Council.^[15]

b) Weeks of Intensive Diplomacy

In the weeks prior to the voting on the different drafts under consideration, diplomatic efforts were running at high gear. Israel was trying to gain US support for a formula calling for “withdrawal from territories occupied” rather than “all the” or “the territories occupied” and eventually succeeded, partly due to Abba Eban’s persuasive efforts with Arthur Goldberg, the US representative at the United Nations. Initially, as described above,^[16] the official US position was in support of a full withdrawal of all Israeli armed forces.

The Arab side, particularly in the person of Egyptian foreign minister Mahmoud Riad, was trying to get back up for a text leaving no doubt about the extent of Israeli withdrawal: it had to be total withdrawal to the positions held prior to the outbreak of hostilities on 5 June 1967. Riad had most delegations on his side, however any adopted resolution had to be approved by the US, since as a permanent member of the Security Council, it could exercise its right to veto. When Lord Caradon presented the British draft to the Egyptian foreign minister, Riad broached the subject again and asked about the intention behind the absence of the definite article in the withdrawal clause. Adressing Riad’s concern, Caradon assured him that “the text means all and not some of the territories”.^[17]

In addition, “as a sop to the Arabs”, as William Quandt put it, the preambula of the British draft emphasised “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”. Objections from Eban were limited, since from a strictly legal perspective, only the operating paragraphs have a binding effect.^[18]

King Hussein of Jordan had received assurances from president Lyndon Johnson that the US was in support of a withdrawal from all territories occupied during the war. As a consequence, Hussein urged Riad to support the United States in the Security Council. The British proposal was closer to the Arab position than the US proposal was, so it was likely to find the King’s support as well. Furthermore, Hussein received a number of assurances from US officials that will be depicted in section 4d).^[19]

With the support for Caradon’s draft secured from Jordan and Egypt, the countries that had suffered the heaviest territorial losses as a result of the June War, there were no further obstacles towards a successful adoption of Security Council Resolution 242. When it was put to the vote on 22 November, all fifteen members opted for the British proposal.^[20]

4. The Withdrawal Clause

a) “The” or not “The” – about the Absence of the Definite Article

The debate over the actual meaning of resolution 242, particularly about the withdrawal clause, started immediately after its unanimous adoption. In a speech following the vote, the representative of France, for instance, with reference to the French version of the resolution,^[21] made it clear that his country supported a withdrawal of Israel’s armed forces from the territories occupied during the war.^[22]

The main argument of the proponents of the Israeli position is that withdrawal “from territories occupied”, as opposed to “the territories occupied”, can be understood as withdrawal from some, but not all territories. In addition, the second operating paragraph of resolution 242 mentions the right “of every State in the area […] to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries…”. This is interpreted to imply that the existing boundaries are neither secure nor recognised. This assumption is based on the idea that the pre-1967 borders were not final, since they merely reflected the positions that the parties were holding at the time when the Armistice Agreement of 1949 was signed.

In his autobiography, Abba Eban describes his interpretation of Caradon’s text, the way it was presented to him on 18 November, 1967, as follows: “To get a majority, it would be essential to state the principle of the ‘non-admissibility’ of the acquisition of territory by force’. This, however, would be a preambular reference. The operative element in the proposed resolution would be that in return for Israeli withdrawal, the Arab states would have to make a ‘just and lasting peace’ and agree on ‘secure and recognized boundaries’. Israel, in order to get peace, would have to withdraw from the cease-fire lines to a territorial boundary to be established in peace negotiations.”^[23]

The facts hardly support Eban’s interpretation of resolution 242. The preambular mentioning of the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” can only be seen in connection with Israel’s military conquests as a result of the June War of 1967. As a matter of fact, the second preamble is the first actual element of the resolution and therefore deserves particular attention. Indeed, as a guiding principle, the preamble rejects military action for the purpose of territorial aggrandizement.^[24]

Seen in this connection, the withdrawal clause can only mean the withdrawal from all the territories occupied during the war. It does not call for the establishment of secure and recognised boundaries – this would exceed the Council’s competence. It calls for the withdrawal of Israel’s armed forces to the existing boundaries. Irrespective of the presence or absence of the definite article in the withdrawal clause, resolution 242 has to be interpreted within the framework international law in general and the United Nations Charter in particular. Seen within this context, there is no room for an interpretation other than the one cited above.

b) The Withdrawal Clause in other UN Languages

When resolution 242 was adopted in 1967, the Security Council used five official languages (French, Russian, English, Chinese and Spanish). Two of these languages, English and French, had the status of working languages. With regard to the first operating paragraph, it must be noted that neither the Russian nor the Chinese language distinguish between “from territories” as opposed to “the territories” because there is no definite article in them.

The French version of the withdrawal clause, translated into English, clearly does not correspond to the expression “from territories”, but to “from the territories”. It remains unclear why Sydney Bailey, in his book “The Making of Resolution 242”, writes about his “own inclination to […] share the view of Shabtai Rosenne that the French version is ‘an accurate and idiomatic rendering of the original English.’”^[25] As a matter of plain fact “from territories” means “de territoires” in French, while “from the territories” means “des territoires.”

Furthermore, with reference to the Spanish final official version of resolution 242, Bailey seems to imply that the meaning of the withdrawal clause has somewhat changed, compared to the translation of the British draft version:

“In Spanish, however, we find that when the British proposal was in draft form, the words used were ‘Retiro…de territorios’, but when the proposal had been formally approved and became a decision, the Spanish wording had been changed to ‘Retiro…de los territorios.’”^[26]

Indeed, the definite article in front of the word “territorios” was added in the final version of the resolution. However, a crucial bit in the Spanish translation of Caradon’s draft resolution is missing in Bailey’s quotation. It read “Retiro de todas las fuerzas armadas israelíes de territorios…”,^[27] a formula which was just as unambiguous as the final Spanish version of resolution 242.

c) The Intended Meaning of the Withdrawal Clause

The Arab position on Israeli withdrawal after the war was a position of no compromises on this crucial issue. However, when it seemed that the alternative to the British proposal may be no resolution at all,^[28] Arab officials began seriously considering Caradon’s draft. They were willing to accept it, should there be explicit assurances from both the British and the Americans that the intended meaning of the withdrawal clause was the retreat of Israel’s armed forces to the 1949 lines.

Mahmoud Riad recalls that he asked Caradon whether the absence of the definite article in his proposal meant partial, and not total, withdrawal. Lord Caradon replied: ”Of course not. The text means all and not some territories. Proof is that the resolution in the preamble emphasizes the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.”^[29] The author of resolution 242 is later quoted as having said that it meant “the return of Israel to the 4 June position.”^[30] Indeed, describing the prevalent perception in November 1967 in New York, Caradon recalls that “we all took it for granted that the occupied territory would be restored.”^[31]

It can be argued that Riad’s recollection of various assurances was impaired by wishful thinking,^[32] and admittedly, a matter of this significance cannot be left to the readers’ subjective penchant to believe one or the other version of the story. In an article written by Donald Neff and published in the “Middle East International” in 1991, however, highly interesting evidence regarding this matter has been presented. The source of Neff’s information is a classified document by the State Department^[33] which, as he writes, “came into my hands several years ago”.^[34]

According to Neff’s rendering of the relevant passages of this document, Arthur Goldberg met King Hussein of Jordan on 3 November in New York and told him that “the United States did not visualise a Jordan limited to the East Bank”. He added that while the US “could not guarantee that everything would be returned to Jordan”, since “some territorial adjustments would be required”, there must be “a mutuality in adjustments.” On 6 November, Hussein travelled to Washington and spoke to Secretaty of State Dean Rusk. Rusk assured the King that the United States would “use its influence to obtain compensation to Jordan for any territory it was required to give up” in the process of implementing resolution 242. Hussein met President Johnson on 8 November and received similar assurances. Another two days later, the King met Arthur Goldberg again. When Hussein asked him about the Israeli government’s position, Goldberg assured him that the Israelis were “on board.” Only these numerous assurances finally prompted the King of Jordan to give his consent to a formula calling for a withdrawal “from territories.”

5. Conclusions

Finally, aside from the controversy over the omission of the definite article in the withdrawal clause and the intended meaning of UN Security Council Resolution 242 as described above, the resolution as whole – all alleged ambiguities notwithstanding - can only mean a return to the pre-war borders. The alternative interpretation would be territorial aggrandizement for the benefit of one party. This is under no circumstances reconcilable with the Charter of the United Nations, particularly with the Articles 1 and 2.^[35]

The significance of resolution 242 has been reaffirmed on various occasions over the decades. In UNSC resolution 338 on the issue of the October War of 1973 it was explicitly mentioned in its second operating paragraph, which called for “the implementation of Security Council resolution 242 (1967) in all of its parts.”^[36] In the following years, it has become a common practice at the Security Council to reaffirm resolution 242 through a call for the implementation of resolution 338. Indeed, the last time this happened was on 17 December 2002, when resolution 1451^[37] was adopted unanimously.

The acceptance of resolution 242 by the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1988 and the abandonment of the policy that had, as its ultimate aim, the total destruction of the Israeli state, was a very auspicious development. After all, it meant the abdication of the claim to almost 80 per cent of former British Mandate Palestine and the acceptance of the existence of Israel. In recent months, the Palestinian leadership has been showing its willingness to settle for even less than that, when it declared its approval of the proposals by the Clinton administration during the the negotiations held in Taba in December 2000.

The most significant commitment to resolution 242 and the so-called “land for peace” formula was expressed in a joint declaration^[38] by all Arab States at the Arab League Summit in Beirut in 2002, endorsing the principle of a peace in return for the full withdrawal of Israel’s occupying forces. The resolution was adopted unanimously on 28 March on the basis of a Saudi proposal.

While Israel has withdrawn from the Sinai peninsula and concluded a peace treaty with Egypt and, more recently, with Jordan, the prospects of an end to the occupation of the Golan Heights, but particularly of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip seem rather grim. In recent years, the continuing colonisation of Palestinian territories by Israel has been one of the major obstacles towards a progress in the peace process that has henceforth been terminated. Settlement policies have raised serious concerns about the Israeli governments’ actual commitment to resolution 242. The current, Likud-led Israeli administration has explicitly refused to accept its obligation under international law to end the occupation of Arab territories.^[39]

Bibliography

Arab League, 2002, The Arab Peace Initiative. At http://64.77.65.168/arableague/E2801news1.html.

Bailey, Sydney D., 1985, The Making of Resolution 242, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

Eban, Abba, 1977, An Autobiography, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Finkelstein, Norman, 1995, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, New York: Verso.

Korn, David, 1992, The Making of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242: Centrepiece of Arab-Israeli Negotiations, Gergetown: The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University.

Korn, David, 1992, Stalemate: The War of Attrition and Great Power Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1967-1970, Oxford: Westview Press.

Lall, Arthur, 1968, The UN and the Middle East Crisis, 1967, New York: Colombia University Press.

Neff, Donald, 1991, The Differing Interpretations of Resolution 242, Middle East International.

Quandt, William B., 1993, Peace Process, American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967, Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.

Riad, Mahmoud, 1981, The Struggle fo Peace in the Middle East, London: Quartet Books Ltd.

Rosenne, Shabtai, On Multi-Lingual Interpretation. At http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0g9w0.

Sharon loses party vote on Palestinian state, 13 May 2002 at http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/05/13/likud.vote/?related.

Still waiting for No 242, 13 November 2002. The Guardian, article written by Paul Foot. At http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4545126,00.html.

United Nations, 1945, Charter of the United Nations. At http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/.

Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1993, UN Security Council Resolution 242. The Building Block of Peacemaking, Washington: The Washington Institute fo Near East Policy.

[...]

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^[1] Lall, Arthur, The UN and the Middle East Crisis, 1967, p. 2; Finkelstein, Norman, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, p. 125; Bailey, Sydney D., The Making of Resolution 242, p. 10. Quandt, William B., Peace Process, p. 26.

^[2] Finkelstein, Norman, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, p. 125.

^[3] Bailey, Sydney D., The Making of Resolution 242, p. 10 et seq.

^[4] Bailey, Sydney D., The Making of Resolution 242, p. 28 et seq; Lall, Arthur, The UN and the Middle East Crisis, 1967, p. 26.

^[5] Korn, David, The Making of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, p. 1.

^[6] Quandt, Peace Process, p. 47; Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, p. 129.

^[7] Riad, Mahmoud, The Struggle fo Peace in the Middle East, p. 60; Finkelstein, Norman, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, p. 138-140; Elaraby, Nabil in: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, UN Security Council Resolution 242, p. 28 et seq. Also see Eban, Abba, An Autobiography, p. 403. Interestingly, Eban maintains that Israel was attacked first by Egypt on the morning of 5 June 1967. Anyhow this is neither subject to scholarly debate, nor is it the Israeli government’s official position.

^[8] Quandt, Peace Process, p. 52.

^[9] Bailey, Sydney, The Making of Resolution 242, p. 145;

^[10] Korn, David, Stalemate, p. 33; Also see Quandt, William B., Peace Process, p. 55.

^[11] Elaraby, Nabil, in: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, UN Security Council Resolution 242, p. 41.

^[12] Bailey, Sydney, The Making of Resolution 242, ibid.

^[13] Bailey, Sydney, The Making of Resolution 242, ibid.

^[14] Lall, Arthur, The UN and the Middle East Crisis, 1967, p. 255.

^[15] Bailey, Sydney, The Making of Resolution 242, p. 147; Lall, Arthur, The UN and the Middle East Crisis, 1967, p. 257.

^[16] See section 3a).

^[17] Riad, Mahmoud, The Struggle fo Peace in the Middle East, p. 60.

^[18] Quandt, William B., Peace Process, p. 56.

^[19] Riad, Mahmoud, The Struggle fo Peace in the Middle East, p. 64.

^[20] Bailey, Sydney, The Making of Resolution 242, p. 157.

^[21] The French text reads “retrait des territoires occupés“. See APPENDIX.

^[22] Riad, Mahmoud, The Struggle fo Peace in the Middle East, p. 72.

^[23] Eban, An Autobiography, p. 451.

^[24] Abu Odeh, Adnan, in: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, UN Security Council Resolution 242, p. 48 et seq.

^[25] Bailey, Sydney, The Making of Resolution 242, p. 152 et seq.

^[26] Bailey, Sydney, The Making of Resolution 242, p. 153. For full text of Spanish version see APPENDIX.

^[27] See Rosenne, Shabtai, On Multi-Lingual Interpretation.

^[28] This was due to the fear of a US veto.

^[29] Riad, Mahmoud, The Struggle fo Peace in the Middle East, p. 68. Also see Caradon as quoted in Finkelstein, Norman, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, p. 146: “In our resolution we stated the principle of the ‘withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict’ and in the preamble emphasized ‘the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.’ In our view, the wording of the provisions is clear.”

^[30] Riad, Mahmoud, The Struggle fo Peace in the Middle East, p. 70.

^[31] See quotation in Bailey, Sydney, The Making of Resolution 242, p. 151.

^[32] This argument can be found in Bailey, Sydney, The Making of Resolution 242, p. 154. Bailey, referring to Caradon’s assurances given to Riad cited above, writes: “There must have been some misunderstanding about Riad’s expectation…”

^[33] Noring, Nina J. and Smith, Walter B., “The Withdrawal Clause in UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967”. The document is based on detailed records of the negotiations preceding the adoption of Resolution 242.

^[34] Neff, Donald, The Differing Interpretations of Resolution 242, Middle East International, 13 September 1991.

^[35] See Charter of the United Nations: http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/

^[36] SEE APPENDIX.

^[37] SEE APPENDIX.

^[38] See http://64.77.65.168/arableague/E2801news1.html

^[39] See articles “Sharon loses party vote on Palestinian state”, 13 May 2002 at http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/05/13/likud.vote/?related and “Still waiting for No 242”, 13 November 2002. The Guardian, , article written by Paul Foot (son of Lord Caradon). At http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4545126,00.html.