A Durable Peace (65 page)

4. T
HE
G
AZA
S
TRIP

a. Threat.
During the period 1949–1956, prior to the Suez war, numerous infiltrations and terrorist raids were mounted by Egypt from
the Gaza Strip. However, with the establishment of the United Nations Emergency Force in 1957, based in the Gaza Strip and
along the Sinai border, the situation has been quiet. Only three events of sabotage occurred in this area during the period
January 1965 to February 1967. The Strip,
under Egyptian control, provides a salient into Israel a little less than 30 miles long and from four to eight miles wide.
It has served as a training area for the Palestine Liberation Army and, despite the few incidents arising in this area of
late, it is significant to note that one of the first actions by the Israelis in the recent conflict was to seal off the area
from the Sinai.
b. Requirement.
Occupation of the Strip by Israel would reduce the hostile border by a factor of five and eliminate a source for raids and
training of the Palestine Liberation Army.

5. T
HE
N
EGEV
-S
INAI
B
ORDER

a. Threat.
This area has not presented any border problems since establishment of the United Nations Emergency Force in 1957. The demilitarized
zone around Al Awja, containing the main north-south, east-west road junction in eastern Sinai and the major water source
in the area, is the principal feature providing military advantage.

b. Requirement.
Except for an adjustment of a portion of the boundarytied to the defense of Eilat, discussed below, and retention of the
demilitarized zone around Al Awja, no need is seen for Israeli retention of occupied territory in the Sinai

6. T
HE
N
EGEV
-J
ORDAN
-A
QABA
-S
TRAIT OF
T
IRAN
A
REA

a. Threat.
There were only five incidents of sabotage in this area during the period January 1965 to February 1967. Israel’s chief concern
in this area is free access through the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba and protection of Eilat, Israel’s chief oil
port and trade link with the West African countries. Eilat, being at the apex of Israel’s southern tip, is vulnerable to interdiction
from Egyptian territory.

b. Requirement.
To provide Israel with sufficient depth to protect theport, the boundary should be established approximately 20 miles to the
west along the Wadi el-Girafi, south to its headwaters, then east to a point on the Gulf of Aqaba at approximately 39° 20’
north latitude. In the event an international guarantee for free passage of the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba is not
provided, Israel would feel compelled to occupy key terrain in order to control the entrance to the Strait.

The Security Council,

1.
Calls upon
all parties to present fighting to cease all firing and terminate all military activity immediately, no later than 12 hours
after the moment of the adoption of this decision, in the positions they now occupy

2.
Calls upon
all parties concerned to start immediately after the cease-fire the implementation of Security Council Resolution 242 (1967)
in all of its parts;

3.
Decides
that, immediately and concurrently with the cease-fire, negotiations start between the parties concerned under appropriate
auspices aimed at establishing a just and durable peace in the Middle East.

On the basis of the National Palestinian Covenant and the PLO’s political plan as approved at the 11th session (6–12 January
1973); and in the belief that a just and lasting peace in the region is impossible without restoration of the full national
rights of the Palestinian nation, and first and foremost the right of return and self-determination on the homeland’s soil
entire; and after having studied the political circumstances as they developed during the period between its previous and
its present session—the Council resolves as follows:

1. Emphasis of the PLO’s position with relation to Security Council Resolution 242, which overlooks the national rights of our nation and approaches the Palestinian issue as a refugee problem.
   

   The Council therefore rejects any action on that basis on any level of Arab and international operation, including the Geneva Conference.
   

2. The PLO is fighting by every means, and primarily by the armed struggle, to free the Palestinian land and establish a national,
   independent and fighting government over every part of the soil of Palestine to be freed. This calls for a considerable change
   in the balance of forces, for the good of our nation and its struggle.
   
3. The PLO objects to any plan for a Palestinian entity at the price of recognition, peace (
   sulb
   ), secure boundaries, surrender of national rights and deprivation of our nation’s prerogative of return and of self-determination
   in its homeland.
   
4. Any step of liberation is a link in realizing the strategy of the PLO for the establishment of a Palestinian-democratic
   State, as resolved by the previous Councils.
   
5. It is necessary to struggle alongside the national Jordanian forces for the establishment of a national Jordanian-Palestinian
   front, with the purpose of forming a national democratic government in Jordan that will safeguard solidarity.
   
6. The PLO struggles to unify the efforts of the two nations and all the forces of the Arab liberation movements which subscribe
   to this plan.
   
7. In view of this plan, the PLO fights to strengthen national unity and raise it to a height where it will be capable of
   fulfilling its national missions.
   
8. After its establishment, the national Palestinian government will fight for the unity of the countries of confrontation,
   to complete the liberation of all the Palestinian land and as a step in the direction of overall Arab unity.
   
9. The PLO fights to strengthen its solidarity with the Socialist countries and the forces of liberation and progress, to
   frustrate all the Zionist reactionary and imperialist plans.
   
10. On the basis of this plan, the leadership of the revolution will fomulate tactics that will enable these objectives to
    be realized.
    

1.
Letters from Jill W. Rhodes (Jan. 31, 1991), Marion Hitch (Feb. 11, 1991), and Judy T. Fulp (Jan. 20, 1942).

2.
Mark Twain,
The Innocents Abroad
(New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1984),
pp. 385
,
398
.

1.
David Fromkin,
A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East 1914–1922
(London: Andre Deutsch, 1989),
p. 403
.

2.
See J.A.S. Grenville,
The Major International Treaties 1914–1945: A History and Guide with Texts
(London: Methuen, 1974),
pp. 48
–
49
.

3.
Bernard Lewis, “The Palestinians and the PLO, a Historical Approach,”
Commentary
(Jan. 1975),
p. 32
.

4.
Bernard Lewis,
Semites and Anti-Semites
(New York: Norton, 1986),
p. 169
.

5.
Ibid.

1.
Anna Nordau,
Memoirs
(Jerusalem: Mitzpah, 1930),
p. 159
.

2.
Alkalai’s published calls for the establishment of Jewish colonies in the Land of Israel began to appear in 1834 in Semlin,
the capital of Serbia, where he served as rabbi. One of his admirers was a fellow Semlinernamed Simon Loeb Herzl, grandfather
of the founder of Zionism. Kalischer’s
Seeking Zion
(1862) was more widely read than Alkalai’s writings, and it influenced not only the religious world but Hess’s
Rome and Jerusalem
(1862), which quotes from it. Hess’s book became a classic statement of Jewish nationalism, which is all the more astonishing
because it was made by a prominent member of Germany’s cosmopolitan intelligentsia.

Translated excerpts from all three authors can be found in Arthur Hertzberg, ed.,
The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader
(New York: Atheneum, 1984),
pp. 102
–
38
.

3.
Marvin Lowenthal, ed.,
The Diaries of Theodor Ilerzl
(New York: Dial, 1956),
pp. 267
–
73
,
339
.

4.
Encyclopaedia Judaica
(Jerusalem: Keter, 1971), vol. 14,
pp. 352
–
53
.

5.
Encyclopaedia Judaica,
vol. 9, p. 1312.

6.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Emile,
trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic, 1979),
p. 304
.

7.
That millions of enslaved people were to be considered “free” because their oppressors were of their own kind was the fantastic
creed foisted on a credulous Western intelligentsia during the second half of the twentieth century by an assortment of Communist
and Third World dictators. They distorted beyond recognition Isaiah Berlin’s ideas of positive and negative freedom (developed
in his essay “Two Concepts of Liberty”), effectively leaving their subjects with no freedom of any kind. See
Four Essays on Liberty
(New York: Oxford, 1969).

8.
Byron quoted
in Encyclopaedia Judaica,
vol. 4, p. 1549.

9.
Adams quoted in Nahum Sokolow,
A History of Zionism 1600–1918
(Bombay: Longmans, Green and Co., 1919), vol. 1,
p. 59
.

10.
Napoleon quoted in Peter Grose,
Israel in the Mind of America
(New York: Knopf, 1983),
p. 8
.

11.
Shaftesbury quoted in Sokolow,
History of Zionism,
p. 123
.

12.
Palmerston quoted in Leonard Stein,
The Balfour Declaration
(London: Vallentine, Mitchell and Co., 1961),
pp. 6
–
7
.

13.
A.W.C. Crawford, Lord Lindsay,
Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land
(London: Henry G. Bohn, 1858),
p. xi
.

14.
George Gawler,
Tranquillisation of Syria and the East
(London: T. and W Boone, 1845),
p. 6
.

15.
Descriptions of the Zionist sympathies of prominent Britons and Americans can be found in Sokolow,
History of Zionism.
Also of interest are Fromkin,
Peace to End All Peace,
pp. 268
–
70
; Grose,
Israel in the Mind of America;
and Samuel Katz,
Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine
(New York: Bantam, 1973),
pp. 100
–
106
.