Address by Yasser Arafat Before the General Assembly
(November 13, 1974)
In the name of the people of Palestine and the leader of its national struggle, the Palestine
Liberation Organization, I take this opportunity to extend to you,
Mr. President, my warmest congratulations on your election to the presidency
of the twenty-ninth session of the United
Nations General Assembly. We have, of course, long known you to
be a sincere and devoted defender of the cause of freedom, justice and
peace. We have known you also to be in the vanguard of the freedom fighters
in their heroic Algerian war of national liberation. Today Algeria has attained a distinguished position in the world community and has
assumed its responsibilities both in the national and in the international
fields, thus earning the support and esteem of all the countries of
the world.
I also avail myself of this opportunity to extend my sincerest appreciation
to Mr. Kurt Waldheim, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, for
the great efforts he has made and is still making to enable us to assume
our responsibilities in the smoothest possible way.
In the name of the people of Palestine I take this opportunity to congratulate
three States that have recently been admitted to membership in the United
Nations after obtaining their national independence: Guinea-Bissau,
Bangladesh and Grenada. I extend our best wishes to the leaders of those
Member States and wish them progress and success.
Mr. President, I thank you for having invited the PLO to participate
in this plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly. I am
grateful to all those representatives of States of the United Nations
who contributed to the decision to introduce the question of Palestine
as a separate item on the agenda of this Assembly. That decision made
possible the Assembly's resolution inviting us to address it on the
question of Palestine.
This is a very important occasion. The question of Palestine is being
re-examined by the United Nations,
and we consider that step to be a victory for the world Organization
as much as a victory for the cause of our people. It indicates anew
that the United Nations of today is not the United Nations of the past,
just as today's world is not yesterday's world. Today's United Nations
represents 138 nations, a number that more clearly reflects the will
of the international community. Thus today's United Nations is more
nearly capable of implementing the principles embodied in its Charter
and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as being more
truly empowered to support causes of peace and justice.
Our peoples are now beginning to feel that change. Along with them,
the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America also feel the change.
As a result, the United Nations acquires greater esteem both in our
people's view and in the view of other peoples. Our hope is thereby
strengthened that the United Nations can contribute actively to the
pursuit and triumph of the causes of peace, justice, freedom and independence.
Our resolve to build a new world is fortified -- a world free of colonialism,
imperialism, neo-colonialism and racism in each of its instances, including
zionism.
Our world aspires to peace, justice, equality and freedom. It wishes
that oppressed nations, bent under the weight of imperialism, might
gain their freedom and their right to self-determination. It hopes to
place the relations between nations on a basis of equality, peaceful
coexistence, mutual respect for each other's internal affairs, secure
national sovereignty, independence and territorial unity on the basis
of justice and mutual benefit. This world resolves that the economic
ties binding it together should be grounded in justice, parity and mutual
interest. It aspires finally to direct its human resources against the
scourge of poverty, famine, disease and natural calamity, toward the
development of productive scientific and technical capabilities to enhance
human wealth -- all this in the hope of reducing the disparity between
the developing and the developed countries. But all such aspirations
cannot be realized in a world that is at present ruled over by tension,
injustice, oppression, racial discrimination and exploitation, a world
also threatened with unending economic disasters, war and crisis.
Great numbers of peoples, including those of Zimbabwe, Namibia, South
Africa and Palestine, among many others, are still victims of oppression
and violence. Their areas of the world are gripped by armed struggles
provoked by imperialism and racial discrimination, both merely forms
of aggression and terror. Those are instances of oppressed peoples compelled
by intolerable circumstances into confrontation with such oppression.
But wherever that confrontation occurs it is legitimate and just.
It is imperative that the international community should support these
peoples in their struggles, in the furtherance of their rightful causes
and the attainment of their right to self-determination.
In Indo-China, the peoples are still exposed to aggression. They remain
subjected to conspiracies preventing them from attaining peace and realizing
their goals. Although peoples everywhere have welcomed the agreements
on peace reached in Laos and South Viet Nam, no one can say that genuine
peace has been achieved, nor that those forces responsible in the first
place for aggression have now desisted from their attacks on Viet Nam.
The same can be said of the present military aggression against the
people of Cambodia. It is therefore incumbent on the international community
to support these oppressed peoples, and also to condemn the oppressors
for their designs against peace. Moreover, despite the positive stand
taken by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with regard to a
peaceful, just solution of the Korean question, there is as yet no settlement
of that question.
A few months ago the problem of Cyprus erupted violently before us.
All peoples everywhere shared in the suffering of the Cypriots. We ask
that the United Nations continue its efforts to reach a just solution
in Cyprus, thereby sparing the Cypriots further war and ensuring peace
and independence for them instead. Undoubtedly, however, consideration
of the question of Cyprus belongs within that of Middle Eastern problems
as well as of Mediterranean problems.
In their efforts to replace an outmoded but still dominant world economic
system with a new, more logically rational one, the countries of Asia,
Africa and Latin America must nevertheless face implacable attacks on
these efforts. These countries have expressed their views at the sixth
special session of the General Assembly on raw materials and development.
Thus the plundering, the exploitation, the siphoning-off of the wealth
of impoverished peoples must be terminated forthwith. There must be
no deterring of these peoples' efforts to develop and control their
wealth. Furthermore, there is a grave necessity for arriving at fair
prices for raw materials from these countries.
In addition, these countries continue to be hampered
in the attainment of their primary objectives formulated at the Third
United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea at Caracas, at the World
Population Conference at Bucharest and at the World Food Conference
in Rome.
The United Nations should therefore bend every effort
to achieve a radical alteration of the world economic system, making
it possible for developing countries to develop. The United Nations
must shoulder the responsibility for fighting inflation, now borne most
heavily by the developing countries, especially the oil-producing countries.
The United Nations must firmly condemn any threats made against these
countries simply because they demand their just rights.
The worldwide armaments race shows no sign of abating. As a consequence,
the entire world is threatened with the dispersion of its wealth and
the utter waste of its energies. Armed violence is made more likely
everywhere. We expect the United Nations to devote itself single-mindedly
to curbing the unlimited acquisition of arms; to preventing even the
possibility of nuclear destruction; to reducing the vast sums spent
on military technology; to converting expenditure on war into projects
for development, for increasing production, and for benefiting common
humanity. And still, the highest tension exists in our part of the world.
There the Zionist entity clings tenaciously
to occupied Arab territory; zionism persists, in its aggressions against us and our territory. New military
preparations are feverishly being made. These anticipate another, fifth
war of aggression to be launched against us. Such signs bear the closest
possible watching, since there is a grave likelihood that this war would
forebode nuclear destruction and cataclysmic annihilation.
The world is in need of tremendous efforts if its aspirations to peace,
freedom justice, equality and development are to be realized if its
struggle is to be victorious over colonialism, imperialism, neo-colonialism
and racism in all its forms, including zionism. Only by such efforts
can actual form be given to the aspirations of all peoples, including
the aspirations of peoples whose States oppose such efforts. It is this
road that leads to the fulfillment of those principles emphasized by
the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Were the status quo simply to be maintained, however, the world would
instead be exposed to prolonged armed conflict, in addition to economic.
human and natural calamity.
Mr. President,
Despite abiding world crises, despite even the gloomy powers of backwardness
and disastrous wrong, we live in a time of glorious change. An old world
order is crumbling before our eyes, as imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism
and racism, the chief form of which is zionism, ineluctably perish.
We are privileged to be able to witness a great wave of history bearing
peoples forward into a new world that they have created. In that world
just causes will triumph. Of that we are confident.
The question of Palestine belongs in this perspective of emergence
and struggle. Palestine is crucial amongst those just causes fought
for unstintingly by masses laboring under imperialism and aggression.
It cannot be, and is not, lost on me today, as I stand here before the
General Assembly, that if I have been given the opportunity to address
the General Assembly, so too must the opportunity be given to all liberation
movements fighting against racism and imperialism. In their names, in
the name of every human being struggling for freedom and self-determination,
I call upon the General Assembly urgently to give their just causes
the same full attention the General Assembly has so rightly given to
our cause. Such recognitions once made, there will be a secure foundation
thereafter for the preservation of universal peace. For only with such
peace will a new world order endure in which peoples can live free of
oppression fear, terror and the suppression of their rights. As I said
earlier, this is the true perspective in which to set the question of
Palestine. I shall now do so for the General Assembly, keeping firmly
in mind both the perspective and the goal of a coming world order.
Even as today we address the General Assembly from what is before all
else an international rostrum, we are also expressing our faith in political
and diplomatic struggle as complements, as enhancements of our armed
struggle. Furthermore, we express our appreciation of the role the United
Nations is capable of playing in settling problems of international
scope. But this capability, I said a moment ago, became real only once
the United Nations had accommodated itself to the living actuality of
aspiring peoples, towards which an Organization of so truly international
a dimension owes unique obligations.
In addressing the General Assembly today, our people proclaims its
faith in the future, unencumbered either by past tragedies or present
limitations. If, as we discuss the present, we enlist the past in our
service, we do so only to light up our journey into the future alongside
other movements of national liberation. If we return now to the historical
roots of our cause we do so because present at this very moment in our
midst are those who, while they occupy our homes, as their cattle graze
in our pastures, and as their hands pluck the fruit of our trees, claim
at the same time that we are disembodied spirits, fictions without presence,
without traditions or future. We speak of our roots also because until
recently some people have regarded -- and continued to regard -- our
problem as merely a problem of refugees. They have portrayed the Middle
East question as little more than a border dispute between the Arab
States and the Zionist entity. They have imagined that our people claims
rights not rightfully its own and fights neither with logic nor valid
motive, with a simple wish only to disturb the peace and to terrorize
wantonly. For there are amongst you -- and here I refer to the United
States of America and others like it -- those who supply our enemy freely
with planes and bombs and with every variety of murderous weapon. They
take hostile positions against us, deliberately distorting the true
essence of the problem. All this is done not only at our expense, but
at the expense of the American people, and of the friendship we continue
to hope can be cemented between us and this great people, whose history
of struggle for the sake of freedom we honor and salute.
I cannot now forgo this opportunity to appeal from this rostrum directly
to the American people, asking it to give its support to our heroic
and fighting people. I ask it whole-heartedly to endorse right and justice,
to recall George Washington to mind, heroic Washington whose purpose
was his nation's freedom and independence, Abraham Lincoln, champion
of the destitute and the wretched, and also Woodrow Wilson, whose doctrine
of Fourteen Points remains subscribed to and venerated by our people.
I ask the American people whether the demonstrations of hostility and
enmity taking place outside this great hall reflect the true intent
of America's will. What crime, I ask you plainly, has our people committed
against the American people? Why do you fight us so? Does such unwarranted
belligerence really serve your interests? Does it serve the interests
of the American masses? No, definitely not. I can only hope that the
American people will remember that their friendship with the whole Arab
nation is too great, too abiding and too rewarding for any such demonstrations
to harm it.
In any event, as our discussion of the question of Palestine focuses
upon historical roots, we do so because we believe that any question
now exercising the world's concern must be viewed radically, in the
true root sense of that word. If a real solution is ever to be grasped.
We propose this radical approach as an antidote to an approach to international
issues that obscures historical origins behind ignorance, denial, and
a slavish obeisance to the present.
Mr. President,
The roots of the Palestinian question reach back into the closing years
of the nineteenth century, in other words, to that period we call the
era of colonialism and settlement as we know it today. This is precisely
the period during which zionism as a scheme was born; its aim was the
conquest of Palestine by European immigrants, just as settlers colonized,
and indeed raided, most of Africa. This is the period during which,
pouring forth out of the west, colonialism spread into the furthest
reaches of Africa, Asia and Latin America, building colonies, everywhere
cruelly exploiting, oppressing, plundering the peoples of those three
continents. This period persists into the present. Marked evidence of
its totally reprehensible presence can be readily perceived in the racism
practiced both in South Africa and in Palestine.
Just as colonialism and its demagogues dignified their conquests, their
plunder and limitless attacks upon the natives of Africa with appeals
to a "civilizing and modernizing" mission, so too did waves
of Zionist immigrants disguise their purposes as they conquered Palestine.
Just as colonialism as a system and colonialists as its instrument used
religion, color, race and language to justify the African's exploitation
and his cruel subjugation by terror and discrimination, so too were
these methods employed as Palestine was usurped and its people hounded
from their national homeland.
Just as colonialism heedlessly used the wretched, the poor, the exploited
as mere inert matter with which to build and to carry out settler colonialism,
so too were destitute, oppressed European Jews employed on behalf of
world imperialism and of the Zionist leaders. European Jews were transformed
into the instruments of aggression -- they became the elements of settler
colonialism intimately allied to racial discrimination.
Zionist theology was utilized against our Palestinian people: the purpose
was not only the establishment of Western-style settler colonialism
but also the severing of Jews from their various homelands and subsequently
their estrangement from their nations. Zionism is an ideology that is
imperialist, colonialist, racist; it is profoundly reactionary and discriminatory;
it is united with anti-Semitism in its retrograde tenets and is, when
all is said and done, another side of the same base coin. For when what
is proposed is that adherents of the Jewish faith, regardless of their
national residence, should neither owe allegiance to their national
residence nor live on equal footing with its other, non-Jewish citizens
-- when that is proposed we hear anti-Semitism being proposed. When
it is proposed that the only solution for the Jewish problem is that
Jews must alienate themselves from communities or nations of which they
have been a historical part, when it is proposed that Jews solve the
Jewish problem by immigrating to and forcibly settling the land of another
people -- when this occurs, exactly the same position is being advocated
as the one urged by anti-Semites against Jews.
Thus, for instance, we can understand the close connection between
Cecil Rhodes, who promoted settler colonialism in South East Africa,
and Theodor Herzl, who
had settler colonialist designs upon Palestine. Having received a certificate
of good settler colonialist conduct from Rhodes, Herzl then turned around
and presented this certificate to the British Government, hoping thus
to secure a formal resolution supporting Zionist policy. In exchange,
the Zionists promised Britain an imperialist base on Palestinian soil
so that imperial interests could be safeguarded at one of their chief
strategic points.
So the Zionist movement allied itself directly with world colonialism
in a common raid on our land. Allow me now to present a selection of
historical truths about this alliance:
The Jewish invasion of Palestine began in 1881. Before the first large
wave of immigrants started arriving, Palestine had a population of half
a million; most of the population was either Muslim or Christian, and
only 20,000 were Jewish. Every segment of the population enjoyed the
religious tolerance characteristic of our civilization.
Palestine was then a verdant land, inhabited mainly by an Arab people
in the course of building its life and dynamically enriching its indigenous
culture.
Between 1882 and 1917 the Zionist movement settled approximately 50,000
European Jews in our homeland. To do that it resorted to trickery and
deceit in order to implant them in our midst. Its success in getting
Britain to issue the Balfour Declaration once again demonstrated the
alliance between zionism and imperialism. Furthermore, by promising
to the Zionist movement what was not its to give, Britain showed how
oppressive was the rule of imperialism. As it was constituted then,
the League of Nations abandoned our Arab people, and Wilson's pledges
and promises came to naught. In the guise of a Mandate, British imperialism
was cruelly and directly imposed upon us. The Mandate issued by the
League of Nations was to enable the Zionist invaders to consolidate
their gains in our homeland.
Over a period of 30 years after the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist
movement, together with its colonial ally, succeeded in bringing about
the immigration of more European Jews and the usurpation of the lands
of the Arabs of Palestine. Thus, in 1947 the Jewish population of Palestine
was approximately 600,000, owning less than 6 per cent of the fertile
lands of Palestine, while the Arab population of Palestine numbered
approximately 1,250,000.
As a result of the collusion between the Mandatory Power and the Zionist
movement and with the support of some countries, this General Assembly
early in its history approved a recommendation to partition our Palestinian
homeland. This took place in an atmosphere poisoned with questionable
actions and strong pressure. The General Assembly partitioned what it
had no right to divide -- an indivisible homeland. When we rejected
that decision, our position corresponded to that of the natural mother
who refused to permit King Solomon to cut her son in two when the unnatural
mother claimed the child for herself and agreed to his dismemberment.
Furthermore, even though the partition resolution granted the colonialist
settlers 54 per cent of the land of Palestine, their dissatisfaction
with the decision prompted them to wage a war of terror against the
civilian Arab population. They occupied 81 per cent of the total area
of Palestine, uprooting a million Arabs. Thus, they occupied 524 Arab
towns and villages, of which they destroyed 385, completely obliterating
them in the process. Having done so, they built their own settlements
and colonies on the ruins of our farms and our groves. The roots of
the Palestine question lie here. Its causes do not stem from any conflict
between two religions or two nationalisms. Neither is it a border conflict
between neighboring States. It is the cause of people deprived of its
homeland, dispersed and uprooted, and living mostly in exile and in
refugee camps.
With support from imperialist and colonialist Powers, the Zionist entity
managed to get itself accepted as a Member of the United Nations. It
further succeeded in getting the Palestine question deleted from the
agenda of the United Nations and in deceiving world public opinion by
presenting our cause as a problem of refugees in need either of charity
from do-gooders, or settlement in a land not theirs.
Not satisfied with all this, the racist entity, founded on the imperialist-colonialist
concept, turned itself into a base of imperialism and into an arsenal
of weapons. This enabled it to assume its role of subjugating the Arab
people and of committing aggression against them, in order to satisfy
its ambitions for further expansion on Palestinian and other Arab lands.
In addition to the many instances of aggression committed by this entity
against the Arab States, it has launched two large-scale wars, in 1956
and 1967, thus endangering world peace and security.
As a result of Zionist aggression in June
1967, the enemy occupied Egyptian Sinai as far as the Suez Canal.
The enemy occupied Syria's Golan Heights, in addition to all Palestinian
land west of the Jordan. All these developments have led to the creation
in our area of what has come to be known as the "Middle East problem".
The situation has been rendered more serious by the enemy's persistence
in maintaining its unlawful occupation and in further consolidating
it, thus establishing a beachhead for world imperialism's thrust against
our Arab nation. All Security Council decisions and appeals to world
public opinion for withdrawal from the lands occupied in June 1967 have
been ignored. Despite all the peaceful efforts on the international
level, the enemy has not been deterred from its expansionist policy.
The only alternative open before our Arab nations, chiefly Egypt and
Syria, was to expend exhaustive efforts in preparing forcefully to resist
that barbarous armed invasion -- and this in order to liberate Arab
lands and to restore the rights of the Palestinian people, after all
other peaceful means had failed.
Under these circumstances, the fourth war broke out in October
1973, bringing home to the Zionist enemy the bankruptcy of its policy
of occupation, expansion and its reliance on the concept of military
might. Despite all this, the leaders of the Zionist entity are far from
having learned any lesson from their experience. They are making preparations
for the fifth war, resorting once more to the language of military superiority,
aggression, terrorism, subjugation and, finally, always to war in their
dealings with the Arabs.
Mr. President,
It pains our people greatly to witness the propagation of the myth
that its homeland was a desert until it was made to bloom by the toil
of foreign settlers, that it was a land without a people, and that the
colonialist entity caused no harm to any human being. No: such lies
must be exposed from this rostrum, for the world must know that Palestine
was the cradle of the most ancient cultures and civilizations. Its Arab
people were engaged in farming and building, spreading culture throughout
the land for thousands of years, setting an example in the practice
of freedom of worship, acting as faithful guardians of the holy places
of all religions. As a son of Jerusalem,
I treasure for myself and my people beautiful memories and vivid images
of the religious brotherhood that was the hallmark of our Holy City
before it succumbed to catastrophe. Our people continued to pursue this
enlightened policy until the establishment of the State of Israel and
their dispersion. This did not deter our people from pursuing their
humanitarian role on Palestinian soil. Nor will they permit their land
to become a launching pad for aggression or a racist camp predicated
on the destruction of civilization, cultures, progress and peace. Our
people cannot but maintain the heritage of their ancestors in resisting
the invaders, in assuming the privileged task of defending their native
land, their Arab nationhood, their culture and civilization, and in
safeguarding the cradle of monotheistic religions.
By contrast, we need only mention briefly some Israeli stands: its
support of the Secret Army Organization in Algeria, its bolstering of
the settler-colonialists in Africa -- whether in the Congo, Angola,
Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Azania or South Africa -- and its backing of South
Viet Nam against the Vietnamese revolution. In addition, one can mention
Israel's continuing support of imperialists and racists everywhere,
its obstructionist stand in the Committee of Twenty-four, its refusal
to cast its vote in support of independence for the African States,
and its opposition to the demands of many Asian, African and Latin American
nations, and several other States in the conferences on raw materials,
population, the law of the sea, and food. All these facts offer further
proof of the character of the enemy that has usurped our land. They
justify the honorable struggle we are waging against it. As we defend
a vision of the future, our enemy upholds the myths of the past.
The enemy we face has a long record of hostility even towards the Jews
themselves, for there is within the Zionist entity a built-in racism
against Oriental Jews. While we were vociferously condemning the massacres
of Jews under Nazi rule,
Zionist leadership appeared more interested at that time in exploiting
them as best it could in order to realize its goal of immigration into
Palestine.
If the immigration of Jews to Palestine had had as its objective the
goal of enabling them to live side by side with us, enjoying the same
rights and assuming the same duties, we would have opened our doors
to them, as far as our homeland's capacity for absorption permitted.
Such was the case with the thousands of Armenians and Circassians who
still live among us in equality as brethren and citizens. But that the
goal of this immigration should be to usurp our homeland, disperse our
people, and turn us into second-class citizens -- this is what no one
can conceivably demand that we acquiesce in or submit to. Therefore,
since its inception, our evolution has not been motivated by racial
or religious factors. Its target has never been the Jew, as a person,
but racist zionism and undisguised aggression. In this sense, ours is
also a revolution for the Jew, as a human being, as well. We are struggling
so that Jews, Christians and Muslims may live in equality, enjoying
the same rights and assuming the same duties, free from racial or religious
discrimination.
We do distinguish between Judaism and zionism. While we maintain our
opposition to the colonialist Zionist movement, we respect the Jewish
faith. Today, almost one century after the rise of the Zionist movement,
we wish to warn of its increasing danger to the Jews of the world, to
our Arab people and to world peace and security. For zionism encourages
the Jew to emigrate out of his homeland and grants him an artificially-created
nationality. The Zionists proceed with their terrorist activities even
though these have proved ineffective. The phenomenon of constant emigration
from Israel, which is bound to grow as the bastions of colonialism and
racism in the world fall, is an example of the inevitability of the
failure of such activities.
We urge the people and Governments of the world to stand firm against
Zionist attempts at encouraging world Jewry to emigrate from their countries
and to usurp our land. We urge them as well firmly to oppose any discrimination
against any human being as to religion, race, or color.
Why should our Arab Palestinian people pay the price of such discrimination
in the world? Why should our people be responsible for the problems
of Jewish immigration, if such problems exist in the minds of some people?
Why do not the supporters of these problems open their own countries,
which can absorb and help these immigrants?
Mr. President,
Those who call us terrorists wish to prevent world public opinion from
discovering the truth about us and from seeing the justice on our faces.
They seek to hide the terrorism and tyranny of their acts, and our own
posture of self-defense.
The difference between the revolutionary and the terrorist lies in
the reason for which each fights. For whoever stands by a just cause
and fights for the freedom and liberation of his land from the invaders,
the settlers and the colonialists cannot possibly be called terrorist,
otherwise the American people in their struggle for liberation from
the British colonialists would have been terrorists; the European resistance
against the Nazis would be terrorism, the struggle of the Asian, African
and Latin American peoples would also be terrorism, and many of you
who are in this Assembly hall were considered terrorists. This is actually
a just and proper struggle consecrated by the United Nations Charter
and by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As to those who fight
against the just causes, those who wage war to occupy, colonize and
oppress other people, those are the terrorists. Those are the people
whose actions should be condemned, who should be called war criminals:
for the justice of the cause determines the right to struggle.
Zionist terrorism which was waged against the Palestinian people to
evict it from its country and usurp its land is registered in your official
documents. Thousands of our people were assassinated in their villages
and towns; tens of thousands of others were forced at gunpoint to leave
their homes and the lands of their fathers. Time and time again our
children, women and aged were evicted and had to wander in the deserts
and climb mountains without any food or water. No one in 1948 witnessed
the catastrophe that befell the inhabitants of hundreds of villages
and towns -- in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Lydda, Ramle and Galilee -- no one
who has been a witness to that catastrophe will ever forget the experience,
even though the mass black-out has succeeded in hiding these horrors
as it has hidden the traces of 385 Palestinian villages and towns destroyed
at the time and erased from the map. The destruction of 19,000 houses
during the past seven years, which is equivalent to the complete destruction
of 200 more Palestinian villages, and the great number of maimed as
a result of the treatment they were subjected to in Israeli prisons
cannot be hidden by any black-out.
Their terrorism fed on hatred and this hatred was even directed against
the olive tree in my country, which has been a proud symbol and which
reminded them of the indigenous inhabitants of the land, a living reminder
that the land is Palestinian. Thus they sought to destroy it. How can
one describe the statement by Golda Meir, which expressed her disquiet
about "the Palestinian children born every day"? They see
in the Palestinian child, in the Palestinian tree, an enemy that should
be exterminated. For tens of years Zionists have been harassing our
people's cultural, political, social and artistic leaders, terrorizing
them and assassinating them. They have stolen our cultural heritage,
our popular folklore and have claimed it as theirs. Their terrorism
even reached our sacred places in our beloved and peaceful Jerusalem.
They have endeavored to de-Arabize it and make it lose its Muslim and
Christian character by evicting its inhabitants and annexing it.
I must mention the fire of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the disfiguration
of many of the monuments which are both historic and religious in character.
Jerusalem, with its religious history and its spiritual values, bears
witness to the future. It is proof of our eternal presence, of our civilization,
of our human values. It is therefore not surprising that under its sky
the three religions were born and that under that sky these three religions
shine in order to enlighten mankind so that it might express the tribulations
and hopes of humanity, and that it might mark out the road of the future
with its hopes.
Mr. President,
The small number of Palestinian Arabs who were not uprooted by the
Zionists in 1948 are at present refugees in their own homeland. Israeli
law treats them as second-class citizens -- and even as third-class
citizens since Oriental Jews are second-class citizens -- and they have
been subject to all forms of racial discrimination and terrorism after
confiscation of their land and property. They have been victims of bloody
massacres such as that of Kfar Kassim; they have been expelled from
their villages and denied the right to return, as in the case of the
inhabitants of Ikrit and Kfar Birim. For 26 years, our population has
been living under martial law and was denied freedom of movement without
prior permission from the Israeli military governor, this at a time
when an Israeli law was promulgated granting citizenship to any Jew
anywhere who wanted to emigrate to our homeland. Moreover, another Israeli
law stipulated that Palestinians who were not present in their villages
or towns at the time of the occupation were not entitled to Israeli
citizenship.
The record of Israeli rulers is replete with acts of terror perpetrated
on those of our people who remained under occupation in Sinai and the
Golan Heights. The criminal bombardment of the Bahr-al-Bakar School
and the Abou Zaabal factory are but two such unforgettable acts of terrorism.
The total destruction of the Syrian city of Quneitra is yet another
tangible instance of systematic terrorism. If a record of Zionist terrorism
in South Lebanon were to be compiled, the enormity of its acts would
shock even the most hardened: piracy, bombardments, scorched-earth policy,
destruction of hundreds of homes, eviction of civilians and the kidnapping
of Lebanese citizens. This clearly constitutes a violation of Lebanese
sovereignty and is in preparation for the diversion of the Litani River
waters.
Need one remind this Assembly of the numerous resolutions adopted by
it condemning Israeli aggressions committed against Arab countries,
Israeli violations of human rights and the articles of the Geneva Conventions,
as well as the resolutions pertaining to the annexation of the city
of Jerusalem and its restoration to its former status?
The only description for these acts is that they are acts of barbarism
and terrorism. And yet, the Zionist racists and colonialists have the
temerity to describe the just struggle of our people as terror. Could
there be a more flagrant distortion of truth than this? We ask those
who usurped our land, who are committing murderous acts of terrorism
against our people and are practicing racial discrimination more extensively
than the racists of South Africa, we ask them to keep in mind the General
Assembly resolution that called for the one-year suspension of the membership
of the Government of South Africa from the United Nations. Such is the
inevitable fate of every racist country that adopts the law of the jungle,
usurps the homeland of others and persists in oppression.
Mr. President,
For the past 30 years, our people have had to struggle against British
occupation and Zionist invasion, both of which had one intention, namely,
the usurpation of our land. Six major revolts and tens of popular uprisings
were staged to foil these attempts, so that our homeland might remain
ours. Over 30,000 martyrs, the equivalent in comparative terms of 6
million Americans, died in the process. When the majority of the Palestinian
people was uprooted from its homeland in 1948, the Palestinian struggle
for self-determination continued under the most difficult conditions.
We tried every possible means to continue our political struggle to
attain our national rights, but to no avail. Meanwhile, we had to struggle
for sheer existence. Even in exile we educated our children. This was
all a part of trying to survive.
The Palestinian people produced thousands of physicians, lawyers, teachers
and scientists who actively participated in the development of the Arab
countries bordering on their usurped homeland. They utilized their income
to assist the young and aged amongst their people who remained in the
refugee camps. They educated their younger sisters and brothers, supported
their parents and cared for their children. All along, the Palestinian
dreamt of return. Neither the Palestinian's allegiance to Palestine
nor his determination to return waned; nothing could persuade him to
relinquish his Palestinian identity or to forsake his homeland. The
passage of time did not make him forget, as some hoped he would. When
our people lost faith in the international community, which persisted
in ignoring its rights, and when it became obvious that the Palestinians
would not recuperate one inch of Palestine through exclusively political
means, our people had no choice but to resort to armed struggle. Into
that struggle it poured its material and human resources. We bravely
faced the most vicious acts of Israeli terrorism, which were aimed at
diverting our struggle and arresting it.
In the past 10 years of our struggle, thousands of martyrs and twice
as many wounded, maimed and imprisoned were offered in sacrifice, all
in an effort to resist the imminent threat of liquidation, to regain
our right to self-determination and our undisputed right to return to
our homeland. With the utmost dignity and the most admirable revolutionary
spirit, our Palestinian people has not lost its spirit in Israeli prisons
and concentration camps or when faced with all forms of harassment and
intimidation. It struggles for sheer existence and it continues to strive
to preserve the Arab character of its land. Thus it resists oppression,
tyranny and terrorism in their ugliest forms.
It is through our popular armed struggle that our political leadership
and our national institutions finally crystallized and a national liberation
movement, comprising all the Palestinian factions, organizations and
capabilities, materialized in the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Through our militant Palestine national liberation movement, our people's
struggle matured and grew enough to accommodate political and social
struggle in addition to armed struggle. The PLO was a major factor in
creating a new Palestinian individual, qualified to shape the future
of our Palestine, not merely content with mobilizing the Palestinians
for the challenges of the present.
The PLO can be proud of having a large number of cultural and educational
activities, even while engaged in armed struggle, and at a time when
it faced increasingly vicious blows of Zionist terrorism. We established
institutes for scientific research, agricultural development and social
welfare, as well as centers for the revival of our cultural heritage
and the preservation of our folklore. Many Palestinian poets, artists
and writers have enriched Arab culture in particular and world culture
generally. Their profoundly humane works have won the admiration of
all those familiar with them. In contrast to that, our enemy has been
systematically destroying our culture and disseminating racist, imperialist
ideologies; in short, everything that impedes progress, justice, democracy
and peace.
The PLO has earned its legitimacy because of the sacrifice inherent
in its pioneering role, and also because of its dedicated leadership
of the struggle. It has also been granted this legitimacy by the Palestinian
masses, which in harmony with it have chosen it to lead the struggle
according to its directives. The PLO has also gained its legitimacy
by representing every faction, union or group as well as every Palestinian
talent, either in the National Council or in people's institutions.
This legitimacy was further strengthened by the support of the entire
Arab nation, and it was consecrated during the last Arab Summit Conference,
which reiterated the right of the PLO, in its capacity as the sole representative
of the Palestinian people, to establish an independent national State
on all liberated Palestinian territory.
Moreover, the legitimacy of the PLO was intensified as a result of
fraternal support given by other liberation movements and by friendly,
like-minded nations that stood by our side, encouraging and aiding us
in our struggle to secure our national rights.
Here I must also warmly convey the gratitude of our revolutionary fighters
and that of our people to the non-aligned countries, the socialist countries,
the Islamic countries, the African countries and friendly European countries,
as well as all our other friends in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Mr. President,
The PLO represents the Palestinian people, legitimately and uniquely.
Because of this, the PLO expresses the wishes and hopes of its people.
Because of this, too, it brings these very wishes and hopes before you,
urging you not to shirk the momentous historic responsibility towards
our just cause.
For many years now our people has been exposed to the ravages of war,
destruction and dispersion. It has paid in the blood of its sons that
which cannot ever be compensated. It has borne the burdens of occupation,
dispersion, eviction and terror more uninterruptedly than any other
people. And yet all this has made our people neither vindictive nor
vengeful. Nor has it caused us to resort to the racism of our enemies.
Nor have we lost the true method by which friend and foe are distinguished.
For we deplore all those crimes committed against the Jews; we also
deplore all the real discrimination suffered by them because of their
faith.
Mr. President,
I am a rebel and freedom is my cause. I know well that many of you
present here today once stood in exactly the same resistance position
as I now occupy and from which I must fight. You once had to convert
dreams into reality by your struggle. Therefore you must now share my
dream. I think this is exactly why I can ask you now to help, as together
we bring out our dream into a bright reality, our common dream for a
peaceful future in Palestine's sacred land.
As he stood in an Israeli military court, the Jewish revolutionary,
Ahud Adif, said: "I am no terrorist; I believe that a democratic
State should exist on this land." Adif now languishes in a Zionist
prison among his co-believers. To him and his colleagues I send my heartfelt
good wishes.
And before those same courts there stands today a brave prince of the
church, Bishop Capucci. Lifting his fingers to form the same victory
sign used by our freedom-fighters, he said: "What I have done,
I have done that all men may live on this land of peace in peace."
This princely priest will doubtless share Adif's grim fate. To him we
send our salutations and greetings.
Why therefore should I not dream and hope? For is not revolution the
making real of dreams and hopes? So let us work together that my dream
may be fulfilled, that I may return with my people out of exile, there
in Palestine to live with this Jewish freedom-fighter and his partners,
with this Arab priest and his brothers, in one democratic State where
Christian, Jew and Muslim live in justice, equality and fraternity.
Is this not a noble dream worthy of my struggle alongside all lovers
of freedom everywhere? For the most admirable dimension of this dream
is that it is Palestinian, a dream from out of the land of peace, the
land of martyrdom and heroism, and the land of history, too.
Let us remember that the Jews of Europe and the United States have
been known to lead the struggles for secularism and the separation of
Church and State. They have also been known to fight against discrimination
on religious grounds. How can they then refuse this humane paradigm
for the Holy Land? How then can they continue to support the most fanatic,
discriminatory and closed of nations in its policy?
In my formal capacity as Chairman of the PLO and leader of the Palestinian
revolution I proclaim before you that when we speak of our common hopes
for the Palestine of tomorrow we include in our perspective all Jews
now living in Palestine who choose to live with us there in peace and
without discrimination.
In my formal capacity as Chairman of the PLO and leader of the Palestinian
revolution I call upon Jews to turn away one by one from the illusory
promises made to them by Zionist ideology and Israeli leadership. They
are offering Jews perpetual bloodshed, endless war and continuous thraldom.
We invite them to emerge from their moral isolation into a more open
realm of free choice, far from their present leadership's efforts to
implant in them a Masada complex.
We offer them the most generous solution that we might live together
in a framework of just peace in our democratic Palestine.
In my formal capacity as Chairman of the PLO I announce here that we
do not wish one drop of either Arab or Jewish blood to be shed; neither
do we delight in the continuation of killing, which would end once a
just peace, based on our people's rights, hopes and aspirations had
been finally established.
In my formal capacity as Chairman of the PLO and leader of the Palestinian
revolution I appeal to you to accompany our people in its struggle to
attain its right to self-determination. This right is consecrated in
the United Nations Charter and has been repeatedly confirmed in resolutions
adopted by this august body since the drafting of the Charter. I appeal
to you, further, to aid our people's return to its homeland from an
involuntary exile imposed upon it by force of arms, by tyranny, by oppression,
so that we may regain our property, our land, and thereafter live in
our national homeland, free and sovereign, enjoying all the privileges
of nationhood. Only then can we pour all our resources into the mainstream
of human civilization. Only then can Palestinian creativity be concentrated
on the service of humanity. Only then will our Jerusalem resume its
historic role as a peaceful shrine for all religions.
I appeal to you to enable our people to establish national independent
sovereignty over its own land.
Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun.
Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let
the olive branch fall from my hand.
War flares up in Palestine, and yet it is in Palestine that peace will
be born.
Sources: Palestinian
Mission to the UN |