Fifty years ago, the world turned its attention to the Middle East of Nov. 22, 1974, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 3236. Titled “Question of Palestine,” it recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the representative of Palestinians, and their “right” to a state. In actuality, it was a subtle undermining of Israel’s right to exist.
Among many concerning issues, was that the resolution demanded the 700,000 Palestinians who fled in 1947 be permitted to return. The drafters of the resolution weren’t daft: they knew a demographic flooding would radically change the character of the Jewish state, then home to about 3.4 million people, which looked an awful lot like an attempt to destroy Israel from the inside.
Unsurprisingly, the resolution didn’t mention the corresponding number of Jews who fled, or were forced to flee, Arab countries.
Of course, no one’s called for the 14-million refugees to return to their homes in India and Pakistan, when the latter was carved out of the former, in 1947. Similarly, no demands were made about the 200,000 refugees resulting from Turkey’s military occupation of Cyprus, starting in 1974 and continuing since. I guess the “right of return” isn’t for everyone.
The voting results for Resolution 3236 were: 89 countries in favour; eight countries against (Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Iceland, Israel, Nicaragua, Norway, United States); and 37 abstentions, including Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s Canada.
Critically, the resolution led to the granting of UN observer status to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to participate in General Assembly sessions.
As with most issues in geopolitical conflicts, nothing happens in a vacuum. The resolution came about a year after the Yom Kippur War, when the Arab nations again, led by Egypt and Syria, attempted to wipe Israel off the map.
More importantly, it came after of a series of terror attacks on Israelis over the course of eight months in 1974.
On April 11, during Passover, three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine infiltrated Israel from Lebanon, entered an apartment building in Kiryat Shmona and massacred 18 residents — eight of whom were children. This atrocity prompted about 40 per cent of the town’s population to relocate.
On May 14, Palestinian terrorists from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), disguised as Israeli soldiers, crossed into Israel from Lebanon. They first killed a couple and their four-year-old son in Ma’alot, before seizing a local school, taking 105 students and 10 teachers hostage. When the Israeli Golani Brigade stormed the building on the second day, the terrorists detonated grenades and opened fire, resulting in the deaths of 25 hostages, including 22 children, and injuring 68 others.
On June 24, three Palestinian terrorists infiltrated Nahariya by sea from Lebanon, marking the first maritime incursion of its kind into Israel. The attack claimed the lives of three civilians and one Israeli soldier.
On Sept. 8, TWA Flight 841, travelling from Tel Aviv to Athens, was bombed, reportedly by the Palestinian Youth Organization, causing the plane to crash into the Ionian Sea, killing all 88 passengers and crew members.
On Nov. 19, a squad from the DFLP attacked Beit She’an, killing four civilians and injuring more than 20 others.
Three days later, the UN voted that the issue was the lack of a 21st Arab state, rather than jihadis trying to eliminate the one Jewish state.
If this all sounds familiar, it’s because it is — just like every call for a “two-state solution” from the UN, after Hamas murdered more than 1,200 in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. What’s that playing on the radio? Sonny and Cher?
It didn’t take long for the PLO to gain legitimacy at the UN — just 10 years between the PLO’s creation in 1964 to Resolution 3236. It helped that the PLO had the imprimatur of the Soviets, masters of propaganda, who crafted their charter, which asserted that Palestine (i.e., Israel) is an Arab homeland, and the establishment of Israel was “null and void.”
Except it wasn’t. In 1949, UN General Assembly Resolution 273 recognized Israel. Before that, Article 80 of the UN Charter accepted previous international treaties, including the San Remo agreement of 1920. In it, the Jewish people were given legal land title to what is now Israel, Judea and Samaria, and Jordan, collectively called British Mandate of Palestine. But against its own agreement, the British cut Jordan out, giving it to Saudi-born Abdullah I Bin Al-Hussein to rule a state that had never been a state before. (No one questions the legitimacy of Jordan, but Israel’s is continually questioned).
Disturbingly, the PLO’s charter promoted “armed struggle” to achieve “liberation,” contrary to Article 2 of the UN Charter, which called to resolve “international disputes by peaceful means” and refrain from “threat or use of force against” other states.
It’s not a stretch to say that by supporting the vote in 1974, 89 countries (and those that abstained) gave a permission slip to terror and violence — rather than a negotiated settlement. It was a case of contradictory charters, and the PLO won out. This legitimized the PLO’s tactics, while delegitimizing Israel. And it has continued in many forms, in many resolutions, to this day.
Tellingly, the PLO’s charter didn’t call for a Palestinian state in the West Bank. In fact, Article 24 stated: “This organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” or the Gaza Strip. Article 24 was quietly removed after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel regained these areas in a defensive war. The PLO’s leadership had changed their minds — they now wanted what they said they didn’t want. In Arabic, they’d say the quiet part out loud: because of the Jews.
Today, it’s uttered, but not so quietly, and no longer just in Arabic.
Incidentally, Jordan, which illegally occupied the West Bank from 1949 to 1967, gave up claims to it in its 1994 peace agreement with Israel. It didn’t render the land ownerless. Nor was Israel “illegally occupying” it since 1967. But with Resolution 3236, it was a coup for newly recognized Palestinian leadership to continue to convince the world that Israel was occupying the land illegally.
As for other, actual illegal occupations, like China’s occupation of Tibet since 1950 — no global protests, no obsession in the UN. No boycott movement. No demonstrations against the 1.2-million murdered and 500,000 dead from starvation.
Israel, and only Israel, was to be obsessed over. If this sounds like a familiar tune, it’s because it is.
National Post