UN Security Council Resolution 242 on the Arab-Israeli Conflict

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The UN Security Council has five permanent members: the United States, the Russian Federation (in 1967, the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, France, and China. Ten other nations have seats on the Security Council for two-year terms. In 1967 those nations were Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Ethiopia, India, Japan, Mali, and Nigeria. Security Council resolutions on substantive matters require unanimous votes by the permanent members; Resolution 242 was affirmed unanimously by the entire Security Council.

The chief drafter of Resolution 242 was Hugh M. Foot, Lord Caradon. Foot, born in 1907, enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a British ambassador to several nations and oversaw the independence of numerous former British colonies. In 1964, during the administration of the British prime minister Harold Wilson, he was appointed minister of state for foreign affairs and the United Kingdom's ambassador to the United Nations, where he served until 1970. He died in 1990.

Three other individuals played a significant role in drafting the resolution. George A. Brown, born in 1914, began his career as a trade-union organizer and then served the British government as foreign minister, secretary of state for economic affairs, and first secretary of state. He was also a major leader of Britain's Labour Party. He was made a peer in 1970, taking as his peerage name Lord George-Brown. He died in 1985.

Arthur Goldberg, born in 1908, was a distinguished American statesman. During World War II he served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. He was secretary of labor in the cabinet of President John F. Kennedy until Kennedy appointed him as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Under President Lyndon B. Johnson he served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He died in 1990.

Finally, Eugene Rostow, born in 1913, was a legal scholar and dean of the law school at Yale University. During World War II he served in the U.S. State Department, where he was a vocal opponent of the wartime internment of Japanese American and Japanese civilians in the United States in the wake of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941. From 1966 to 1969 he was the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs. He returned to teach at Yale Law School and died in 2002.