UN Security Council Resolution 242 on the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Audience

The audience for Resolution 242 was principally the warring parties, including Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan; Egypt, under the leadership of President Gamal Abdel Nasser; Syria, ruled by President Noureddin Mustafa al-Atassi (although al-Atassi was largely a figurehead, with real power in the hands of Deputy Secretary General Salah Jadid and Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad); and Jordan, ruled by King Hussein bin Talal.

When the UN Security Council acts, however, all the world's nations form the audience. At the time of the Six-Day War and the passage of Resolution 242, the cold war was at its height. The Western powers, principally the United States and its allies, backed Israel, although none of the Western nations provided direct military aid during the conflict. The Arab states, in turn, were backed by the Soviet Union, which sent ten warships to the eastern Mediterranean as the prewar situation grew more tense, and most Arab warplanes were MiGs provided by the Soviets. Thus, in certain respects, the Six-Day War was one of the era's many proxy wars with broader cold war implications; and many observers feared that the conflict could escalate into a broader war, engulfing not only the Middle East but also the United States and the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the world took considerable interest in the question of what steps the United Nations would take in response to the war.

A further audience was future negotiators. Throughout the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, numerous parties have attempted to broker an elusive peace in the Middle East. Resolution 242 has provided a framework for such peace initiatives as the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, the 1993 Oslo Accords, and President George W. Bush's 2002 “road map for peace.”