UN Security Council Resolution 242 on the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Impact

Israel and Jordan immediately accepted the terms of Resolution 242. Egypt also stated that it did, but President Nasser then refused to negotiate with the Israelis. In July 1968 he declared openly that there would be no negotiations with Israel, no peace with Israel, and no recognition by Egypt of Israel's right to exist. Syria took a particularly hard-line position, openly rejecting Resolution 242, refusing to engage in talks with Gunnar Jarring, and denying Israel's right to exist. The Palestinians, too, flatly rejected the resolution. In 1968, largely in response to the Six-Day War, the PLO amended its 1964 charter, clearly denying Israel's right to exist. Article 15 of the amended charter states, “The liberation of Palestine … is a national duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine”; Article 19 states, “The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal.” In general, the Arab nations reiterated the position they had taken in the Khartoum Resolution of September 1, 1967. Meanwhile, the cease-fire was repeatedly broken. The Soviet Union rearmed Egypt with MiG fighter jets, artillery, and surface-to-air missiles, and Egypt launched numerous artillery attacks against Israel from across the border.

The diplomatic Jarring Mission, which began in 1968, proved a failure. Despite Jarring's best efforts to bring the parties to the negotiating table, the question of the occupied territories seemed intractable. In a report to the United Nations, U Thant wrote,

When the Special Representative first met with the parties in December 1967, he found that the Israeli Government was of the firm view that a settlement of the Middle East question could be reached only through direct negotiations between the parties culminating in a peace treaty and that there could be no question of withdrawal of their forces prior to such a settlement.

U Thant noted that the Arab nations were equally insistent on their position “that there could be no question of discussions between the parties until the Israeli forces had been withdrawn to the positions occupied by them prior to 5 June 1967” (The Jarring Mission). Negotiations were at an impasse.

Accordingly, the United States attempted its own diplomatic initiative for implementing Resolution 242. Secretary of State William P. Rogers formally announced the “Rogers Plan” on June 19, 1970. The essence of the Rogers Plan was the following provisions: Negotiations would continue under Jarring's leadership, Israel would withdraw from the Egyptian territory it had occupied since the war, the two sides would sign a peace accord officially ending the war, demilitarized zones would be established, Israel would be guaranteed free passage into the Gulf of Aqaba, and the refugee problem would be settled fairly. The Israelis, however, rejected the Rogers Plan, largely because of the Egyptian military buildup, which included three Soviet brigades.

Peace thus remained elusive. War broke out again on October 6, 1973, when combined Arab forces led by Egypt and Syria crossed the cease-fire lines from the Six-Day War and invaded Israel. The first forty-eight hours of the war saw Arab successes, for they surprised Israel by launching the assault on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, giving the war its name, the Yom Kippur War. Israeli forces quickly regrouped. They drove the Syrians out of the Golan Heights, and they met Egyptian forces on the Sinai Peninsula and cut off their supply lines just as the United Nations announced a cease-fire on October 26. This cease-fire was supported by the Arab nations' Soviet backers, who feared a total defeat, and so the war ended in a stalemate.

The Arab nations had felt humiliated by their defeat in the Six-Day War, but Arab successes in the early days of the Yom Kippur War emboldened them. In the middle of the war, Middle Eastern members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo against the United States. Yet after the cease-fire, Israel and the U.S. secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, were stunned by a message received from Egypt: Egypt would be willing to enter into peace talks with Israel provided that Israel honor the cease-fire and allow nonmilitary supplies to be delivered to its encircled army on the Sinai Peninsula. Consequently, for the first time since 1948, Egyptian and Israeli officials met face to face, and in early 1974 an armistice was hammered out. The Egyptian president Anwar as-Sadat meanwhile began introducing economic liberalization policies in Egypt and, inexplicably, expressed impatience with the slow pace of the peace process. In the years that followed, Egypt took part in diplomatic initiatives, and as-Sadat expelled the Soviets from Egypt and removed the nation from the Soviets' sphere of influence. His efforts, as well as those of the U.S. president Jimmy Carter and the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, led to the signing of the Camp David Accords—named for the presidential retreat in Maryland—on September 17, 1978. The accords normalized relations between Egypt and Israel.