The Palestinians as a Political Force ••• 335could agree. It stressed "the inadmissibility of acquiring territory by war"
and called for a just and lasting peace based on (1) withdrawal of Israeli
armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict and (2) the
right of every state in the area to "live in peace within secure and recog¬
nized boundaries free from threats and acts of force." It also called for free¬
dom of navigation through international waterways and a "just settlement
to the refugee problem."
Resolution 242 has joined the Husayn-McMahon correspondence and
the Balfour Declaration in that gallery of ambiguous documents compli¬
cating the Arab-Israeli conflict. The various parties to this conflict inter¬
preted the document differently. The Arabs saw the resolution as calling
on Israel to return, as a precondition for peace, all the lands it had taken in
the June war. Israel claimed that the resolution meant withdrawal from
some of these lands, as each country was to live in peace within secure and
recognized boundaries. Some Arabs interpreted the "just settlement to the
refugee problem" to mean Israel's readmission of all displaced Palestinians
wishing to return (the General Assembly had passed resolutions to that
effect almost annually since 1948). Israel contended that the Palestinian
refugees should be settled in the Arab countries. After all, the Arab states,
retaliating for Israel's "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinians, had expelled
their Jewish citizens, most of whom had settled in Israel.
Jordan, Israel, and Egypt agreed to abide by Resolution 242 (Syria, seeing
it as a de facto recognition of Israel, rejected it until 1974), even though
Arabs and Israelis disagreed on what it meant. Secretary-General U Thant
asked a mediator, Gunnar Jarring, to bring the two sides closer together.
But even as he began his ultimately fruitless mission in early 1968, the reso¬
lution's shortcomings were becoming evident. One, clearly, was that each
side expected the other to give in first. Another was that no limitation was
put on the arms race, which was as feverish and financially debilitating as
ever. Yet another was that the Arabs could still wage economic warfare
against Israel and its backers—the boycott would go on. Finally, although
this became clear only with the passage of time, Resolution 242 ignored the
rights and interests of the Palestinian people.
THE PALESTINIANS AS A POLITICAL FORCEThe emergence of the Palestinians as a separate factor in the Arab-Israeli
conflict was one of the most dramatic developments in 1967. The idea that
the Palestinians constitute a distinct people is novel. Never before in Middle