UN Security Council Resolution 242: Background
Required reading for anyone who refers to the Resolution, without actually having read it. In other words, 99.99% of everybody who has ever said “Resolution 242 demands…”
Lastly, Resolution 242 speaks of “a just settlement of the refugee problem,” not
‘the Palestinian or Arab refugee problem.’ The history of the resolution shows
that it was intentional and reflected recognition that the Arab-Israeli conflict
created two refugee populations, not one. Parallel to the estimated 600,000
Arabs who left Israel, more than 899,00012
Jews fled from Arab countries in the
aftermath of the 1948 war – 650,000 of them finding asylum in Israel.
A history of the behind-the-scenes work drafting the resolution shows that the
former Soviet Union Ambassador Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kuznetsov sought to restrict
the term ‘just settlement’ to Palestinian refugees only. But former U.S. Justice
Arthur J. Goldberg, the American Ambassador to the UN who played a key role in
the ultimate language adopted, pointed out:
“A notable omission in 242 is any reference to Palestinians, a Palestinian state on
the West Bank or the PLO. The resolution addresses the objective of ‘achieving a
just settlement of the refugee problem.’ This language presumably refers both to
Arab and Jewish refugees, for about an equal number of each abandoned their
homes as a result of the several wars.”