UN General Assembly
1967

31. As follows from my comments, what we must now do is ascertain whether, and to what extent, the situation can be moved from the dead point at which it has been since the cease-fire. That question arises because no one can expect to derive any long-range benefits from perpetuating the status quo. For the international community that would mean allowing to subsist a hotbed of disturbance and agitation, all the more dangerous as outside Powers might confront each other there with their opposing policies and actions. Is there any need to say that for the Arab world it would mean a retardation of its efforts to overcome a trauma whose internal and external effects are far from disappearing? Lastly, for Israel it would mean perpetuating, and perhaps aggravating, the abuses which conquest brings with it, and therefore also the insecurity it has known in its twenty years of independent existence; this is certainly borne out by each day’s news. It would also mean leaving for future generations, if not making altogether impossible, that settlement of which I spoke and which should one day enable Muslims and Jews to live at last side by side in peace and reconciliation.