UN General Assembly
1969

civilized States aspire to achieve. 124. At the opening of my remarks on the Middle East crisis a short while ago, I intimated that it was a three-dimensional crisis, of which the conflict between the Arab States and Israel is only one aspect. It is most unfortunate that the general view of that crisis focuses upon this conflict and is oblivious of the other aspects and dimensions. Such distorted vision and conception would in practice make for erroneous approaches. Efforts are exerted to find a settlement for the conflict between the Arab States and Israel without attempting to redress the wrongs done to, or remedy the unjust conditions imposed upon, the Palestinian people, prior to or since the establishment of Israel. 125. The essence of the problem is the dispossession and displacement of the bulk of the Palestinian people, the subjugation and plunder of the rest, the deprivation of the Palestinian people, as a whole, of the opportunity to; exercise its inalienable right to self-determination on the soil of its homeland, and the deprivation of Palestinians as