UN General Assembly
1961

33. I take first the Palestine question. As a result of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, the Arab countries in the Middle East were partitioned between the United Kingdom and France. They were occupied during the inter-war period, and their economic wealth, especially oil, was exploited by international cartels. The interests of the United Kingdom and France greatly increased with the rise of European capital investment, and the discovery of great oil potentialities in the region. These Arab countries gained rapidly a unique position in the Western economy, particularly through their oil production, They also became militarily valuable to the West in the world struggle for power. Thus the control over the region's oil, and over the political activities and the tendencies of its people became the cornerstone of Western policy in the Middle East. Apart from the monopoly control, of the region's oil resources, this trend in policy also manifested itself in the promotion of alliances of a politico-military character, and in the support of decadent regimes and reactionary systems of government.