UN Security Council Resolution 242

The challenge

In six days of war in June 1967, Israel took Sinai and the Gaza Strip, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. According to the UN, about half a million Palestinians were displaced, in a second wave of displacement.¹

On 19 June 1967 Israel's government decided in secret to offer peace to Egypt and Syria on the basis of the international border and Israel's security needs. It took no decision on the West Bank, and passed the decision to the United States.² By October 1968 the position had hardened: peace with Egypt would require Israel to keep a strip of land from Eilat to Sharm el-Sheikh.²

The Arab League summit in Khartoum, which ended on 1 September 1967, chose political efforts to secure Israel's withdrawal, within three principles: no peace with Israel, no recognition of it, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people.³

The road there

1. 22 November 1967The Security Council adopts Resolution 242 unanimously. Britain's Lord Caradon drafted most of it, in close coordination with the United States.⁴⁵
2. 22 October 1973In the middle of the 1973 war, Resolution 338 calls for a ceasefire, for 242 to be carried out in full, and for negotiations between the parties.⁶⁷
3. 15 November 1988The PLO, which had rejected the resolution for two decades, accepts it as a basis for an international conference; see the PLO's road.⁵

The people

Mediated

Gunnar Jarring

What the resolution says

• The preamble: territory may not be acquired by war, and a just and lasting peace is needed in which every state can live in security.⁴
• Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.⁴ The English text has no “the” before “territories”; see the disputes below.
• An end to all claims or states of belligerency, and respect for every state's sovereignty and its right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries, free from threats or acts of force.⁴
• Freedom of navigation through international waterways, and guarantees such as demilitarised zones.⁴
• A just settlement of the refugee problem. The Palestinians are not named.⁴
• A UN special representative to help the states reach an agreed settlement.⁴

Read the document

The geography

The hard decisions

• The text is vague on purpose. According to the Institute for Palestine Studies encyclopedia, Caradon kept the wording loose and added no binding mechanism, so the whole Council could accept it.⁵ It does not say which comes first, withdrawal or peace, and has no map or timetable.⁴ So different sides could accept it and mean different things.⁵
• Syria rejected the resolution in 1967. It accepted it only implicitly, by accepting Resolution 338 in 1973.⁵
• The PLO rejected it: first because it implied recognising Israel, later because it treated the Palestinian question as a refugee problem.⁵ The Palestinian National Council repeated the rejection in June 1974.⁸
• Israel accepted the resolution,⁵ but not a return to the pre-war lines. In February 1971 it told Jarring it would withdraw to secure, recognised and agreed boundaries set in a peace agreement, not to the lines that existed before 5 June 1967.⁹

Where accounts differ

According to Israel; and, on the wording, Lord Caradon, who drafted the text

The English text speaks of withdrawal “from territories”, without “the”. According to the Institute for Palestine Studies encyclopedia, supporters of this reading conclude that full withdrawal is not required, and Caradon and others said the wording was deliberate, leaving the final lines to negotiation.⁵ In 1971 Israel said it would not withdraw to the lines that existed before 5 June 1967.⁹

According to The Arab states that accepted the resolution

The resolution requires withdrawal from all the territories. Critics of the Israeli reading point to the French text, “des territoires”, with the article,⁵ and to the preamble's ban on gaining territory by war.⁴ In 1971 Egypt told Jarring that a lasting peace needs withdrawal from all territories occupied since 5 June 1967.⁹ The Arabic text published by the Institute for Palestine Studies also has the article: «من الأراضي التي احتلتها في النزاع الأخير».¹⁰

According to The PLO, until 1988

The resolution is unacceptable at its root, because it ignores the national rights of the Palestinian people and treats their cause as a refugee problem.⁸ In 1988 the PLO accepted it, together with its declaration of a state, as a basis for negotiation.⁵

According to Historians, on the Israeli cabinet decision of 19 June 1967

The familiar account, going back to Foreign Minister Abba Eban, is that Israel made a generous offer and the Arab states turned it down; the State Archives introduction says the decision went secretly to the United States and no positive reply came.² The historian Avi Raz argues from the archives that it was never passed to Egypt as an offer. Uri Bar-Joseph, reviewing his study, accepts that finding, but finds Raz's argument about the decision's wording weaker.¹¹

According to Historians, on the Khartoum summit

In Israel, Khartoum was read as shutting every door. The historian Avi Shlaim argues that it was a win for the moderates, who wanted withdrawal by political means: Arab spokesmen, he says, read the “noes” as ruling out a formal treaty, direct talks and legal recognition, not a state of peace or talks through third parties.¹² The resolution itself contains both the three “noes” and the commitment to political effort.³

What remains open

• In 1973 Resolution 338 added what 242 lacked: a clear call for the parties to negotiate.⁶

Photos, videos and quotes

1970Watch here: Abba Eban outlines an Israeli peace plan, 1970

Abba Eban outlines an Israeli peace plan, 1970

24 July 1970 · AP Archive

That summer the United States pushed the Rogers initiative, and in August 1970 a ceasefire along the Suez Canal took effect.

1972Watch here: UN mediator Gunnar Jarring arrives in Amman, 1972

UN mediator Gunnar Jarring arrives in Amman, 1972

24 February 1972 · AP Archive

Jarring was appointed in 1967 to work for a settlement based on Resolution 242. His mission lasted years and produced no agreement.