New Hopes for Peace

Excerpts from a speech by Spanish Foreign Minister Francisco Fernandez Ordonez to the United Nations European Seminar on the Question of Palestine May 25, 1991

The most important problem facing the Middle East ... and which lies at the root of its instability, is the Arab-Israeli conflict, and more specifically the so-called question of Palestine.

The recent conflict caused by Iraqi expansionism has consequences and lessons for all of us, ranging from the role of the UN or European political cooperation to the crisis (perhaps already overcome) in the League of Arab States ... The lessons include one of particular significance to me: No Arab country—and not even the PLO—supported the invasion, occupation and subsequent annexation of Kuwait by Iraq.

In other words, as far as principles are concerned, Saddam. Hussain was left totally isolated by his Arab brothers.

Nevertheless, his action aroused sympathy among the populations of the Arab countries themselves. There were many reasons for this, but perhaps the most fundamental was the perception by the Arab masses of a contradiction in the different ways in which the world reacted to two occupations, that of Kuwait and that of Palestine ...

This led to the accusation that a double standard, a different yardstick, was being applied to Israel and Iraq by an international community that required Baghdad to comply in a few months with the provisions of Security Council Resolution 678, while it allowed Tel Aviv to remain deaf for too long, to the demand that it comply with Resolution 242.

And this ... has had a tremendous propaganda and emotional impact and currently casts doubt on the UN system in the eyes of a large part of the Arab world.

The fact is that never before have there been so many circumstances which theoretically favor the cause of peace: the dauntless efforts by the US Secretary of State ... ; the new attitude of the Soviet Union, including the journey by Mr. Bessmertnykh to Israel; the unblocking of the UN Security Council ... a direct effect of world detente; the availability of the Palestinians, expressed in the trend begun by the National Council meeting in Algiers in November 1988, where the existence of the state of Israel was admitted; the willingness to participate in the peace conference expressed in a recent communique by the Gulf Cooperation Council, together with the open attitude on the part of such important countries as Egypt and Jordan, and so on. All these are enormously encouraging elements or signs. It is true that obstacles remain and among them perhaps the greatest is the refusal by the Israeli leaders to accept the principle of peace for land as a valid interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 ...

It is still ironic that the UN should find itself pushed aside by what is perhaps the only country which owes its existence to a resolution by the UN itself...

It has repeatedly been stated that making peace requires more imagination and possibly more courage than making war, in that making peace requires mutual concessions as a guarantee for the future. But for this purpose what is needed, above all, is a minimum of political will to turn the page of history and to accept mutual conditions which must be interpreted as a token off strength rather than weakness. The objective is to achieve a better world in which Israelis and Palestinians are able—perhaps for the first time in history—to live beside each other and not on top of each other, the ones dominated by the others, as appears to have been the case until now and is graphically illustrated in a recently built museum in the Citadel of Jerusalem.