Unofficial Transcript 
65th General Assembly
Statement by Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Agenda item 37 “Question of Palestine”, November 29, 2010


LIBYAN ARAB JAMAHIRIYA:  In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful, distinguished delegates, once more the General Assembly considers the question of Palestine.  It has done that continuously since 1947 without any help for the Palestinians to establish their state and return to their homeland, without this being realized and without the fact that that the international community hasn't helped in serving justice and avoiding the dangers jeopardizing the peace and security in the area and in the world.
The fact that characterizing the question of Palestine imposes on the international community the duty of dealing with it in a different way, a way that proceeds from awareness of the historical facts and the present practices and the quest for solutions in the firm lack of the principles of international law, proceeding from this promise, the Libyan delegation seeks today to draw the attention of the international community to the right approach to resolve the question of Palestine, instead of continuing to go in the dead end paths and dreaming of the mirage, so-called the two states.  
Allow me to go back to history, not the history before the last 3,000 years exploited by Zionism in order to create the tragedy before us today in Palestine, but rather the history of the last 100 years, evidence of which are still there to be seen today throughout historical Palestine.  In order to realize the extent of the injustice meted out on the Palestinian people and to find the exemplary way to serve justice and to avert war and destruction in Palestine and the whole region.  
The percentage of the Jews in historical Palestine in 1917 was 9% of the Arab population, Muslims, Christians and Jews.  The Jewish population possessed 2.5% of the Palestinian Territory.  I repeat, possessed only 2.5% of the Palestinian Territory.  In '47 the number of the Jews reached 32% of the total population of Palestine and they possessed 6.2% of the territories.  Because of the intensified Jewish migration financed by the Zionist movement and encouraged by the British mandate, the same year, that is in 1947, the GA adopted resolution 181 that divided Palestine into two states, by virtue of which 56% of the territory was given by the GA to the Jewish minority and 44% to the Palestinian Arabs who represented more than two thirds of the population.  
However, that resolution was not acceptable to the Zionist leaders because they had further ambitions.  They wanted to benefit as much as they could from the sympathy of the great powers with the Jews because of what took place with them at the hands of Nazism.  Hence, the Zionist movement established armed terrorist organizations and turned them afterwards to an army and with the establishment of the state of Israel, they attacked all the Arab territories in Palestine and between '48 and '49 was able to dominate 77% of the Palestinian territories after bloody butchering of the Palestinians and the destructions of villages and their expulsion from the occupied territories.  
And if Israel was not contented with that, not to implement the resolution of the dividing of Palestine by the GA and the occupation of further territories, in '67 it waged a ferocious war against the Arab states in which it was able to seize the last of the historic Palestinian territory and other parts of the Arab territories.  Herein, I only show to reconfirm that the Jews in 1917 possessed only 2.5% of the territories.  In '67, they possessed and dominated all of the Palestinian territory.  
Let us summarize now what took place for the Palestinians during the last 60 years.  75% of the Palestinians left their land after they were occupied in 1948.  About a quarter of the remaining Palestinians left the West Bank and Gaza after the occupation in '67.  About 400,000 Palestinians left the occupied territories because of the inhuman, racist and illegal Israeli practices in the occupied territories after 1967.  All were either expelled or left their villages in coercion.  
Now about five million Palestinian refugees live in 59 camps, refugee camps under the supervision of the United Nations, most of them in the neighboring states, while about 2 million Palestinian refugees live in other states.  Of course, the occupation authority of Israel did not allow the return of any Palestinian refugee, despite the GA resolution 194 of '48 and 181 of '47 where Israel were committed to implement them since they were a condition for its acceptance as Israel's for membership in the United Nations.  
Let us see what takes place now.  The policy of force of the Israelis brought pressure to bear on the international community to forget the roots of the Palestinian question and to recognize that only 22% of the Palestinian territory is occupied Palestinian territories.  That is the territories occupied after '67.  The Palestinian leaders had to accept less than a quarter of the rights of the Palestinian people to establish their state on it.  
They had an agreement with Israeli entities, more than 10 agreements starting from '93 to 2005.  However, the Israeli party did not implement any agreement, but rather they persisted in its well known policy aimed at getting rid of the Palestinians through the confiscation of territories, the demolition of houses, the prohibition of construction, as well as depriving the inhabitants of the necessaries of life as well as limiting their movement.  
The Israeli occupation authority seized about 50% of the territories of the West Bank to build 149 settlements, as well as the necessary infrastructure together with the establishment of the special security areas and closed military areas and what is called the natural reserves, as well as the special rows limited to the Jews, as well as a racist separation wall, which alone took about 10% of the West Bank territories.
The occupation authority dominates the water resources and deprives the Palestinians of the water from the Jordan River.  It exploits 87% of the wells in the West Bank for these settlements, while it left 2.5 million Palestinians to live on only 13% of the water from wells.  The Palestinian gets less than 60 liters of water today, while the Jewish person gets between 274 and 450 liters of water today.  
This is an anomaly where the Israeli entity has turned the efforts of the international community to resolve the Palestinian question to sort of the theater of the absurd and only at perpetuating the fait accompli, which is reinforced at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people.  There is no room whatsoever to establish a Palestinian state side by side with so-called early.
After the Israeli settlements ravaged half of the West Bank territories and dismembered them where the Palestinians are living in separate areas like the racist Bantu Stands that we witnessed before in South Africa.  This is confirmed by a series of legislations and laws that were adopted recently, or where the Israeli authorities are seeking to issue among them the alteration of what is called the citizenship law where it imposes any person other than the Jews to declare their loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state, and the law that prohibits granting residence of the Palestinians who marry Palestinians who live in the occupied territories since 1948, and a law that would imprison anyone who would reject the presence of Israel as a Jewish state, and the law of acceptance in municipalities which would reject any application to reside -- any person to reside in the town if his thoughts are not in keeping with those of the establishment of the Zionist town.
These are only examples of some laws that aim at -- that aim at ethnic cleansing in Palestine supported by daily measures today where the houses of Palestinians are demolished.  They are expelled.  And these are practices that focused recently in Jerusalem and in Jordan.  
The General Assembly in its resolution 3379 of 10 November 1975, the GA declared that Zionism is a form of racial discrimination.  It wasn't faulty, as some tried to prove.  Zionism, in reality, is the worst form of racism because of its practices of racial discrimination and its belief in ethnic cleansing in Palestine as a way to establish exclusively Jewish state.  
Here we have report that the Center for Human Sciences in South Africa conducted a legal study in the light of international law and the laws that apply in Palestine before and after the occupation in order to answer a specific question.  That is, Is Israel a state that practices apartheid?  The study concluded, and I quote, Israel since 1967 and its aggressive occupation force in the occupied Palestinian territories and the occupation of these territories has become a colonial project based on the system of apartheid or racial discrimination.  
The study is published in the international network for those who would like to peruse it.  It has become crystal clear that the Israeli entity rejects the recognized rights of the Palestinian people and unstintingly attempts to render its occupation legal and rejects the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and seeks by all means to dominate every inch of the Palestinian territory so that Israel will expand and will be entrenched as the racist state where only the Jews live.  Consequently, Palestinians would be expelled. 
The two-state solution promoted by the American administrations and was received enthusiastically by many has not become possible after the Israeli intransigence and the closeness in residence between the Palestinians and the Jews and the diminishing area under the influence of the Palestinian people and its dismemberment.  
In addition to the fact that the two parties believe in their right in all the territories of the historical Palestine, the Israelis claim that they were there 3,000 years ago, and the Palestinian base that to their continuous presence in these territories for hundreds of years.  Because of this deadlock, it has become urgent to consider another solution which takes into account the principles of justice, a solution that benefits from the elimination of apartheid in South Africa and a solution that takes place on the whole territories of historical Palestine, a state where all the Palestinian refugees would return and where all the Arabs and the Jews would live in peace and enjoy the same rights, and under the same duties.  That land would be disarmed and would live and coexist with its neighbors.  
The Israeli entity's practices wouldn't leave any help for another solution except the solution of the single state.  Hence, we have to choose between either that state with the racial state imposed by the Zionists and would be limited to the Jews alone or to be a democratic state imposed by the international community where the Arabs and the Jews would coexist and where they would have the same rights and the same duties and responsibilities, something in concert with what has taken place in South Africa where a democratic state was established on the rambles of the apartheid regime, where the black and white coexisted after decades of animosity and blood shed.  
Mr. President, the Libyan delegation has prepared a draft resolution concerning the single state that would be presented to the GA to be voted upon.  We do hope that it would receive the necessary support to be adopted by all delegations in the service of peace and security in the Middle East and the world in its entirety.  
The draft resolution, as contained in A/65/L-24, proceeds from the principles of the United Nations charter.  It stresses that the principle of the illegality of the possession of territories by force and it also stresses the rights of the Palestinian people, the inalienable rights of the Palestinian to return and to self determination and to establish its state on its territory.  
It shows the tragic consequences resulting from the policy of force of Israel and it refers to the failure at all the initiatives aimed at establishing just peace between the Jews and the Palestinian and what they have suffered from as a result of the occupation and the loss of their territories.  It seeks to achieve justice and to avert more tragedies and disasters in the area. 
It recognizes that the present facts in Palestine does not allow the establishment of two states that are viable, as I have just clarified.  It is based on the good relations between the Jews and the Arabs and the different relations through different centuries before the establishment of the Zionist entity which was created, unfortunately, to cause animosities among the Arabs, Muslims and Jews.
It confirms the following, that the General Assembly is committed to obtaining a lasting and comprehensive solution to the conflict in Palestine, two, emphasizes the right of the inhabitants who are born in or whose fathers or ancestors were born in the historical territory of Palestine to live in the territory and recover their property and to enjoy their human rights as proclaimed in the universal declaration of human rights in the international covenant on civil and political rights and the international covenant on the economic, social and cultural rights, regardless of their religion or ethnic origin.
Third, it affirms the right of all the refugees and displaced persons as a result of the fighting which erupted in 1948 and 1967 and subsequent hostilities to return to their homes and previous abodes.  Fourth, it also affirms that the time is right to find a peaceful, just, lasting, and comprehensive solution to the conflict between the Palestinian and Jewish peoples that safeguard the legitimate rights of the two sides.
Fifth, it decides that there is no viable option other than the establishment of a single, democratic and multiracial and multicultural state for both the Jews and the Palestinians based on equal rights and equal obligations which shall be disarmed and shall live in peace with its neighbors and calls on the two parties to start without delay and awaits the support of the international community negotiations for the realization of such state.  
Six, invites all member states and the United Nations organs, including the Security Council, to provide support for the establishment of a single state for both the Jews and the Palestinians which uphold the right of the return for all the refugees and displaced persons and embraces the values of democracy, justice and human rights.  
Seven, request the Secretary General to follow up on the implementation of the present resolution and to submit to the General Assembly at its 66th session report in that regard.  Eight, decides to remain ceased of the matter.  
There is no doubt this resolution reflects the justice and seeks to establish peace.  We do believe that all the delegations that represent states that are peace-loving and security-loving would vote in favor of it, although we know that many pressures will be brought to bear on this.  Thank you Mr. President.