Security Council resolution 242 (1967), adopted on November 22, 1967, contains the following phrase:

"Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict."

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That phrase has produced considerable controversy inside Israel, but within that controversy a secondary issue has arisen, of some juridical interest, since some of the protagonists of one point of view or another have purported to see a fundamental difference between one or other of these language versions of this phrase.

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The above quoted phrase in resolution 242 (1967) is identical with the draft submitted by the United Kingdom on November 16, 1967, in Security Council document S/8247:

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It is known from an outside source that the sponsors resisted all attempts to insert words such as "all" or "the" in the text of this phrase in the English text of the resolution,9 and it will not be overlooked that when that very word "all" erroneously crept into the Spanish translation of the draft, it was subsequently removed.

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For instance, it is said that the indefinite quality of the English and Russian versions - which was a matter of political determinism-ought to be met by the introduction of a word such as "certains" into the French version (and its equivalent in the Spanish). But in such a context, certains would need some equivalent in English, for instance some, a word which does not appear in the English text and which, moreover, it is unlikely that a draftsman with any command of the English language, from either side of the Atlantic, would have willingly or wittingly inserted. If on this score there is any ambiguity in resolution 242 as it stands (which we do not think to be the case), it is rendered neither greater nor less by comparison of the different language versions, but is inherent in the text as adopted, in all its language versions. In this connection it may be observed that categorical assertions that the resolution obliges Israel completely to withdraw all its armed forces from all the occupied territories are not based on preference for one or other of the language versions of the resolution, but on the resolution in its integrity, in each one of its language versions. That was made clear, by the pro-Arab spokesmen, using the English, French and Russian languages, in the Security Council debate in November 1967. However, the real problem of what the resolution means on this cardinal question, or to put it differently, what the Security Council intended, arises whatever the language in which the resolution be read or a given contention expressed.

WASHINGTON, July 1 [2000]: Washington on Friday confirmed that UN Security Council Resolution 242 - which called for Israel to withdraw from land it captured in 1967 - applied to the Israeli-Palestinian talks, dismissing controversial comments by the Israeli attorney general that it did not.

"The resolutions 242 and 338 have been the cornerstone of the US approach to the Middle East for 30 years," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Resolution 338, passed in 1973, calls for talks to start "aimed at establishing a just and durable peace in the Middle East."

In an opinion published in the Israeli media on Thursday, Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein said UN Security Council Resolution 242 did not apply to the Palestinians.

He said that Israel was not required to return the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority because the two areas were under Jordanian and Egyptian control when Israel seized them, and not the Palestinian group, which only formed in 1994.

Boucher said the 1967 UN resolution was the "framework that we've always worked in and it's the one we believe we should continue to work in".

"It's our view that all negotiations should be based on Resolutions 242 and 338 - all negotiations between Israel and the Arabs, including the negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians," the spokesman added.

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