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"Resolution 242 Revisited": The Security Council's Approach to Israel-Arab Conflict
(Washington Post) Eugene Kontorovich - My new article, "Resolution 242 Revisited: New Evidence on the Required Scope of Israeli Withdrawal," has just been published in the Chicago Journal of International Law. Res. 242 represented a territorial compromise, with accommodations to Arab and Israel positions. A proposed new French resolution - which mandates a withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines - would specifically undo the parts of that compromise that were in Israel's favor, and essentially "reverse" 242, replacing it with the resolution demanded by the USSR and Arab states in 1967. If the U.S. allows this to happen, it would be a fundamental reversal of 50 years of Middle East diplomacy. If the French resolution is approved, this would teach the international community that if one does not like compromises embodied in Security Council resolutions, simply ignore them and wait for the political winds to shift and bring a different resolution. The writer is a professor at Northwestern University School of Law.