Radio Interview – WWRL New York
Dr. Ron Daniels: “Now UN resolution 242. A lot of people get up and start pounding about the enforcement of these resolutions. There was all of a sudden, a lot of discussion about the resolution which called upon the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah, which hadn’t been done. But isn’t it the case too that Israel has resolutions that have been longstanding, that have been out there for awhile that Israel hasn’t complied with?”
Grant Smith: “Absolutely, in fact that is just the question. 1559 is a relatively new resolution calling for Hezbollah to disarm and get out of southern Lebanon. Lebanon has taken the same approach that, unfortunately, that some Bush administration officials have taken, of kind of reinterpreting UN resolutions, to say that we (Hezbollah) are the army of southern Lebanon. And that creates a lot of problems. But 242 is a UN Security Council resolution that was adopted on November 22 of 1967, again, after the ’67 war, which was calling for a withdrawal of Israeli forces from “territory occupied in the recent conflict”, meaning the Six Day War. Now (Israeli Ambassador) Daniel Gillerman was put on the spot in a UN standup a couple of days ago by someone confronting him with this, and he completely obfuscated the issue by saying “well that wasn’t a security council resolution” and a number of other things which weren’t true. So there’s just this unwillingness to really face up to these larger regional issues in spite of the fact of there being various peace plans, which would allow for full Arab recognition of Israel if only it returns to 1967 borders. Some of the larger issues are not on the table, and those are the issues that are going to drive both parties back to conflict.”