During the Fifty-seventh Session of the General Assembly speaker after speaker stressed the need for full and unconditional compliance with Security Council resolutions. The Foreign Ministers of the 115 Member States of the Non-Aligned Movement also called on all States to abide by Security Council resolutions. They pointed out that if the Security Council’s resolutions are not enforced the very legitimacy and credibility of the United Nations is threatened. Furthermore, they called for conflict situations to be addressed multilaterally, through the United Nations. 

Mr President, 

We are meeting here today in response to the Israeli military onslaught on the Head Quarters of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. This is the same Israeli military force, which the Security Council ordered to withdraw six months ago. Israel has yet to comply with Security Council resolutions that call for the withdrawal of its forces from Palestinian towns and cities. 

The life of President Arafat, the elected leader of the Palestinian people, is under threat. Once again President Arafat’s condemnation of attacks against Israel, which he regards as both morally unacceptable and counter-productive to the Palestinian cause, has fallen on deaf Israeli government ears. It seems that there is a blind impulse towards violence and vengeance that prevails over the logic of dialogue and peace. More innocent civilians continue to die. 

We unreservedly condemn the killing of civilians whether they are Israelis or Palestinians. 

Mr President, 

The sense of despair, frustration and hopelessness in the Middle East is brought about by occupation and by the fact that no land has been returned in exchange for peace as required by Security Council resolutions. 

For far too long, Israel has ignored the decisions of both the Security Council and the General Assembly. Israel continues to illegally occupy Palestinian land, settlements continue to expand at an alarming rate and extra judicial executions, arbitrary arrests and the destruction of private Palestinian homes, farms and institutions continue unabated. Israel routinely violates even the most basic provisions of international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva Convention and has yet to withdraw its forces as required by Security Council resolutions 1402 and 1403/2002) and General Assembly resolution ES-10/11. Israel also continues to illegally occupy Syrian and Lebanese territory and to violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon. 

Mr President 

The draft resolution before this Council seeks to address the fundamental requirements for the resumption of a meaningful political process that would lead to a comprehensive solution to the Middle East crisis. It is in line with the Arab peace plan and the recommendations of the Quartet. For any lasting peace in the Middle East to take hold the Israeli military must withdraw immediately to the positions held prior to September 2000 and all acts of violence, including military acts; destruction and terror must cease immediately. 

We call on the Security Council to immediately adopt this resolution. As the NAM Ministers made clear, the Security Council must ensure the implementation of all its resolutions otherwise its credibility will be undermined. 

Thank you

ANNEXE:

STATEMENT BY THE SECRETARY-GENERAL TO THE SECURITY COUNCIL ON THE SITUATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 23 SEPTEMBER 2002

Mr. President, 

Less than a week ago, the Quartet met in this building and agreed on the need for a road map to achieve a permanent settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

We agreed that it was essential and urgent for the Palestinians to take all possible steps to improve security, by bringing an immediate end to violence and terror. But we also agreed that it had to be done within the context of an overall plan, which must address the political, economic, humanitarian and institutional dimensions of the problem. 

We agreed that the plan must spell out reciprocal steps to be taken by the parties in each of three phases, with a Quartet mechanism to monitor and assess each party's progress against specific benchmarks, culminating in the negotiation of a final and comprehensive settlement by 2005. We agreed, in short, on the need for a process driven both by performance and by hope. 

That linkage is essential, and I cannot emphasize it too strongly. Yes, we need performance. But there must be hope, too. For without hope there will be no performance.  

So far from seeing the first steps towards implementing the Quartet's vision, the events of the past few days represent a tragic step in the opposite direction.  

Until last week, there had been six weeks of relative calm in Israel itself, but during the same period in the occupied territory at least 54 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military operations. 

Then, in the space of three days – 17-19 September – we saw a bomb explode in a Palestinian school, and two new suicide attacks perpetrated against Israeli civilians inside Israel. 

I have said over and over again that such acts are "morally repugnant" – and I say it again today. Each time those words have to be repeated, they become even more grimly apt.

These acts are to be condemned, both for the utterly unjustifiable loss of life, the pain and misery that they cause to innocent people, and because they set back even further the prospect for a just and lasting settlement. They strike directly at that very hope which – as the Quartet agreed – is an essential driver of political progress.

Once again I urge all Palestinians, especially the leaders of all political factions, to renounce this wicked instrument of terror – clearly and irrevocably, now and forever. 

Last week, the Quartet recognised Israel's legitimate security concerns, and repeated its demand that terrorist attacks be stopped once and for all. It also repeated its call on the Palestinian Authority to work with the United States and regional partners to reform security services and combat terrorism.  

But how can the Palestinians respond to that call, if what is left of the civil and security infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority – which already gravely weakened – is now in the process of being destroyed? Surely, such destruction will only set back even further the prospects for implementing necessary reforms and ensuring real improvements in the Authority's security performance? 

Similarly, the continuing destruction of ministries' and municipalities' capacity to provide basic services – such as water, electricity, and education – will hamper and even undermine efforts to meet humanitarian needs, whether by Palestinian or by international organisations.

Further misery is hardly a basis for progress, whether political, security or economic. 

The Quartet and our Arab partners in the region are working intensively with the Palestinian Authority to see that security and institutional reforms are implemented.

But we can succeed only if the Government of Israel actively supports the process, rather than hindering it.  

The systematic and literal grinding down of the Authority's Headquarters in Ramallah, in which a further ten Palestinians have been killed, is also likely to cause greater political instability in the West Bank and Gaza.  

Despite the re-imposition of curfews in most West Bank Towns, it has already prompted mass demonstrations in a number of Palestinian cities, including Ramallah, and efforts to address key reform issues have been postponed as a result.  

This too will set back the prospects for resuming the peace process. Once again, I appeal to Israel to take greater care to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians, and to refrain from policies and actions that are in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.  

My Special Envoy is in constant contact with both parties, and has repeatedly spoken to Chairman Arafat and other senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah. He met this morning with Foreign Minister Peres, and is now in Ramallah with the Secretary-General of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Abu Mazen. He is working in close coordination with the other members of the Quartet and key actors in the region. 

Mr. President,  

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not going to be resolved by military might alone, or by violent means of any kind. A policy based on forcing the other side to capitulate is a bankrupt policy. It is not working, and it will never work. It only encourages desperation. It weakens moderates, and strengthens extremists.  

In the end there will have to be a political settlement, negotiated between the two peoples on an equal basis; a settlement in which – as this Council has said – two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side within secure and recognised borders.  

Why not reach that ends sooner rather than later? How many hundreds or thousands more have to die, how much more pain and misery must be endured, before leaders on both sides find the vision and the courage to accept the inevitable?  

Mr. President,  

Only a settlement on that basis can bring real peace and security to both peoples, and only a comprehensive approach can bring a settlement on that basis nearer.  

The so-called "sequential" approach, which insists on full security as a precondition for progress on the political, humanitarian and institutional fronts, has clearly failed.  

Israel needs to understand that there will be no lasting security without a political settlement – and therefore, even while defending itself against terrorist attacks, Israel should cooperate actively with the Quartet's efforts to reach such a settlement within the next three years.  

The Palestinians, on their side, need to understand that there will be no settlement without lasting security for Israel.  

Both sides must be urged – by all that have any influence over them – to accept and act on those understandings, so that at last there can be peace and security for both peoples, as part of a just, lasting and comprehensive settlement in the Middle East.  

But I fear this vision will remain a distant mirage, so long as our television screens – and the minds of all those involved – are filled with ugly scenes of death and destruction, whether in the streets of Tel Aviv or at the mukataa in Ramallah.  

Mr. President,  

More than eighty years ago the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote of a time in his country when 

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the worldΌ

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst  

Are full of passionate intensity."  

Alas, those words have been true of many times and many places since, and they seem all too true of the situation between Israelis and Palestinians today.  

But let us not resign ourselves to that state of affairs. Let us help the best on both sides, Palestinian and Israeli, to regain their passion for peace, and the conviction that brought them so close to agreement two years ago.

Let us resist the downward spiral into anarchy. Let us Rebuild a centre that can hold.  

Thank you very much.