Summary
Soviet Foreign Minister whose speech to the UN General Assembly on 26 November 1947, quoted at length in Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, is the book’s proof that Soviet support for partition was support for both peoples of Palestine — the consistency against which Chapter 7 measures the Soviet Union’s April 1956 Middle East declaration (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.387-388).
Details
- Gromyko told the General Assembly on 26/11/47, during the Soviet Union’s struggle for the creation of the State of Israel, that the partition proposal and the committee’s approval of it “are not aimed against the Arabs. That resolution was not intended to harm either of the peoples who inhabit Palestine. On the contrary: in the opinion of the Soviet delegation, that resolution was intended for the benefit of the basic national interests of the two peoples, for the benefit of the interests of the Jewish people and of the Arab people” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.387).
- He distinguished Arab representatives’ declarations, “apparently been influenced by momentary moods”, from “the fundamental interests of the Arab people”, and concluded: “The delegation of the Soviet Union is convinced that the Arabs will yet look to Moscow, not only one time, with hope for the Soviet Union’s aid in their struggle for legal interests, and in their attempt to liberate themselves from the residues of foreign dependence” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.387-388).
- The book comments that the last sentence “has the ring of prophecy about it in our day. But whoever tries to understand Soviet policy in the Middle East and other parts of the world knows that this is not prophecy, but foresight which stems from political reasoning well thought-out for the long term, and complete consistency” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.388).
Related pages
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Soviet Union, UN General Assembly Resolution 181