Following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Security Council adopted Resolution 242.
Perhaps the best-known Security Council resolution in the first 50 years of the UN, Resolution 242 stated that "a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" should include the application of two principles: (1) "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict," and (2) "acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."
In short, the resolution called for withdrawal of Israeli troops in exchange for recognition of Israel and the renunciation of all threats to destroy it.
"The aims of the two sides do not conflict," Lord Caradon, the British Ambassador, told the Security Council. "They converge. They supplement and support each other. To imagine that one can be secured without the other is a delusion. They are of equal validity and equal necessity."
From United Nations: The First Fifty Years, by Stanley Meisler. Copyright 1995 by Stanley Meisler. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
