The Full Story of Resolution 242: How the US Sold Out the Palestinians

Henry Kissinger writes in his memoirs that when, upon entering the Nixon administration as national security adviser in 1969, he first heard the phrase "a just and lasting peace within secure and recognized borders", he thought the incantation so platitudinous that he accused the speaker of pulling his leg. But Kissinger quickly learned that this central tenet of UN Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied during the 1967 war in return for an Arab pledge of full peace and recognition, was deadly serious. The resolution had been adopted more than a year before Kissinger arrived on the scene, but he played a key role in setting it, and the land-for-peace doctrine that is its centerpiece, into concrete as the basis for U.S. policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict. For 25 years, the resolution remained the bedrock of all efforts to forge a peace agreement through every subsequent U.S. administration--until President Bill Clinton arrived on the scene and until, ironically, the peace process revved up in earnest.