UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted after the June 1967 Six Day War, was a non-binding recommendation for settling the Arab-Israel conflict. Israel and the Arab States agreed to accept the recommendations. Syria and the PLO at first refused to accept it but later, they also agreed to accept it, and thus it became the accepted framework for ending the Arab Israel conflict. The preamble of the Resolution states that acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible and that the conflict must be settled by peaceful means. The operative parts of the Resolution call for Israel to withdraw from territories occupied in the Six Day War, for the Arab States to end the state of war with Israel, for freedom of navigation in international waterways and for a just settlement of the refugee problem. The phrasing used in the clause about Israel withdrawal is “from territories.” There is a continuous disagreement as to whether this implies withdrawal from all the territories occupied or that the issue of borders is subject to negotiation between the parties. By accepting the Resolution, the Arab States apparently abandoned any legal basis for demanding Israel withdrawal from beyond territories occupied in the Six Day War.

A presentation of the concluding remarks and main submissions on the issues discussed in Chapters 1 to 6 of the book.

The aplication of the law of neutrality in a civil war setting was contingent upon the recognition of belligerency of the rebels. However, the experience of the Spanish Civil war with the ill-fated policy of non-intervention in favour of either side in the conflict has established the inadmissibility of neutrality in non-international armed conflicts. Thus, neutrality is not applied as a matter of principle and by virtue of the rule that in the event of a civil war, assistance is permissible to the government but not to the rebels.