As other documents in this collection on Moroccan nationalists in 1947 and 1950 have exemplified, the United Nations was an important arena in decolonization struggles for Arabs, as it was for Asians and Africans as e.g. Alanna O’Malley’s The Diplomacy of Decolonisation: America, Britain, and the United Nations during the Congo crisis, 1960-1964 (2018) has shown. In this regard, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was founded in 1964 and taken over by the Fatah movement in 1969, was no exception.

To be sure, Palestinian organizations including Fatah and the PLO decried key UN actions. One was the UN Palestine partition plan of 1947; another was UN Security Council resolution 242 of November 1967. Calling upon Israel to withdraw “from territories occupied” during the Six-Day War in June and calling for the “acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace,” it did not mention Palestine or the Palestinians. Even so, the PLO sought to get access to the UN and UN recognition. A crucial landmark on this road was the address to the UN in New York in November 1974 by Yassir Arafat (1929-2004), a Fatah co-founder in 1959 and from 1969 PLO chairman.

Arafat did not speak at the Security Council, which was and is dominated by its five veto-carrying permanent members Britain, China, France, the United States, and the USSR/Russia. Rather, he addressed the UN General Assembly (UNGA), where from the 1960s Third World states were in the majority; his speech was the first time that the UNGA allowed a non-state representative to attend its plenary session. The UNGA invited the PLO after having decided, in September, to begin separate hearings on Palestine (rather than making Palestine part of general Middle Eastern hearings), and after the PLO was internationally recognized as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, a landmark accomplishment for the organization. The UNGA president who introduced Arafat, Abdelaziz Bouteflika (1937-2021), was the Foreign Minister of Algeria, which since its independence in 1962 had supported the Palestinian cause organizationally, militarily, and politically. Arafat spoke in Arabic; the below text is the official UN English translation. Arafat did not write the text all by himself; several PLO officials and Palestinians close to the PLO, including Edward Said, assisted, as Timothy Brennan has noted in Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said (2021). Later in November 1974, the UNGA inter alia decided to give the PLO observer status and affirmed Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

In a meeting, the Working Group started to develop the wording of the Council Decision on the NPT Review and Extension Conference in 1995

In 1994, the European Union decided for the first time to play a role in the NPT Review Conference, with a view towards the NPT Review and Extension Conference in 1995. This note stipulated that the EU should demonstrate consensus in support of extending the NPT and persuading non-members to join the treaty.

This presentation, given by Felix Oboussier, discusses the potential impacts the NPT may have on the Euratom Treaty. He concludes that a definitive opinion on the whether or not the requirements and objections of non-nuclear member states have been fully taken into account seems premature.

This article by Jan Gijssels discusses the legal implications of Euratom and the proposed Non-Proliferation Treaty.

This document includes council directives to the Commission for the negotiation of a Euratom verification agreement in accordance with Article III, 4, of the NPT.

This interview with M. Margulies describes the Euratom Treaty as a tangible manifestation of a desire for peace.

This note from the Euratom Commision details the possible construction of an isotope separation plant in the European Community.

This note to the Council of Ministers details the jurisdiction and consequences stemming from the American request that an Article III be included into the NPT.

This memo to the Council of Ministers from the Euratom Commission examines the Russian draft of Article III of the NPT. It draws attention to the gradual convergence of Russian and American positions on the control clauses of the Treaty.