United Nations, Dec 03: Israel and the Palestinians staked out diametrically opposed positions in an all-day debate in the UN General Assembly, with mirror image views of history dating back to 1947. Israel's UN Ambassador Daniel Gillerman kicked off the debate yesterday by listing a number of peace overtures he said the Palestinians had missed, beginning with the Assembly's 1947 vote to partition 23 percent of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

''Indeed, this...precipitated a massive Arab invasion aimed at destroying the Jewish state before it was even established,'' he said. After Arab armies were defeated at the end of the 1948 war, Israel held all of western Palestine except the West Bank, which was captured by Jordan, and Gaza, which was seized by Egypt.

Gillerman and nearly every other ambassador in the United Nations spoke during the day, tackling the ''question of Palestine'' on the anniversary of the partition and following up by addressing ''the situation in the West Asia''. The overlapping debates will result in a plethora of resolutions, most of them condemning Israel for its continued occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, its settlements on Palestinian lands and its closure of borders.

Gillerman said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was an excuse for West Asian governments to overlook their own failures and lack of democracy from ''Yemen to Syria''.

''If we want to truly get to the heart of understanding and improving the situation in the West Asia, we must look to the lack of democratic values and institutions,'' he said. Bureau Report