By Barry Werner
It is a mistake to view the Palestinian/Israeli conflict as
a dispute just between the Palestinian Arabs and the Israelis. It started long
before there was such as thing as Palestinian identity and it has never been
just a local conflict. Until the PLO was given the role of the sole
representative of the Palestinian People, there was no such thing as a Palestinian
People. The Arab world as a whole started the conflict to prevent a sovereign
Jewish community from being established in the lands that the followers of
Mohammed conquered in the 7’Th Century. The Arab war aim was to merge Palestine
with “Greater Syria”, not to create an independent state for the Arabs of
Palestine. Most of the Muslim world joined in and it became a wider Arab/Muslim
conflict against Israel.
The conflict became internationalized even further. The
Middle East was a locus of competition between the West and the Soviet Union in
the Cold War. The Soviet Union armed the Arabs against Israel and the Kremlin
demonized Zionism (the political left in the Western world still repeats that
propaganda today). The Non-Aligned group of countries used opposition to Israel
as a way to express their anger over past Western colonialism and sided with
the Arabs. The West’s geopolitical and economic interests were seriously affected
and so resolving the conflict became an obsession for them and for the UN.
After the combined Arab countries (and Cuba) failed to
destroy Israel the Arab world created the PLO to continue the fighting.
Reframing the conflict as a struggle for Palestinian nationalism rather than as
a war by the Arab World against the Jewish People so soon after the Holocaust
was intended to make the Arab cause more palatable to the West, but only as
long as the ultimate goal of destroying the Jewish state was accomplished.
The international character of the conflict can be seen
clearly in the 1970’s worldwide Arab rampage of terrorism and plane hijackings
and in the attack on the world’s economy by use of an oil embargo. It was a
global Arab attack on the Western world. The Arab world learned that
terrorizing the west was a winning strategy that turned the West against Israel.
(In recent years the Islamist jihadi rampage in the West is more about
demonstrating the dominance of Islam than it is about the Arab conflict with
Israel. Israel is now a secondary target; jihadis attack Jews everywhere without
regard to their relationship to Israel. The Islamist jihadi movement is about
world domination.)
As a consequence of the Western world trying to appease the
Arab/Muslim world, the conflict over the land of Palestine was not allowed to
be resolved normally. The background to the conflict over the land of Palestine
is as follows. In 1948 Jordan and Egypt illegally occupied the West Bank and Gaza.
In 1967 Israel liberated the occupied land. But even though the Arab world had
seized the land illegally they wanted the land back. The Western world wanted
to appease the Arabs and tried to give the West Bank and Gaza back to the Arabs
in various “peace initiatives” of its own and in UNSC Resolution 2334.
It is very important to see how the international character
of the Arab/Israeli conflict changed with time.
The Arab world’s goals changed drastically with the Six Day
War. A new Arab goal emerged, namely erasing the Arab world’s dishonorable
defeat in that war. Russia massively resupplied the Arab armies and the Arab world
started yet another war in 1973, the Yom Kippur War, but lost again. In 2002,
the Arab League proposed the “Arab Peace Initiative”, offering Israel
normalization in the region if, but only if, Israel agreed to erase every
centimeter of territorial gain it made in the Six Day War. Since the intention
was to erase the Arab world’s dishonorable defeat, Israel was either to give
back every centimeter of territory conquered in the Six Day War or there would
be no deal. (In recent years, the Arab League softened the terms and allowed
for an equal exchange of land, and Israel agreed to accept the offer but only
as the start of negotiations.)
In recent years the situation changed drastically again. Now
the major Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries, and
Morocco) see Israel as a potential ally against the religious fanaticism that
threatens to destabilize them, the threat of expansionist Iran, and the many
severe economic and ecological threats the Arab countries face.
However, the PLO, and its “rejectionist” offshoots, such as
Hamas, etc, keeps on fighting and expecting the Arab world and the West to back
them up as before (Hamas also looks to Iran for support).
The Western world is still trying to appease the rejectionists as if there has been no change in the goals
of the moderate Arab governments.
Two conclusions can be drawn.
First, the West should respond to the new international
reality and shift its emphasis from supporting the rejectionist war against
Israel to encouraging and supporting cooperation between the moderate Arab
world and Israel. The West should encourage the Arab world to normalize
relations with Israel and partner with Israel and the moderate Arab governments
in addressing the many serious problems that confront the Middle East.
Second, to finally bring an end to the Palestinian/Israeli
conflict it should be disentangled from the web of international intrigue and
resolved on its own merits. The Arabs waged an “all-or-nothing” war to destroy
Israel and lost. An objective peace initiative would emphasize these points:
- Israel has by far the strongest claim to the land liberated in the Six Day War of 1967 (the West Bank and Gaza);
- It is reasonable for Israel not to allow the hostile, antisemitic, Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza to return to Israel or to become citizens of Israel because they have been taught antisemitism and hatred for Israel for as long as the Palestinian Authority, the PA, has been given the authority to do so by the Oslo Accords. (Not preparing its people for peace was an essential violation of the Oslo Accords by the PA, it’s reasonable that they should have to pay the price for violating the fundamental intention of the Oslo Accords.)
- For humanitarian reasons, unless the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza can be relocated to other Arab countries (not a likely scenario since all the other Arab countries don’t want them and they have good reasons to be afraid of them) they should be given an independent but disarmed state of their own, or several small independent disarmed states, or whatever, where they presently reside, on only whatever land it takes to maintain them in Gaza or the West Bank. But they should not be given the whole West Bank.
- The Palestinian Arabs and the Arab/Muslim world as a whole should agree to an end of claims against Israel and publicly recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.
- The Arab/Muslim world should acknowledge Israel for its democratic, inclusive multi-cultural character and its defense of Arab rights and Muslim religious sites.
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