What The Arabs Are Saying About Israel

Dr. Alex Grobman

Hudson New York

14 August 09

Why Can’t the Arabs Accept a Jewish state?

Throughout the years, the Arabs have not stopped trying to eliminate Israel. Alhough they live in a number of different sovereign states, the Arabs view themselves as part of a single Arab Nation extending ‘from the [Atlantic] to the [Arab/Persian] Gulf.’ This is not a future objective in pan-Arab canon, but “a present reality,” notes historian Walid Khalidi.1

For historical, cultural and religious reasons, pan-Arabism resonates among all segments of Arab society, endowing them with “sanctity as dogmas.” The “de-Arabization of Arab territory” in Palestine is viewed as a breach of the unity of the Arab people because it divides its “Asiatic from its African halves.” This is a violation of Arab lands and “an affront to the “dignity of the [Arab] Nation.”2

In other words, the Arabs regard themselves as the only “legitimate repository of national self-determination” in the Middle East. No one questions their right for independence, but the rejection of the same right of other national groups in the region for self-rule “borders on political racism,” states Shlomo Avineri of The Hebrew University. Arab repudiation of Israel’s legitimate right to exist is part of this deep-seated belief that only Arabs are entitled to have a nation-state in the Middle East.3

A People’s War

Arab failure to destroy Israel by force has led the Arabs to adopt the Marxist-Leninist “people’s war” strategy employing political and military methods used so effectively in China and Vietnam, according to historian Joel Fishman. Since the late 1960s, the political campaign has sought to divide Israeli society and delegitimize the country through incitement in Arab textbooks and media, and demonize her at the U.N. by branding Israel a racist and pariah state. 4

Part of this political strategy was to sign the Oslo Accords in order to secure land from which to launch a guerilla war to demolish the Jewish state and replace it with an Arab one. The late Faisal Husseini, Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, called this ruse a “Trojan Horse. “ 5

Husseini urged the Arabs “to look at the Oslo Agreement and at other agreements as ‘temporary procedures, or phased goals,’ this means we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them. Our ultimate goal is [still] the liberation of all historical Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, even if this means that the conflict will last for another thousand years or for many generations.” The negotiations were a means toward “an extension of continuing conflict and not an opportunity for two peoples to reach a new rapprochement.”6

Agreeing to temporary concessions as a means to achieve their primary goal was suggested to Yasser Arafat and Abu Iyad, his top lieutenant, at a meeting with the North Vietnamese in early 1970. “Our ultimate strategic objective was to set up a unitary democratic state on all Palestine,” Abu Iyad avowed, “but we hadn’t provided for any intermediary stage, or any provisional compromise.”7

Members of Vietnamese Politbureau explained how in their struggle for independence they had made difficult compromises, including dividing the country into two separate independent states, while waiting for a more positive shift in the balance of power to them.8

Fatah (the largest Palestinian political party) accepted this strategy, which Abu Iyad later justified by pointing out that David Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders had accepted partition in 1947, although they claimed all of Palestine. The same applied for North and South Korea. Even Lenin had forfeited a large section of Soviet territory in the Brest-Litovsk treaty, to ensure the survival of the Bolshevik government.9

Weren’t the Arabs entitled to the same “margin of flexibility and maneuver” the Zionists had afforded themselves, he asked, especially since Israel would “remain invincible in the foreseeable future?” There is a difference, he noted, between surrender and compromise. 10

If the Arabs were prepared to accept an interim solution such a two-state solution or a series of solutions, without acknowledging that this was only an interim phase, this would defuse criticism of the PLO in the West while playing for time to achieve their objective. Iyad observed that their Vietnamese comrades do not “hesitate to sacrifice the detail so as to preserve the essential.”211

The Fifth Palestinian National Congress (February 1-4, 1969) passed the resolution confirming this policy. By early 1974, all factions of the Resistance agreed to found an independent state on “any part of Palestinian territory to be liberated,’’ with the proviso that “the strategic objective of the PLO continues to be the establishment of a democratic state on the whole of Palestinian territory.” 12

Not long after the Congress ended, feuds erupted among various groups, with the more radical elements denouncing the agreement as a “liquidation text.” One poster had a map of Palestine riddled with ten bullet holes representing the ten articles that had just been ratified. 13

At the Fatah’s Sixth General Congress in August in Bethlehem, the first since 1989, the debate over strategy continued. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared that “although peace is our choice, we reserve the right to resistance, legitimate under international law.”
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