Don’t let Israel mediate between you
Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times ON-POINT was the one who said Arabs are best in losing chances, mainly in the political arena and specifically in the issue concerning Palestine with the distribution of its blood among tribal groups and personal interests.
Instead of accepting the 1948 partition and embarking towards building an independent country with Jerusalem (the entire city of Jerusalem and not part of it) as its capital, the Arabs rejected that proposal. Thereafter, Palestine was lost in the avalanche of slogans and consecutive defeats.
Before that, during World War II, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin Al-Husseini attracted the animosity of Western countries towards the Palestinians by declaring his support for the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
This stance taken by Al-Husseini was the cause for the loss of the first chance which came three years after the end of the war when the Western countries and Europe stood with the Jews and supported them in establishing their country.
The second chance was lost in the 1960s when Arabs disagreed on the “Rogers Plan” which aimed to achieve an end to belligerence in the Arab–Israeli conflict following the Six-Day War and the War of Attrition.
The plan accepted by the then-Egyptian President Jamal Abdul Nasser was rejected by other Arabs. In his sevenhour meeting with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Alexandria, Abdul Nasser asked him, “How many years will it take to liberate Palestine?” and Arafat responded, “20 years”. Abdul Nasser then told Arafat that he can regain the West Bank and Gaza in just one year through the Rogers Plan, and then the Palestinians can continue with the pursuit of liberating other occupied land for 19 years.
At that time, Israel had occupied the entire Palestine, Sinai and Golan Heights.
Today, Arabs are demanding for the return of the June 1967 borderlines. With this, they are in chimes with theory of the former Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol who said, “We are not in need of peace with the Arabs. All we need to do is to engage in a war with them after every ten years, through which we can occupy new land. Eventually, these people will forget the previously occupied land and will instead demand the land that was last occupied”.
We have to acknowledge the fact that Arabs have lost many opportunities in the past and are still losing such opportunities due to divided stances and volatility of their options. On the other hand, Israel continues to deal with the world with the same strategy since 1947.
Israel is requesting for peace but the Arabs are the ones
who are refusing it. Whenever there is a plan for peace, the Arabs undermine the bearer of such plans. This is what happened with the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat over the Camp David Accord. Israel till date continues to deal with this accord, which is considered to be a thorn under the foot because the accord has become a testimony of Israel’s evasiveness in declaring its intention for peace. Four decades later, events have proven the veracity of Sadat’s position.
In one of the Arab summits convened by the late King Fahad bin Abdulaziz and the late American President Ronald Reagan, King Fahad asked President Reagan, “Why are you prioritizing Israel’s interests over the rights of Arabs. Why do you sympathize with them?”
Reagan replied, “Israel presents to us peace proposals. It has a unified stance and is a recognized country. On the other hand, the Arabs only talk about violence and throwing Jews into the sea”.
In response, King Fahad presented his peace initiative in 1981. At that time he was the Crown Prince, and this initiative was endorsed in the 12th Arab Summit held in Fez in 1982. However, it ended up dying under the pressure imposed by Arab nations, especially Egypt and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
Since then, the discord orchestra of Arabs’ subverting rhetoric against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia began. This was another lost chance.
The late King Abdullah later presented another peace initiative, which was endorsed in the Beirut Summit in 2002. However, it was also bombarded by the Arabs’ subverting rhetoric. Meanwhile, Israel continued to expand further into the land of Palestine, which almost reached a point of becoming unsuitable to establish a country that can survive.
All of this is happening while Arabs are preoccupied with themselves and their “Arab Spring” which destroyed Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Tunisia. If not for the wisdom of its leaders and their sagacity in extinguishing the flames of sedition, Egypt and the Gulf Cooperation Council member states would also have faced disaster and misery.
Arabs have to acknowledge that Israel won in all this. Among us are those who are doing well with rhetoric, slogans and subversion of anyone who declares peace initiative that strives to complete its cause, which can only be stopped through peace.
This peace should be controlled by conditions which can preserve what is left of Palestine so that we do not get to a point where the Palestinians become an Arab problem. Then we may end up turning to Israel to mediate between us.