Arab League punts violence

I WRITE as a great admirer of William Saunderson-Meyer. In last Saturday’s “Jaundiced Eye” he has not considered an important aspect of the tragedy that has been unfolding in the Middle East for more than a century.

The Arab League does not recognise the state of Israel, so it should come as no surprise that it does not recognise Jerusalem as its capital.

The League of Arab States, since its founding in 1945, has hardly been a model for peaceful settlement of disputes. Prior to the establishment of the Jewish state, among others, the league took the following steps:

In December 1945, the Arab League launched a boycott of “Zionist goods” that continues to this day.

In December 1946, it rejected the first proposed Palestine partition plans, claiming “that Palestine is a part of the Arab motherland”.

In October 1948, it rejected the UN “Partition Plan” for Palestine adopted by the General Assembly in Resolution 181.

At the time, the secretary-general of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, referring at a Cairo press conference to incipient conflict with Israel, said: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

The traditions of hostility and rejection continued:

In October 1949, the Arab League declared that negotiation with

Israel by any Arab state would be in violation of article 18 of the Arab League.

In April 1950, it called for severance of relations with any Arab state that engaged in relations or contacts with Israel and prohibited member states from negotiating unilateral peace with Israel.

In March 1979, it suspended

Egypt’s membership in the league (retroactively) from the date of its signing a peace treaty with Israel.

The Arab League, which has systematically opposed and blocked peace efforts for nearly 70 years, and is in a declared state of war with Israel, is threatening violence once again. Today, the reason is recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; what will it be tomorrow? Is this what the Arab states mean by withdrawing from the “peace process?”