Guilty Of Perpetuating The Palestinians’ Plight

From the birth of Israel in 1948 to this day, no individual entity, group or state has undermined the Palestinian cause and perpetuated their plight more than the Arab states collectively. It remains up to the Arab leaders, especially those of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to seek an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict along the lines of Crown Prince Abdullah's peace proposals and resolve, once and for all, the Palestinians' tragic situation. Secretary Powell's appeal to the Arab-heads-of state to beseech Arafat to end the violence is on target, but it sorely lacks the punch needed to force him to come to terms with Israel's reality and negotiate in earnest a lasting peace.

For nearly 54 years, the Arab states have used and abused the Palestinian people and manipulated their cause for domestic consumption and because of inter-Arab rivalry:

In the war of 1948, the Arab states encouraged the Palestinians to leave their homes and return to collect the spoils of the war: the result was the creation of a massive refugee crisis. Following their military defeat in that war, only Jordan granted the Palestinians citizenship. The rest of the Arab states preserved their status as aliens, with limited civil and political rights.

Following the 1956 and 1967 wars, and in succeeding years, the number of refugees continued to swell. The Arab states, nevertheless, insisted on maintaining the refugee status of the Palestinians. Year after year, Arab leaders demanded and received UN aid to keep the refugee problem alive, with the Palestinians languishing in despicable conditions in camps.

The Arab states deliberately promoted Palestinian factionalism, with each country co-opting one or more Palestinian factions to do its bidding in its struggle with Israel. (Syria still harbors 7 Palestinian groups, Iraq 2, Lybia 1.) Each host country offers them money, training camps and weapons, playing one Palestinian faction against the other to secure their loyalty to, and increase their dependence on, the host country.

Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states strongly opposed the Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations (1979) and counseled the Palestinians to reject the Egyptian-Israeli-American invitation to join the peace talks to the detriment of the Palestinians.

Throughout the 60's, 70's and 80's, the PLO maintained uneasy and often adversarial relations with the Arab host countries. In 1970 they fought a civil war in Jordan; between 1975 and 1982 it was mired in the civil war in Lebanon. In addition, most of the Palestinian population there were expelled from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states because of the PLO's support of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. More Palestinians were killed by other Arabs than by Israelis. The intense animosity and hatred continue to this day, especially among the Syrians and the Palestinians.

Finally, when former Israeli Prime Minister Barak offered the Palestinians a framework for peace, not dissimilar to the current Saudi proposal, both Saudi Arabia and Egypt told Arafat to reject it. And since the second Intifadah erupted 19 months ago, most Arab countries, except Jordan and Mauritania, have encouraged the Palestinians to violently resist Israeli occupation, provided financial help to the families of suicide bombers and supplied militant factions with weapons and explosives to terrorize Israel.
I do not mean to suggest by this brief summary that Israel has had no part in aggravating and prolonging the Palestinian plight and is exempt from any past or present responsibility. I do suggest, however, that had the Arab states, following the Oslo I agreement in 1993, strongly supported Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and consistently and sincerely rejected any reversion to violence and terror, a Palestinian state may have already been established on most of the West Bank and Gaza. However strained Arafat's relations have been over the years with many of the Arab leaders, he took his cues from them and followed their general sentiments.

For once the United States must come to grips with a simple reality: the Arab leaders, especially Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Mubarak of Egypt, can, and indeed must, exert whatever pressure it takes for Arafat to realize that ending the violence is a sine-qua-non to any meaningful dialogue with Israel. Every Israeli leader, regardless of his or her political leaning, knows that there is no military solution to the conflict with the Palestinians. But every Israeli citizen also knows that as long as the Palestinians revert to terror as a tool to exact more concessions, or compel the Israelis to evacuate the territories or simply to obliterate Israel (a goal Hamas and Jihad openly seek), Israel will resort to brutal force to disabuse them of the notion that violence and terror can work. The West Bank is not Southern Lebanon, and those young-guard Palestinians who have drawn a parallel between the two, believing they can force Israel out of the West Bank by sheer force, have made a tragic mistake.

The Arab heads-of-state must realize that, even without suicide bombings and constant threats to liquidate Israel emanating form Saddam Hussein and various extremist groups, Israelis have a national obsession with security. Their obsession originates from centuries of being a prey, targets of discrimination, genocide, abuse and violence. However significant Crown Prince Abdullah's peace proposal and however important its endorsement by all of the Arab leaders, it is of no use when they condone rather than condemn, in the strongest terms, the Nataniah massacre (which precipitated Israel's current incursion into the West Bank) and all other suicide bombings. Israelis cannot be expected to respond, even to such a peace gesture, when suicide bombers pose a real and present danger to their very survival, shattering the last vestige of every Israeli's personal safety.

Prime Minister Sharon may or may not be the Israeli leader who will deliver peace acceptable to both parties. But if the Arab leaders sincerely want an equitable agreement, they must first renounce violence in any form against Israel and exert the strongest economic and political pressure on the Palestinian leadership to do likewise. Only then will they begin to gradually restore the Israelis' confidence in the peace process. And only then will the Israelis direct their government to make the necessary concessions for peace or put in place a new government should Sharon refuse for ideological reasons. Obviously, other critical elements must also quickly fall into place, including an immediate freeze on building new settlements or expanding existing ones, the opening of political negotiation, and the initiation of full and genuine cooperation on security issues.

The United States must be clear and unequivocal. We must demand that Arab leaders put an end to, condemn and oppose any form of violence and take every practical measure to choke off the terrorists' lifeline of support. If these leaders fail, it will unfortunately be consistent with their decades-long abuse of the Palestinians, except this time violence and terrorism will come back to haunt them, shaking the very foundations on which they stand.