Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 33

 

Two words explain the entire Arab-Israeli conflict  

As a child, I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories. I still do. A large part of their appeal was the wisdom of the mythical detective. Here is one gem: ‘There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.’ [1] (We’ll return to the ‘obvious fact’ in question shortly).

Let me offer you a story worthy of the great sleuth. It is a tale of two tiny, monosyllabic words. Together they provide the answer to the question that sits at the heart of what has been called the world’s most intractable and complex conflict, the 100-year war between the Arabs and the Jews. The question is: why is peace so elusive? And the words provide the answer. They are yes and no, the diametrically opposite responses to the multiple attempts to achieve peace:

Yes – the Zionist/Israeli response to Arab demands for recognition and sovereignty.

No – the Arab/Palestinian response to Jewish demands for recognition and sovereignty.

Those two words explain the nature, duration and intractability of the conflict. They also hold the key to its resolution.

Arab rejectionism has resulted in a dismal historical record. The complete list of opportunities missed by Israel’s enemies to achieve the so-called two-state solution (2SS) is too long to reproduce but here is a sample (and hold tight, this will make your head spin): 

1919: If Prince Faisal had respected rather than reneged on his agreement with Chaim Weizmann and accepted Jewish as well as Arab sovereignty in the region.

1922: If Britain’s effective partition of Mandatory Palestine into an eastern Arab territory and a western Jewish one had satisfied Arab leaders.

1937: If Arab leaders had, like the Jews, accepted the partition proposal of the British Peel Commission.

1947: If Arab leaders had, like the Jews, accepted the partition proposal of the UN Special Commission on Palestine.

1948-67: If the Jordanian and Egyptian leaders had established a Palestinian state during their occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.

1949: If Arab leaders had withdrawn their insistence that the return of any refugees was conditional on (or a first step towards) the dissolution of Israel.

1964: If Arab leaders had rejected rather than supported the newly formed Palestine Liberation Organisation’s declared aim of destroying Israel. 

1967: If Arab leaders had, like Israel, accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242 instead of issuing the Khartoum Declaration: no peace, no recognition, no negotiations.

1973: If Arab leaders had, like Israel, accepted UN Security Council Resolution 338 (that reiterated Resolution 242).

1978: If Yasser Arafat had accepted the US-Israeli proposal at Camp David for a five-year period of Palestinian autonomy to be followed by a final settlement.

1993-95: If the PLO had fulfilled their commitments at Oslo to make peace with Israel rather than re-igniting their campaign of terrorism.

2000-1: If Arafat had accepted Israel’s offer (at Camp David and Taba) of Palestinian statehood in over 90 per cent of the disputed territories.

2002-3: If Arafat had, like Israel, accepted the Bush Roadmap rather than sabotaging it with terrorism and a demand for the return of the Arab refugees.

2007-8: If Mahmoud Abbas had accepted Israeli PM Olmert’s offer (at Annapolis) of Palestinian statehood in 94 per cent of the disputed territories.

2014: If Abbas had, like Israel, accepted the Kerry-Allen framework for territorial compromise designed to lead to the 2SS.

2016: If Abbas had, like Israel, accepted the Biden peace initiative to revive negotiations with Israel. 

2020: If Abbas had, like Israel, accepted the Trump Peace to Prosperity Plan (that included the 2SS) as a basis for negotiations.

2022: If Abbas had accepted the Israeli invitation to join the Negev (Abraham Accords) Summit to help revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

1948 – present: If Arab leaders had accepted responsibility for the Jewish Nakba rather than demanding a return of the Arab refugees as part of a demographic strategy to destroy Israel.

 

As for the opportunities to reach the 2SS that were missed by Zionists/Israeli leaders since 1919, I couldn’t find any. None. I challenge anyone to improve on this figure. To avoid disappointing those readers who demand greater ‘balance,’ I will concede that there were a few times when Israeli leaders might have boosted peace hopes by being more accommodating to Arab demands:

1949: If Israel had been more flexible on the Arab refugees at the Lausanne conference.

1967-73: If Israel had abandoned her Conceptzia (complacency) after the Six Day War.

1971: If Israel had been more receptive to Sadat’s offer of an interim agreement.

1982: If Israel had agreed to explore the Reagan plan for Palestinian autonomy.

2002: If Israel had accepted the Arab (Saudi) Peace Initiative as a basis for negotiations.

 

These ‘opportunities’ were flimsy at best: at Lausanne, the Arab delegation refused to sit in the same room as the Israelis; after the Six Day War the Arab world declared Three Nos – no peace, no recognition, no negotiations; the Sadat peace offer demanded a ‘right of return’ of the Arab refugees; Reagan’s Palestinian autonomy plan was rejected by the PLO as well as Israel; and the Arab (Saudi) peace initiative, like Sadat’s offer three decades earlier, required the return of the Arab refugees and their descendants to Israel. 

Note that the 2SS – meaning two-states-for-two peoples not two Arab states – did not figure anywhere on the few occasions when Arab attitudes to Israel appeared to soften. Instead, one wholly unacceptable Arab demand – that Israelis commit national suicide – was never removed from the table throughout the century of conflict. That is the driver of the violence and the reason it has persisted. The ‘complexities’ of the dispute are consequences of that single, ever-present cause that translates into one deadly little Arabic word – la. 

How to explain this destructive mindset that has so often sabotaged the 2SS (or any other path to peace)? In the first place, the 2SS was always a potential outcome rather than a solution or it would have worked by now. Second, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (whom nobody could accuse of being friendly to the Jews) gave the answer in a 1947 speech though nobody seems to have noticed until Schwartz and Wilf recently rediscovered it: ‘For the Jews the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine’ [2]:

In other words, the Jews wanted a state alongside existing or future Arab states while the Arabs (aided and abetted by the Iranians and their proxies since 1979) wanted existing and future Arab states instead of a Jewish one. That rejectionist posture, to which the Palestinians and their allies have adhered with limpet-like ferocity, denies the Jewish people the right to self-determination while demanding the fulfilment of that same right for Arabs. It also happens to be antisemitic through and through [3].

Occasionally, peace talks with neighbouring regimes got off the ground and in the case of Egypt and Jordan bore fruit, even if the harvests turned out to be more meagre than promised. And since 2020, the Abraham Accords have defied expectations and brought about a degree of normalisation between Israel and a handful of Arab states though the latter’s unequivocal recognition of Jewish national rights has yet to be realised. But Israel’s negotiations with her more intransigent opponents – including Syria and the Palestinians – have failed for two reasons: successive Arab leaders never unambiguously accepted Israel’s right to exist as the sovereign state of the Jewish people, nor have they relinquished their demand for the alleged (though legally non-existent) ‘right of return’ of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants. The purpose of the refugees’ return was never a secret – to extinguish the Jewish state demographically rather than physically.

The historical record from 1917 onwards is clear: the Zionists/Israelis have time and again said yes to the partition of Mandatory Palestine and self-determination for both peoples through territorial compromise. The Arabs/Palestinians have just as consistently said no. Yet here’s the extraordinary thing: the world blames the Jews and exonerates the Arabs for the tragic collapse of the numerous peace initiatives, as if Israeli guilt were self-evident – an ‘obvious fact.’ Why? Orientalism, neo-colonialism, ignorance? None is explanatory except one. Conan Doyle’s alter ego famously declared: ‘Eliminate all other factors, and the one that remains must be the truth’ [4].

What is that one remaining factor that might explain the intractability of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the knee-jerk tendency of the international community to place the burden of guilt exclusively on Israel? Jew-hatred fits the bill and is the ‘obvious fact’ that is often overlooked. Its chronic presence throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and its malign impact on global diplomacy, are well-documented even if many commentators seem wilfully blind to it. 

The time is long past for antisemitism’s central role in the conflict – and its manifestation as a two-letter word that has negated all attempts at peace-making – to be acknowledged, confronted and neutralised [5]. 

1       Conan Doyle, A. The Boscombe Valley Mystery - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story. London, MX Publishing, 2014 (first published 1891).

2      Schwartz A, Wilf E. The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream has Obstructed the Path to Peace. New York, All Points Books, 2020.

3      International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. About the IHRA non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism. https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism

4      Conan Doyle, A. The Sign of Four. London, Penguin (Classics), 2001 (first published 1890).

5      Stone DH. Taming the Middle East Elephant: The Role of Antisemitism in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. London, Vallentine Mitchell, 2023 (forthcoming).