Arab Israel Conflict - Questions and Solutions - YJ Draiman

Arab Israel Conflict - Questions and Solutions

There is no glib or ready solution to the present confrontation.  Enmity bread over decades cannot be easily defused.  The Arab-Palestinian "refugees" have found their "myth" as Mousa Alami prescribed.  They found an identity in that myth.  And a dream.  But surely a dream of destruction, mayhem and bloodshed, of "injustice" masquerading as justice, of and "rights" based upon deception and falsehoods, cannot and should not continue to capture the sympathy and imagination of the gullible outside world at the expense of the Jews, whose identity the Arab-Palestinians would usurp. 

If Egypt and the late president Anwar Sadat could make peace with Israel, however tenuous, after a saber rattling and the religiously inspired anti-Jewish sentiments that created a warm bond between Egypt and Nazism, then so might the other "moderates" and "rejectionists" in the Arab world today.  Once, during Solomon's reign (965-928 BC), "United Israel" which extended all the way to Iraq, was so "highly honored as the leading state between Egypt and Asia minor," that Egypt's pharaoh "had given his daughter in marriage" to Solomon, for "good diplomatic and political reasons." 

As the minister of agriculture of Syria, an avowed supporter and supportee of the Soviet Union, had illustrated, it was "American" technological assistance that Syria wanted and needed.  But might it have been the irrigation expertise of Israel that he really needed?  The result of the peacemaking process depends greatly on the international community continued adherence to the truth as it is sometimes tacitly acknowledged, and not the totalitarian-sponsored pan-Arab deception and inversion of truth.  To achieve their short-sighted ends -- a "peaceful" piece of the Arab oil action -- some nations among the free world community appear to be buying the turn-speak (false and deceptive propaganda).

For sixty-five years, while the real nature of the Arab "refugee problem" has often been identified, the affluent Arab world has paid only a relative pittance to the care of the "refugees";  on the other hand, prodigious Arab funds have supported terror and violence.  The Arabs have, in addition, rejected every genuine humanitarian attempt to solve the "problem" of their brethren, whose right to dignity of citizenship is their legitimate human right. But The Arab nations chose to use then as a pawn against Israel.

The world community has made the mistake of unwittingly creating a breeding ground of violence and terror.  Through perpetuation of the "humanitarian" conditions of the "temporary" camps, it hoped perhaps to avoid having to exact from the Arab world an attitude towards its refugees that conform to the customary requirements expected from other nations; the penalty for such demand was perceived to be the possible loss of substantial Arab oil benefits (which today has diminished greatly).  The wound was allowed to fester until it began to burst into the terrorism of the PLO and other offspring of the earlier terror tactics in Western Palestine organized by the Mufti after WWI, in consultation with his Nazi soulmates.  Now, the world community is being faced with a Pan-Arab suggestion for another blunder, this one even more difficult to retrieve.  The new "moral" flame is presently offered, to take the place of justice.  Through the deceptive revisionist history of Arab propaganda, it is asserted that Israel must bear the guilt for the Arab "refugees", since the Jews "in 1948 excluded the Arabs from their homeland since time forgotten."  Unfortunately, and perhaps not surprisingly to those sophisticated in the art of politics, the case as it has been falsified and distorted by propaganda does not benefit the "Palestinian" Arab refugees themselves.  As the Palestinian writer Fawaz Turki summed it up, although it was "Arab governments" who "continued to oppose... integration,"  the price for this intransigence and inflexibility was paid by the Arab-Palestinians alone and not by the Arabs.... Pawn politics and indifference were the two foci of a problem of tragic and human dimensions. 

The Arab Soviet distortion has prolonged the refugees frustration, and supports -- indeed rationalize and justifies -- Arab terrorist activities, even against Arab-Palestinians.  The very political process by which the refugees plight has been highlighted has condemned many Arab "refugees" to encampment psychologically if not physically (the situation today in Syria is no different).  However, hundreds of thousands of other Arab "refugees" are already living and working in the critically labor-needy Arab states, in some instances running those countries (Jordan's population is about 75% Arab-Palestinians), and they feel that citizenship is "owed" to them.  Indeed, unpublicized and largely unknown, many are in fact already bona fide citizens.

The present propaganda argument is based on the deceptive "historical claims" of the "native Arab Palestinians on his land" -- now called Israel (The real truth is we all know that the Arabs are the occupiers of Jewish territory).  According to the propaganda claim, it is from the Jewish settled area of Western Palestine that the "Arabs were excluded from their homeland since time forgotten".  That claim cannot be sustained.  If the "historical" claim is measured against documented history, which contradicts that claim, the Arab propagandist and their supporters often shift to an argument based on pragmatics:  the " Arab-Palestinian people" exist, therefore they must have a "homeland".  That argument must run head on into the realities of justice, of Jordon, and the Arab-Jewish exchange of refugee population in 1948 (the Arab state of Jordan consists today over 78% of Jewish Territory). 

The Arabs recognition of how vulnerable was their "return of the Arab refugees" argument inspired the transformation of the "refugee" into a false "historical" claim.  "Arab-Palestinian self-determination" was the "new tool"; claim is based on the specious and misconceived comparison of the "90% Arab-native including Christians etc. and 9%-Jewish population," in all "Palestine"-- what we now know should properly be limited, for comparison, to the Jewish settled area of Western Palestine.  As a few Arab strategists have admitted, the real "refugee" rights could too easily become evident.  The "consequences" of the obvious Arab Jewish refugee exchange of populations were frankly assessed by the Arab writer Sabri Jiryis; "Jews have absorbed the million Jews who were terrorized and expelled from Arab states and the Arab states, in their turn, must settle the Palestinians "Arabs" within their borders and solve their problems."

Although the Arab-born segment of the Jewish population has finally been recognized, inevitably, as the bulk of the "Sephardic" majority within an "Orientalized" Israel, which amounts to over half the current population. Western observers are seldom reminded that the Sephardic Israeli majority is in fact mainly composed of either the descendants or of those who were themselves the Jewish Arab refugees who were terrorized and expelled from Arab-Muslim countries. Thus, the accompanying social problems, the Arab-born Jews' distrust of the Arab world and their Support of a "hard-line" government position toward the Arabs--all conditions that are predictable and logical when seen in context--are not evaluated in context. That the social problems are the results of Israel's attempt to absorb a refugee population at least double to the number of Arabs who purportedly left Israel in 1948--a massive Jewish refugee population that doubled the number of Jews already in Israel in 1948--and that all the Arab-born Jewish refugees converged on the Jewish State at about the same time that the Arabs left, while Israel was improvising its urgent defense against Arab warfare--the connection is rarely if ever made. What was obvious, literal exchange of Jewish and Arab refugee population, which is double the amount of Arab refugees, even if one accepts the inflated Arab counts, goes unrecognized and ignored or is shrugged aside as an unwelcome complication.

Moreover, to judge the attitudes and viewpoints of the million Sephardic Jewish refugees from terror and oppression in Arab lands, who had their all their personal assets confiscated, including businesses, homes and over 120,000 square km. of land, apart from the critically significant historical circumstances that made them that way is as faulty and incomplete as it would be for an observer to try to judge the reactions and activities of American blacks toward civil rights without ever having heard of slavery or the history of the blacks in America and the genesis of the civil rights movement. Yet the Sephardic Jews' attitudes toward their former masters--attitudes born of harsh experience in the Arab lands and the Arabs' continued avowed hostilities toward the dhimmi Jewish state--are scarcely ever related to the bitter history and the circumstances surrounding the pivotal Jewish brutally forced exodus from the Arab world.

Meanwhile the Arab émigré-refugees remain exploited by the Arab leaders in that Arab world, their own milieu. Most are actually already absorbed; a small percentage are still in their camps. All remain without a moderate leadership, and many fear for their lives; were they to take a truly moderate stance, they might well be murdered, as others have been.

One must care about the Arab "Palestinian" peoples, whatever their heritage. They are Arabs and Jews and "others" who have been long abused in a world misled by its torturous deceptive misconceptions. Instead of permitting those Arab "refugees" who are outside of Jordanian Palestine to suffer the planned discrimination of adamant Arab governments in land where many "refugees" have lived for a generation or more, the free world might begin a fair and realistic effort to solve the problem once and for all.

The possibility of solution is there. An Arab Palestinian State already exists in Jordan, many Arab Palestinian carry a Jordanian passport. The other Arab states can be encouraged to make room for those among the Arab refugees who have not yet been absorbed, and to give citizenship in their respective states of asylum to those outside Jordan. There is no bromide here for facile solution, or one that would not be fraught with bitterness and antagonism. Before the India-Pakistan exchange of refugee populations was resolved, years of rancor and violence elapsed.

What must not continue, what cannot be allowed to continue, is the cynical scapegoating of the Jewish State and the Jewish refugees herein, or the sacrifice of the Arab refugees who are, in the name of "humanitarianism," being employed inhumanly as a war weapon against Israel by the Arab world. In the face of these major problems, too many politicians and persons of influence choose to shut their eyes to the facts. Too many refrain from critical analysis of false and deceptive propaganda in order to preserve their illusions about the price of oil. And far too many, the overwhelming bulk of us, had never been furnished with enough data to understand what the problem really was and do not care, since it is easier to be ignorant, than take a logical stand.

A program calculated to furnish incentives to the Arab states and others--a "Marshall-type" plan to cooperate for peace--has been proposed by many eminent bipartisan political figures. Such a program would ---

convert the bilateral peace into a truly regional peace, by demonstrating that "the fruits of peace exceeds the spoils of war." The plan could be financed by all the countries which have a great interest in peace and stability in the Middle East because of their dependency of the oil in that region. it would be based on the knowledge that there is also an Arab dependency upon the free world to continue its present relationship with Arab states. Such a plan ought to create an incentive to solve the problems that stands in the way of regional space.

To the extent that we render aid, it would necessarily be linked with "the settlement of the refugees" or, if they are already settled, then citizenship for the Arab refugees within these various Arab lands. 

The United States has provided over a billion dollars in UNRWA funds over the last fifty-plus years, for what was to have been "temporary relief before settlement."  It is not possible that the fund which has prolonged the refugee status of the "Arab refugee" could be replaced by aid in conjunction with development, and that permanent Arab refugee resettlement in the Arab regions could follow? The Arab world wants the benefits of co-existence with the "West" and therefore a major roll can be played by the United States in helping to resolve the Arab refugee-émigré problem.

All the necessary ingredients exist; recent reports of migrant labor in the Arab states have shown that the Arabs are urgently in need of labor, skilled and unskilled. Within the Arab world there is now an abundance of capital to pay the costs of integrating the refugees. Foreign funds, once freed from no-longer necessary UNRWA camps, could assist the rehabilitation of the Arab refugees. The million Jewish refugees from Arab lands have already been absorbed by the Israelis, but those of their properties that were confiscated would far exceed what even the Arab refugees left behind. The de facto exchange of Arab and Jewish refugee populations is undeniable, a fait accompli. Its recognition by the Arabs should be facilitated with the West's endorsement. Recall the Syrian official's offer to "give land away to workers who come--except the Palestinians," whose "hatred must be directed at Israel." Syria's request for "American technology," along with United States and other Western assistance now in effect or projected in many Arab "rejectionist" states, ought to be reciprocal; cooperation should be enlisted and required from nations that are aided by the United States and the West.

If the Arab world political and unjustified discrimination against its refugees-émigré brothers were to cease, and if the camp indoctrination could no longer act as a catalyst to the rejection of peace with Israel, if the Jordanian-Palestinian state, the Arabs' "displacement" of Jews, and the exchange of populations that took place between Jews and Arabs are all finally understood and recognized by the free world , then the Arab "rejectionist" front dedicated to the Jihad (holy war) against Israel may finally realize that the program of propaganda deception cannot succeed. They may then accede to a policy of genuine moderation, of a kind which in Western sense means toleration and peace.

At long last the Arab refugees would then be allowed the right to live in a more normal environment, to the refugees' optional benefit, and to the ultimate advantage of the Arab host nations. This possibly peaceful and ultimately most humane course of action would entail only a relatively minor financial transaction for the Arab nations. It would dignify the refugees and enable the Arab countries of asylum to observe the universal laws of hospitality and decency toward their refugees. It will also, if done, demonstrate that the Arabs are genuinely concerned for the welfare of their brethren, that they have finally observed the humanitarian requirements expected of any government that wishes to benefit from mutual relationships in the free world, and that they are not primarily interested in utilizing the refugees, human beings, flesh and blood, as their weapon in their war.

Thus far, merely mouthing the deceptive words of turn-speak has achieved an amazing measure of success for the revisionist history and the propaganda of the "Arab Israeli Conflict." As the late PLO-Saiqa (Syrian PLO) leader Zuheir Muhsein observed in PLO strategy discussions in 1974, many nations had already accepted the calculated interchange of images: the Arabs had managed 'to juxtapose the Israeli existence with a 'Palestinian' one.' Muhsein went on to explain the proposed "Independent Palestinian State" on the West Bank aka Judea and Samaria;

Our purpose is a democratic State in the whole of Palestine.... A State in the occupied area will not constitute an obstacle. The contrary is true--it will be a point of departure.... This State will be the backbone of  our struggle against Israel."

The Arabs, through terror and enticement of oil power, actually manipulated the prevention of the Jewish majority that should, as mandated in 1920, have become in turn the sovereign Jewish State of Palestine before WWII. Had the Arabs not succeeded, the "final solution to the Jewish problem" might have been haven, not Holocaust.

The cruelest instance of willful blindness to the nature of ones actions is attributable to British exceedingly restrictive Jewish immigration policy. It is horrifying to learn that the British--a supposedly 'civilized people"--were willing to see Jews in Europe put to death by the Nazis for "fear" of "Arab reaction and comment," the British falsely claimed that "Palestine" had "no more places" for Jews, while at the very same moment the British were imposing "illegal" Arab immigrants by tens of thousands into Palestine to do "necessary" work--work and place that they denied to the Jews.

In the end, Britain's systematic policy of virtual exclusion of Jews had resulted in utter disaster. It was disaster in the eyes of the British because they left Palestine defeated  and in a state of war until today; for the Arabs, who had won a battle against the entry of perhaps six million prospective Palestinian/Israeli Jews, it was disaster then to be faced, ironically, with anathema of a dhimmi nation that the Jews achieved ultimately additionally because of the world's horror at the senseless slaughter of those six million; for the Jews, there was disaster in the tragic timing of Israel's declared sovereignty and independence; had it been unrepressed it would have culminated its control and sovereignty in time to preclude the Holocaust. As it turned out, Israel emerged just in time to gather in not only the survivors of Hitler's savagery, but that great swell of persecuted and terrorized million Arab-born Jews who fled the Arab countries seeking refuge. the probable fate of those terrorized refugees from Arab lands, had the Jewish state been voted down (even-though according to international law and treaties, Israel was reconstituted in 1920 and required majority to take full control) due to lack of numerical majority, became, mercifully, only a matter for abstract speculation.

Today, the explicitly stated Arab goals appear to be gaining credence once again through the medium of false and deceptive propaganda and twisted rhetoric, unquestioned by those of us who haven't known the questions to ask and do not care, and unhindered by many who have guessed. Those who understand the reality ought to demand more.

Throughout the Mandate for Palestine, the British attempted to gain peace by appeasing Arab intimidation and terror. It was a self-imposed intimidation to a perception of oil-power and force that the Western powers themselves in fact evoked. Yet, others are considering a similar catastrophic course. But the lesson ought to be clear by now that the West's continuation of the protracted British policy of submission to Arab pressure has not brought a peaceful life to the region, on the contrary, it inflames the regional conflict for the foreseeable future. As Winston Churchill cautioned in 1939, the acts that we engage in for appeasement to the Arabs today we will have to remedy at a far greater cost and remorse tomorrow.