The Israel-Arab Reader

by Walter Laqueur

  Any other country, no matter how hospitable, is still a diaspora, a temporary station on the way home. To others, it was not an attractive land; no one wanted it. Mark Twain described it only 100 years ago as a desolate country which sits in sackcloth and ashes—a silent, mournful expanse which not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life.

  The Zionist movement gave political expression to our claim to the Land of Israel, and in 1922, the League of Nations recognized the justice of this claim. They understood the compelling historic imperative of establishing a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel. The United Nations organization reaffirmed this recognition after World War II.

  Regrettably, the Arab leaders, whose friendship we wanted most, opposed a Jewish state in the region. With a few distinguished exceptions, they claimed that the Land of Israel is part of the Arab domain that stretches from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. In defiance of international will and legality, the Arab regimes attempted to overrun and destroy the Jewish state even before it was born. The Arab spokesmen at the United Nations declared that the establishment of a Jewish state would cause a bloodbath which would make the slaughters of Genghis Khan pale into insignificance. In its declaration of independence on May 15, 1948, Israel stretched out its hand in peace to its Arab neighbors, calling for an end to war and bloodshed. In response, seven Arab states invaded Israel. The UN resolution that partitioned the country was thus violated and effectively annulled.

  The United Nations did not create Israel. The Jewish state came into being because the tiny Jewish community in what was Mandatory Palestine rebelled against foreign imperialist rule. We did not conquer a foreign land; we repulsed the Arab onslaught, prevented Israel’s annihilation, declared its independence, and established a viable state and government institutions within a very short time.

  After their attack on Israel failed, the Arab regimes continued their fight against Israel with boycott, blockade, terrorism, and outright war. Soon after the establishment of Israel, they turned against the Jewish communities in Arab countries. A wave of oppression, expropriation, and expulsion caused a mass exodus of some 800,000 Jews from lands they had inhabited from before the rise of the Islam. Most of the Jewish refugees, stripped of their considerable possessions, came to Israel. They were welcomed by the Jewish state, they were given shelter and support, and they were integrated into Israeli society, together with half a million survivors of the European Holocaust.

  The Arab regimes’ rejection of Israel’s existence in the Middle East and the continuous war they have waged against it are part of history. There have been attempts to rewrite this history, which depicts the Arabs as victims and Israel as the aggressor. Like attempts to deny the Holocaust, they will fail. With the demise of totalitarian regimes in most of the world, this perversion of history will disappear.

  In their war against Israel’s existence, the Arab governments took advantage of the cold war. They enlisted the military, economic, and political support of the communist world against Israel, and they turned a local regional conflict into an international powder keg. This caused the Middle East to be flooded with arms, which fueled wars and turned the area into a dangerous battleground and a testing arena for sophisticated weapons. At the UN, the Arab states mustered the support of other Muslim countries and the Soviet bloc. Together, they had an automatic majority for countless resolutions that perverted history, paraded fiction as fact, and made a travesty of the UN and its charter.

  Arab hostility to Israel has also brought tragic human suffering to the Arab people. Tens of thousands have been killed and wounded; hundreds of thousands of Arabs who lived in Mandatory Palestine were encouraged by their own leaders to flee from their homes. Their suffering is a blot on humanity. No decent person—least of all a Jew of this era—can be oblivious to this suffering. Several hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs live in slums known as refugee camps in Gaza, Judaea, and Samaria. Attempts by Israel to rehabilitate and house them have been defeated by Arab objections. Nor has their fate been any better in Arab states. Unlike the Jewish refugees who came to Israel from Arab countries, most Arab refugees were neither welcomed nor integrated by their hosts. Only the Kingdom of Jordan awarded them citizenship. Their plight has been used as a political weapon against Israel. The Arabs who have chosen to remain in Israel—Christian and Muslim—have become full-fledged citizens, enjoying equal rights and representation in the legislature, in the judiciary, and in all walks of life.

  We, who over the centuries were denied access to our holy places, respect the religion of all faiths in our country. Our law guarantees freedom of worship and protects the holy places of every religion.

  Distinguished co-chairmen, ladies, and gentlemen, I stand before you today in yet another quest for peace—not only on behalf of the State of Israel, but in the name of the entire Jewish people that has maintained an unbreakable bond with the Land of Israel for almost 4,000 years. Our pursuit of accommodation and peace has been relentless. For us, the ingathering of Jews into their ancient homeland, their integration into our society, and the creation of the necessary infrastructure are at the very top of our national agenda.

  A nation that faces such a gigantic challenge would most naturally desire peace with all its neighbors. Since the beginning of Zionism, we formulated innumerable peace proposals and plans. All of them were rejected. The first crack in the wall of hostility occurred in 1977, when the late President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt decided to break the taboo and come to Jerusalem. His gesture was reciprocated with enthusiasm by the people and Government of Israel, headed by Menahem Begin. This development led to the Camp David accords and a treaty of peace between Egypt and Israel. Four years later, in May 1983, an agreement was signed with the lawful government of Lebanon. Unfortunately, this agreement was not fulfilled because of outside intervention. But a precedent was set, and we look forward to courageous steps, similar to those of Anwar al-Sadat. Regrettably, not one Arab leader has seen fit to come forward and respond to our call for peace.

  Today’s gathering is a result of a sustained American effort based on our own peace plan of May 1989, which in turn was founded on the Camp David accords. According to the American initiative, the purpose of this meeting is to launch direct peace negotiations between Israel and each of its neighbors and multilateral negotiations on regional issues among all the countries of the region. We have always believed that only direct bilateral talks can bring peace. We have agreed to precede such talks with this ceremonial conference, but we hope that Arab consent to direct bilateral talks indicates an understanding that there is no other way to peace. In the Middle East, this has special meaning, because such talks imply mutual acceptance, and the root cause of the conflict is the Arab refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

  The multilateral talks that would accompany the bilateral negotiations are a vital component in the process. In these talks, the essential ingredients of coexistence and regional cooperation will be discussed. There cannot be genuine peace in our region unless these regional issues are addressed and resolved.

  We believe the goal of the bilateral negotiations is to sign peace treaties between Israel and its neighbors and to reach an agreement on interim self-government arrangements with the Palestinian Arabs. But nothing can be achieved without goodwill. I appeal to the Arab leaders—those who are here and those who have not yet joined the process: Show us and the world that you accept Israel’s existence. Demonstrate your readiness to accept Israel as a permanent entity in the region. Let the people in our region hear you speak in the language of reconciliation, coexistence, and peace with Israel. In Israel, there is an almost total consensus for the need for peace. We only differ on the best ways to achieve it. In most Arab countries, the opposite seems to be true. The only differences are over the ways to push Israel into a defenseless position and, ultimately, to destruction. We would like to see in your countries an end to poisonous preachings against Israel. We would like to see an in
dication of the kind of hunger for peace which characterizes Israeli society.

  We appeal to you to renounce the jihad against Israel; we appeal to you to denounce the PLO Covenant which calls for Israel’s destruction; we appeal to you to condemn declarations that call for Israel’s annihilation, like the one issued by the rejectionist conference in Tehran last week; we appeal to you to let Jews who wish to leave your countries go. And we address a call to the Palestinian Arabs: Renounce violence and terrorism. Use the universities in the administered territories, whose existence was made possible only by Israel, for learning and development, not agitation and violence. Stop exposing your children to danger by sending them to throw bombs and stones at soldiers and civilians.

  Just two days ago, we were reminded that Palestinian terrorism is still rampant, when the mother of seven children and the father of four were slaughtered in cold blood. We cannot remain indifferent and be expected to talk with people involved in such repulsive activities.

  We appeal to you to shun dictators like Saddam Husayn who aim to destroy Israel. Stop the brutal torture and murder of those who do not agree with you. Allow us and the world community to build decent housing for the people who now live in refugee camps. Above all, we hope you finally realize that you could have been at this table long ago, soon after the Camp David accords were first concluded, had you chosen dialogue instead of violence, coexistence instead of terrorism.

  Ladies and gentlemen, we come to this process with an open heart, sincere intentions, and great expectations. We are committed to negotiating without interruption, until an agreement is reached. There will be problems, obstacles, crises, and conflicting claims, but it is better to talk than to shed blood. Wars have not solved anything in our region; they have only caused misery, suffering, bereavement, and hatred.

  We know our partners to the negotiations will make territorial demands on Israel but, as an examination of the conflict’s long history makes clear, its nature is not territorial. It raged well before Israel acquired Judaea, Samaria, Gaza, and the Golan in a defensive war. There was no hint at recognition of Israel before the war in 1967, when the territories in question were not under Israel’s control.

  We are a nation of 4 million. The Arab nations from the Atlantic to the Gulf number 170 million. We control only 28,000 square km. The Arabs possess a land mass of 14 million square km. The issue is not territory, but our existence. It will be regrettable if the talks focus primarily and exclusively on territory. It is the quickest way to an impasse.

  What we need, first and foremost, is the building of confidence, the removal of the danger of confrontation, and the development of relations in as many spheres as possible. The issues are complex, and the negotiations will be lengthy and difficult. We submit that the best venue for the talks is in our region, in close proximity to the decisionmakers, not in a foreign land. We invite our partners to this process to come to Israel for the first round of talks. On our part, we are ready to go to Jordan, to Lebanon, and to Syria for the same purpose. There is no better way to make peace than to talk in each other’s home. Avoiding such talks is a denial of the purpose of the negotiations. I would welcome a positive answer from the representatives of these states here and now. We must learn to live together. We must learn to live without war, without hatred.

  Judaism has given the world not only the belief in one god, but the idea that all men and women are created in God’s image. There is no greater sin than to ravage this image by shedding blood. I am sure that there is no Arab mother who wants her son to die in battle, just as there is no Jewish mother who wants her son to die in war. I believe every mother wants her children to learn the art of living, not the science of war.

  For many hundreds of years, wars, deep antagonisms, and terrible suffering cursed this continent on which we meet. The nations of Europe saw the rise of dictators and their defeat after lengthy and painful struggles. Now they are together, former bitter enemies, in a united community. They are discussing the good of the community, cooperating in all matters, acting almost as one unit. I envy them. I would like to see such a community rise in the Middle East, and I believe that despite all differences between us we should be able, gradually, to build a united regional community. Today it is a dream, but we have seen in our own lifetimes some of the most fantastic dreams become reality. Today the gulf separating the two sides is still too wide, the Arab hostility to Israel too deep, the lack of trust too immense to permit a dramatic, quick solution, but we must start on the long road to reconciliation with this first step in the peace process.

  We are convinced that human nature prefers peace to war and belligerence. We, who have had to fight seven wars and sacrifice many thousands of lives, glorify neither death nor war. The Jewish faith exalts peace, even to the extent that it considers it a synonym for the Creator himself. We yearn for peace; we pray for peace.

  We believe the blessing of peace can turn the Middle East into a paradise, a center of cultural, scientific, medical, technological creativity. We can foresee a period of great economic progress that would put an end to misery, hunger, and illiteracy. It could put the Middle East, the cradle of civilization, on the road to a new era. Such a goal merits our devotion and dedication for as long as it is necessary, until, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, we shall be able to turn swords into plowshares and bring the blessings of peace to all the peoples of our region. . . .

  Palestine Delegation Leader Haydar Abd al-Shafi

  ... We, the people of Palestine, stand before you in the fullness of our pain, our pride, and our anticipation, for we long harbored a yearning for peace and a dream of justice and freedom. For too long, the Palestinian people have gone unheeded, silenced and denied. Our identity negated by political expediency; our right for struggle against injustice maligned; and our present existence subdued by the past tragedy of another people. For the greater part of this century we have been victimized by the myth of a land without a people and described with impunity as the invisible Palestinians. Before such willful blindness, we refused to disappear or to accept a distorted identity. Our intifada is a testimony to our perseverance and resilience waged in a just struggle to regain our rights. It is time for us to narrate our own story, to stand witness as advocates of truth which has long lain buried in the consciousness and conscience of the world. We do not stand before you as supplicants, but rather as the torchbearers who know that, in our world of today, ignorance can never be an excuse. We seek neither an admission of guilt after the fact, nor vengeance for past inequities, but rather an act of will that would make a just peace a reality.

  We speak out, ladies and gentlemen, from the full conviction of the rightness of our cause, the verity of our history, and the depth of our commitment. Therein lies the strength of the Palestinian people today, for we have scaled walls of fear and reticence, and we wish to speak out with the courage and integrity that our narrative and history deserve. The cosponsors have invited us here today to present our case and to reach out to the other with whom we have had to face a mutually exclusive reality on the land of Palestine. But even in the invitation to this peace conference, our narrative was distorted and our truth only partially acknowledged.

  The Palestinian people are one, fused by centuries of history in Palestine, bound together by a collective memory of shared sorrows and joys, and sharing a unity of purpose and vision. Our songs and ballads are full of tales and children’s stories, the dialect of our jokes, the image of our poems, that hint of melancholy which colors even our happiest moments, are as important to us as the blood ties which link our families and clans. Yet, an invitation to discuss peace, the peace we all desire and need, comes to only a portion of our people. It ignores our national, historical, and organic unity. We come here wrenched from our sisters and brothers in exile to stand before you as the Palestinians under occupation, although we maintain that each of us represents the rights and interests of the whole.

  We have been denied the right to publicly
acknowledge our loyalty to our leadership and system of government. But allegiance and loyalty cannot be censored or severed. Our acknowledged leadership is more than [the] justly democratically chosen leadership of all the Palestinian people. It is the symbol of our national unity and identity, the guardian of our past, the protector of our present, and the hope of our future. Our people have chosen to entrust it with their history and the preservation of our precious legacy. This leadership has been clearly and unequivocally recognized by the community of nations, with only a few exceptions who had chosen for so many years shadow over substance. Regardless of the nature and conditions of our oppression, whether the disposition and dispersion of exile or the brutality and repression of the occupation, the Palestinian people cannot be torn asunder. They remain united—a nation wherever they are, or are forced to be.

  And Jerusalem, ladies and gentlemen, that city which is not only the soul of Palestine, but the cradle of three world religions, is tangible even in its claimed absence from our midst at this stage. It is apparent, through artificial exclusion from this conference, that this is a denial of its right to seek peace and redemption. For it, too, has suffered from war and occupation. Jerusalem, the city of peace, has been barred from a peace conference and deprived of its calling. Palestinian Jerusalem, the capital of our homeland and future state, defines Palestinian existence, past, present, and future, but itself has been denied a voice and an identity. Jerusalem defies exclusive possessiveness or bondage. Israel’s annexation of Arab Jerusalem remains both clearly illegal in the eyes of the world community, and an affront to the peace that this city deserves.