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Posted on 12/29/2001 12:13:21 AM PST by BenF

It is customary in the Western world to think that, after Oslo, the Arab countries have given up the idea of destroying Israel, and that the Israeli-Arab dispute has been reduced to the issue of partial or entire withdrawal from the territories that Israel conquered in the Six Day War.

The second Camp David conference and the rejection of former prime minister Ehud Barak's far-reaching proposals should have reopened the question of the exploitation of the Palestinian problem by the Arab countries.

In May 1948, five Arab countries invaded Israel in order to liberate what they called "Arab Palestine," and thus directly created the Palestinian refugee problem and prevented the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in accordance with the UN partition plan.

In the absence of a military victory, the Arab countries wished to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee problem by placing them in closed refugee camps and preventing their integration into the economy. This choice contrasted with the absorption into many countries of more than 49 million refugees from World War II. Furthermore, Israel absorbed more than 700,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, equal to the number of Palestinian refugees.

Pan-Arab support for the Palestinians, which has taken the form of participation in all the wars against Israel and the imposition of diplomatic and economic embargoes, has remained the sole method of demonstrating apparent Arab solidarity. These actions, in fact, conceal the rivalry and hostility characteristic of inter-Arab relations up to the present.

Various Arab countries have also set up training camps in their territory and have given direct aid by financing and supplying arms to the Palestinian terrorists and to other "liberation movements." Some of them continue to serve as terrorist headquarter bases. In Syria alone not less than 15 such HQs are active.

Over the entire course of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Arab countries have avoided applying real pressure to the Palestinian leadership to accept compromises in negotiations, compromises that could have led to a solution to the conflict.

The wealthy oil-producing countries, headed by Saudi Arabia, have purchased industrial peace in their territories by allocating considerable resources to the development of Palestinian terrorist organizations, and Islamic ones that were based on the Palestinian model, throughout the world. Saudi Arabia finds difficulty in denying the unassailable evidence regarding its role in the financing of Bin Laden's al-Qaida organization.

Fostering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and setting it ablaze from time to time is an efficient device employed by the Arab rulers to perpetuate authoritarian regimes. Stirring up nationalistic passions about apparent support for the "rights of the Palestinians" covers up the corruption, and the concentration of power in the hands of a minority, and pushes aside problems of unemployment, poverty, and loss of hope for a better future for the younger generation - problems suffered by most Arab societies today.

History will find it impossible to absolve the Arab countries of their direct responsibility for the wretched state of their Palestinian brothers who have been kept in conditions of poverty and alienation, despite the generous aid they received for them from the international community.

The Arab and Muslim world is united around the issue of Palestinian extremism in conferences and in extreme, declaratory resolutions that keep alive a fighting spirit that is liable to perpetrate the conflict for many more decades. If the Palestinians wish to be relevant in the search for an arrangement with Israel that would improve the situation of their own people, they must come to terms with the fact that without painful compromises and fateful decisions, the Palestinian people will be unable to realize their rights and live in peace with their Israeli neighbors.

Under the conditions currently prevailing in the Palestinian territories, the question arises whether the head of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, is capable of making historical decisions on behalf of his people. Unfortunately, experience indicates an on-going failure on his part to do so.

Those who have recently been in contact with American, or even European, leaders have become aware of the growing disappointment and skepticism regarding Arafat's ability to make realistic decisions to solve the conflict with Israel. These people repeatedly emphasize that unless the Arab countries apply real pressure to the Palestinian leadership, the chaos will continue in territories under Arafat's "successful" guidance, with the accompanying suffering, poverty, and loss of hope for a better future for the coming generations of Palestinians.

Given the behavior of the representatives of Arab countries in sessions of the UN and in international conferences, such as that held in Durban, as well as the hatred and incitement against Israel and the Jews expressed daily in the Arab media, one must conclude that Arab countries have failed to learn the lessons of continued Palestinian terrorism and bloody wars caused by the policy of rejection of Israel and refusal to recognize its right to live in peace and security.

(The writer is a former ambassador to France.)

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