Among the Palestinians, the feeling is overwhelming that they are the innocent victims who can do no wrong and to whom the world owes everything. They make children, but the UN has to feed them. They build 13 different security apparatuses, but the donor countries have to finance them. They are steeped in corruption, but the Arabs and the Europeans have to foot the bills. It does not occur to them that if they had rolled up their sleeves and applied themselves over the last 50 years to work, construction and peace, they would have solved their problems. It is absurd that in the negotiations attention was never focused on the fundamental issue: the Israelis, who are supposed to be the cruel oppressors, were those ready to withdraw and share sovereignty over the land, as if they were the losers in the struggle, while the weak and conquered were intransigent, as if they were the victors. This is a reversed logic, the like of which one cannot find elsewhere.

What allows the defeated and occupied Palestinians to behave as if they were the victors is the strength and self-assurance they derive from their Arab and Muslim history and culture, and 200 million and 1,200 million followers, respectively. It is no coincidence that at these crucial moments Arafat clings to the claim that he represents all of them, even though no one has delegated that power to him. He even demands the right to represent the Christian world, claiming Jesus Christ was Palestinian. The Jews did not have the nerve to advance the argument that they ought to watch over the Christian holy places in the Holy Land because Jesus was Jewish. As a result, it is the Palestinian claim that is under consideration, while the more natural, and more credible Israeli guarantee for the safety of the Christian shrines under its aegis is not even heard.

The Arab and Muslim contempt for the Jews, so deeply engraved in their historical and political consciousness, is fed by the inexplicable gap between the Jews' supposed inferiority and the curse cast on them by Allah and History and their rather stunning success as a modern state in the Middle East. Particularly incomprehensible and unacceptable to the Arabs is the high status of the Jewish communities in the Western countries, especially the U.S. Especially humiliating to the Arabs is the fact that the Muslim community, with its large Arab component, equals in numbers, and certainly in years of existence, its Jewish counterpart, but is nowhere near it in terms of impact. Due to the considerable assistance that American Jews have extended to Israel, the imperative has become primary in Arab thinking to weaken American Jewry. Hence the Arab effort to reduce this influence, then achieve parity with it, then eliminate and replace it, both in America and in the Middle East.

The Arabs are on the way to achieve the first phase of parity with the Israelis via the various peace processes. By his turnabout in 1977, Sadat attained near-equality with Israel in the U.S., and turned his country into an American ally. During the Second Gulf War, it was the Arabs, including the intransigent Syrians, who became America's war partners, while the Israelis were asked to sit by quietly and absorb the missiles showered on them by Saddam. After the war, it was Arabs, including those who sided with Saddam (Jordan and the PLO) who were forced upon Israel in Madrid, thus setting off the roller coaster of pressures against Israel that would produce Oslo and its aftermath.

The Arabs understand full well that a successful and democratic Israel will persist only so long as the Jewish majority leads it.

Today, the American military holds more frequent and more visible joint maneuvers with Egypt than with Israel. Israel, the supposed "strategic ally," who was repeatedly assured of strategic upgrading and funds for the concessions it was made to accept, was abandoned by President Clinton at the dusk of his rule, after he had set a dangerous baseline for future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians (although Clinton knew that neither the Israeli Knesset, nor the Israeli public, were ready to stomach those far-reaching departures from existential red lines).

Were the Arabs to solidify their position of parity, and then gain an edge over Israel in Western chanceries, they could then move to overwhelm it, again with Israel's generous help. Because while the Palestinians and the Syrians, like the Lebanese and the Egyptians before them, insist on their complete and uncompromising rights, Israel resorts to compromise and "understanding." As in the Solomonic trial, justice rests with the firm and unflinching, not with the hesitant and spineless. Similarly, the right of return of a refugee to his home sounds much more credible, and draws much more support, than the counter claim of those who are prepared to yield part

September-October 2001               - 9 -               Outpost