When Will These Gullible Arabs Understand?

Khalid Amayreh,
In Occupied East-Jerusalem
7/11/07
ThePeoplesVoice

The decision of the Arab League to dispatch a delegation to Israel to discuss the already moribund Arab Peace initiative can only be interpreted as another exercise in futility, gullibility and impotence.

First of all, Israel itself is utterly uninterested in any genuine peace process that would end the Israeli occupation of Palestine and bring about a just resolution of the Palestinian refugee plight.

Indeed, a country that has built hundreds of Jewish-only colonies on stolen land, and is now mutilating the West Bank with a hateful, gigantic wall that is reducing Palestinian population centers to open-air concentration camps, is obviously not interested in peace and reconciliation, neither with the Palestinian people nor with the Arab and Muslim nations.

Hence, it is only logical to expect the Arab initiative, which promises Israel full normalization of relations with Arab countries in return for a total withdrawal from the occupied territories and a just solution for the enduring refugee plight, will eventually face the same failure and same fiasco that other similar initiatives have met since the William Roger's plan in the late 1960s.

This is not to say that Israel will not want to talk with the Arab.

Israel does want to normalize relations with all Arab states and peoples from Mauritanian to Bahrain provided that they come to terms with Israel's Nazi-like colonization of Palestine and ethnic cleansing and attempted national annihilation of the Palestinian people.

The Arab League delegation, which includes Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu al Gheith and his Jordanian counterpart, Abdul Elah Khatib, was supposed to arrive in occupied Jerusalem Thursday, 12 July. However, the Israeli government has decided to postpone the visit for at least two weeks due to "special considerations" pertaining to Israeli premier Ehud Olmert.

The postponement, some observers suggest, should be seen as a proof of Israel's disinterest, even contempt, of the visit.

Earlier, the Israeli government has asked Egypt and Jordan to expand the Arab "contact group" to include other countries such as Saudi Arabia.

There is only one interpretation of the Israeli request, namely that Israel wants to normalize relations with all Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, while the Nazi-like occupation of Palestine and the Nazi-like treatment of Palestinians remain unchanged.

Olmert, a deceitful man with virtually no moral credibility, has said that he sees "positive points" in the Arab initiative, an allusion to the normalization clause.

However, he and other members of his government have made it very clear that a complete withdrawal from the occupied territories was out of question, that ending the occupation of East Jerusalem was out of question and that allowing significant numbers of Palestinian refugees to return home was out of question.

In a certain sense, Olmert is being honest since Israel doesn't consider the West Bank "occupied" land but rather a "disputed" territory.

The fact that the West Bank is already dotted with hundreds of Jewish-only settlements, inhabited by racist-minded Talmudic fanatics who view non-Jews as animals whose lives have no sanctity or value, makes it extremely difficult if not outright impossible for any Israeli government to leave the entirety of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem..

Moreover, East Jerusalem, the contemplated capital of the contemplated but unlikely Palestinian state, has already been reduced to a ghetto, surrounded on all sides by Jewish settlements.

And given the clear drift toward religious and right-wing chauvinism among Israeli Jews, it would a kind of day-dreaming to expect Israelis to agree to give up the Arab town back to its lawful owners even in return for a 100% -peace.

More to the point, if Jerusalem is "red line" for Israelis, government and peoples alike, the implementation of the right of return for Palestinian refugees is even a redder line.

Indeed, Israel and Zionism are about expulsion and deportation and ethnic cleansing of non-Jews, and allowing the refugees to return home would be Zionism's ultimate antithesis.

Hence, a voluntary and willful acceptance by Israel of the return of a significant number of Palestinian refugees to their former homes and property in what is now Israel would be even beyond day-dreaming.

So, if Israel is going to tell the Arab League delegation "No to Jerusalem, No the right of return and no to withdrawal to the 1967 borderline," then for God's sake why dispatch a delegation to Israel in the first place.

Under such circumstances, one is prompted to ask if the Arab League and Arabs in general have to bear another humiliation at the hands of these war criminals in West Jerusalem?

This is a question I put to the Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Mousa, who should be acquainted with the smallest details of Israeli intransigence and hostility to peace.

I realize that the Arabs might want to score a public relations achievement by showing the world that they are exhausting all possible efforts for peace and that Israel is the one that rejects peace.

But such a desperate feat will only be an expression of powerlessness and wishful thinking.

The world knows that Israel doesn't want peace, but this hypocritical and immoral world is simply not willing to call the spade a spade whenever it is in Israeli hands.

Hence, it is vital that the Arabs put an end to all these undignified and embarrassing contacts with Israel, and start exploring another strategy that would bring about both peace and freedom for Palestine.

Needless to say, this strategy lies first and foremost in achieving strategic parity with Israel, a country that understands only the language of brute force.

In the final analysis, the Arabs are acting as beggars, and beggars, as we all know, can't be choosers.

Only when the Arab and Muslim states in the Middle East possess a strategic force, will Israel start thinking about peace.

July 11, 2007 © 2007 Khalid Amayreh