Palestine—The Symbol
From MICHAEL ADAMS BEIRUT
MR. DAG HAMMARSKJ&D, referring last week to the signs of renewed tension in the Middle East, spoke of an atmosphere of general mistrust Which has not in any way diminished' as being- the ultimate cause of the chain reaction of inci- dents in this part of the world. He was referring, of course, to the mistrust which divides Arabs and Israelis and prevents any approach to a settlement between the two.
To the outside world this appears to be a prob-
lem which no longer exists. The Arabs lost most of Palestine in 1948—so the argument runs—and it is time they realised it and resigned themselves to their defeat. But this is to ask the impossible of any people, and most of all of a people who are divided into separate States (not, originally, by their own will) and who are only now emerging from a period of painful humiliation and foreign control. To them Palestine is the symbol, not only of their own collective failure in 1948, but of that Whole chapter in their history which opened with the Arab revolt during the First World War, and In which their own struggle for national indepen- dence was frustrated, as they see it, by the broken promises and the political and economic imper- ialism of the Western world.
Hence their passionate concern with Palestine.
a concern which is coloured certainly by remorse for their own failure to rescue it from the Jews in battle, but in which a far stronger element is their ObvtIeler thrcconviction that the West sold it to the Jews
Arabs' heads—and this despite the solemn
tmdertaking of the British Government, when it Issued the Belfour Declaration in 1917, that in the establishment of a 'national home' for the Jews 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in . Palestine.' A million Arab retugees along the borders of Israel are the living evidence that this promise, for whatever complex reasons, was not kept, and unless we remember this and acknowledge our partial responsibility for the situation of the refugees and for the 'prob- lem' of which they are the embodiment, we have n° right to be impatient with the Arab govern- ments for their sterile approach to the problem, Or for their undying suspicions about the motives behind our Middle Eastern policies.
When you discuss the Palestine question with
Arabs (and I shudder to think how many hours I have spent in such discussions over the past four Years), they will sometimes illustrate it in this way. What if Hitler, they will say, instead of massacring the Jews, had won the war in 1940 and established the State of Israel in Cornwall? And what if the Americans, benevolently neutral between Britain and Israel, had given the Jews the financial sup- port they needed to maintain their State against Your obvious hostility and your ambition to regain the lost part of your homeland? And what if the °riginal settlement establishing the State of Israel had provided for a demilitarised zone along the border between Devon and what had been Corn- wall and was now Israel, a zone in which, by the terms of the treaty, the English farmers living there were to be allowed to remain in possession of their lands; and if, in defiance of this treaty, the Israelis in Cornwall had gradually edged for-
ward and expelled them, blowing up their villages and shooting at them as they tried to plough their lands? Would you then be so insistent on the right of the Israelis to enjoy free passage through the Suez ('anal?
It is easy to dismiss this as an absurd flight of fancy—but again, unless we can exercise our imaginations enough to put ourselves in the place of the Arabs, with all their weakness and with hundreds of years of foreign domination behind them, how can we sit in judgment on their present attitude towards Israel? No detached observer can deny that in agreeing to the establishment of the State of Israel on Arab lands, the world did the Arabs an injustice--and for the Arabs there is no consolation in the fact that an earlier injustice had been done to the Jews, for it was not the Arabs who persecuted the Jews and sent them to the gas chambers. Why should they and they alone be made to atone for the sins of the world?
Such an exercise of the imagination can do nothing to alter the facts of the situation; but it can help us to understand the intransigence el the Arabs--and if the Arabs felt that their attitude was understood in the West, or even approached with any sympathetic will to understand. at least the edge of their bitterness would be dulled. As it is, they feel driven back on their own inadequate resources, both physical and moral, resources which are the more inadequate because the Arab governments are divided by personal and dynastic and material interests. Jf they could agree with each other, the problem would still be an int- mensely difficult one; while they are divided, no solution is possible.
Each Arab ruler, whatever his true preoccupa- tions, feels bound to strike an attitude over the Palestine problem, because only in terms of the Palestine problem can he lay claim to be a leader of the Arabs and not merely the king or president or sheikh of this or that parcel of territory. Kas- sem has plenty to occupy him in retaining control of Iraq. and in making his declining influence felt in the tug-of-war between Communists and nationalists—but his wider ambitions demand that he should campaign publicly for a Palestine State,' a concept which has no reality whatsoever in the present (or indeed in any foreseeable future) context of affairs. Nasser is interested above all in the gigantic development schemes which his plan- ners have drawn up for Egypt. and now he has the development of Syria to contend with as well—but if Kassem presumes to speak out on behalf of Palestine, Nasser (whose frontiers march with those of Israel, where Kassem's do not) can do no less. In Jordan King Hussein has troubles enough, as the succession of treason trials show—but as the de facto ruler of the only substantial section of Palestine left to the Arabs, he too must stake his claim to the leadership of the Palestinians. And so the Arabs have presented to the world during the past two weeks the spectacle of the Arab League, bent on discussing the Palestine problem but unable even to agree on the terms in which the problem could be approached, like the 'great' powers arguing about the shape of their conference table. Only when one of them is strong enough to disregard the protests of the rest will the Arabs be able to tackle the Palestine problem in earnest—and that day seems as 'far distant as ever.
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