Saleh ِAl-Qallab
Jordanian writer, Former Minister of Information, Minister of Culture and Minister of State. Member of the Board of Trustees of the Saudi Research and Marketing Group
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No Solution But This One for a Conflict of More Than 70 Years

Let us presume, and this is no longer an unlikely or bizarre hypothetical, Arab League summit with full attendance ended with recognizing the state of Israel along the pre-June 1967 borders. This state would become a Middle Eastern entity without expansionist claims or aspirations. The question here is: would the West in Europe and the Americas deal with this state as it deals with the Arab countries, that is, as a typical Middle Eastern state without any of the special privileges it has been granted as their pampered child since 1948?

Of course, it should be kept in mind that not a single Arab state, including those described as the "confrontation states," has not become convinced, seventy years and more late, that this state's existence has become a fait accompli. The condition that was imposed on this region through brute force after the Holocaust crimes has become a fact of life. Even after three successive wars and a conflict that was more costly for Arabs than it was for Israel, given that it was and is spending from European and, of course, US pockets.

This is the case. Despite that, even after everything that happened since the Allies conducted the 1945-1946 Nurenberg Trials, which lifted the lid on the Nazis' monstrous crimes against the Jews of Germany and other European countries, some Western circles begun to doubt the facts of the Holocaust. This skepticism is not justified in any sense and is driven by racist motives. However, an American poll revealed how widespread such views, certainly compelled by an abhorrent racism, truly are. According to the poll, a quarter of US adults believe that the Holocaust is a myth and did not happen. In fact, this denial is offensive to Jews and Arabs because it is driven by hostility to "Semites.”

Beyond a doubt, these Americans hostile to "Semites," Arab and Jewish, are akin to those who like those who maligned the former head of the Muslim World League for visiting, with a few colleagues, the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, where a "Monument" was erected to symbolize the historical crime committed by the Nazis against innocent Jews. It is a crime against humanity. They must all be condemned and must be denounced; indeed, those who objected to him fulfilling humanitarian and Islamic duty have sided with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis who committed those well-documented crimes against innocents. Their only sin was following one of the monotheistic religions ... like Islam and Christianity.

What is meant by this long introduction is that the time has undoubtedly come to move in the direction of "normalizing" relations with Israel, after a conflict has been ongoing uninterruptedly all this time. However, it should not continue to be the Israel that has been teaching its children that our Palestinian brothers and we still hear: "It is your land Israel, from the Nile to the Euphrates"... It also cannot be the Israel that continues to occupy the entire West Bank, from the 1948 borders to the Jordan River in the east, occupies the Syrian Golan Heights and continues to build settlements in the areas it occupied during the June War of 1967… Nor can it be the Israel whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, clings to the Deal of the Century, which would maintain Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories in its current form, as well as allowing it to keep the Syrian Golan Heights.

It is clear that the time has indeed come for a "historic compromise" between the Arabs and Israelis. It has come after more than seven decades of conflict, during which three grinding wars were fought. The political struggle did not pause for even for a single moment. Bloody violence erupted out of the confrontations in the Middle East, the European West and the entire world.

Nonetheless, such a bargain requires that concessions be made by both Palestinians and Israelis. The Palestinian people should have an independent state along the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Israeli state should have the boundaries it did in 1948, while the so-called "internal Arabs'" conditions should also be taken into account. They have become a major force and have more than a dozen deputies representing them, and they should enjoy the same rights as those of the Jews (Israelis) who had come to this country from the four corners of the globe... It is well known that the Palestinians and the Arabs have accepted this, and, even before the desired peace agreements are concluded, there is no negotiation on this issue.

Moreover, since the desired peace process is being discussed earnestly, and the Arabs, if not all of them, then most of them, and the Israelis as well of course, are convinced, convincing the West, far and near, ought to be stressed. It must be convinced to make it understood to Israel that the latter, from now on, is to be a Middle Eastern country like that all Arab countries. The framework of "the West's pampered child" must come to an end politically, financially, militarily and with regard to security and all other matters. In truth, some Europeans, as well as some Americans, are awaiting, on pins and needles as they say, for the conclusion of this conflict, which has gone on for more than seventy years. For their part, most of the Israelis are fed up and "bored" with this conflict, and they are now anticipating this historical moment's arrival. All these long years, they have been waiting to become part of this Middle Eastern region and have a share of its current and future blessings.

Obviously, the Jews of the West, those of the US and Europe, have become fed up with the Middle Eastern conflict as well. They, too, the majority of them, are no longer capable of continuing to be Israel's "taxpayers." Indeed, many of them continued to strive, over a long period of time, to get rid of this burden, for the Europeans among them to become genuinely European and that the Americans become exclusively American. Thus, both the former and the latter are most anxious for this desired "historic solution" and for the Israeli state to become a Middle Eastern state. This, in fact, is what the majority of Israelis are awaiting. They are also fed up with this seemingly endless conflict.

The desire for this "normalization", which is being called for reciprocally, has opened many doors that had been closed. It seems that the Israelis were waiting for them to open not to "make money" and merely to establish joint economic projects. Rather, they were waiting to be freed from the burdens of the "Torahtic dreams" and their European and American loyalties, to become a central part of a promising Middle East. This means that if these rosy dreams were to come true, if Israel became a Middle Eastern country along the 1948 borders and the Palestinian people were granted their independent state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as their capital. Then, this Middle East would become a new East. The other requisite, which cannot be done without, is getting rid of the tyrannical and backward Iranian regime, that it joins the civilized path if it is indeed taken and everyone got their due. This Middle East would be a thousand times better off than that European and American West.