If the six decades of the Arab-Israeli conflict should have taught us anything it is surely that it is time to think out of the box, writes Hassan Nafaa* The Nakba -- the war of 1948 and the founding of Israel -- may have occurred 60 years ago but the Zionist project is much older. It began over 110 years ago and it hasn't finished yet. In other words, the Zionists started plotting and planning long before the Arabs were aware of their designs. By the time the Arabs did catch on the Zionists were better equipped for the clash that they had anticipated and, indeed, worked to bring about. It was only natural, therefore, that they beat us, seized our land and drove out our people. While we succumbed to depression and loss of confidence, their victory fed Zionist self-confidence and their determination to continue towards the realisation of a project the true aims and objectives of which we had not even begun to fathom. Every time another clash erupted, as was bound to happen, mostly at their instigation, we would be surprised afresh by the ferocity of their aggression. Then we changed tack and made peaceful overtures. Whether it was to ward off their wrath or devote ourselves to reconstruction and development is immaterial since they refused to believe us. Claiming they needed to put to rest any doubts about our intentions they insisted upon "confidence-building measures" beneath which rubric their demands increased and became more unreasonable by the day. Instead of digging in our heels and reproaching them for failing to honour mutually binding treaties and understandings we acted as though we had no alternative but to cave in to their demands. Whether this was out of fear of them or because of a desire to win the approval of their allies it gave them the opportunity to twist our arms and rub our powerlessness in our faces. Now here we are, more than a third of a century since we have begun to try to live peacefully with Israel, so in thrall to our fear of Zionist cunning that even our dreams of the future have been turned into nightmares. On the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Zionist state we must ask ourselves what we have learned from the catastrophe and whether we have taken stock of our position for the Arab-Israeli conflict is clearly far from over. A proper understanding of the past and, hence, the ability to seriously prepare for the future is, after all, contingent upon our acceptance of a number of facts. First, we have exhausted all means of dealing with Israel, none of which we have handled particularly well. We have engaged in three conventional wars (in 1948, 1956 and 1973), in a protracted war of attrition on the Egyptian front (from 1968 to 1970) and in guerrilla warfare on the Palestinian, Jordanian and Lebanese fronts at various junctures. We have negotiated with Israel secretly, openly, bilaterally and collectively. We have signed various accords with it, in Camp David (1978), Oslo (1993) and Wadi Araba (1994), and participated in international peace conferences in Madrid (1991) and Annapolis (2007). In spite of all these different efforts and approaches a resolution to the conflict and the realisation of peace continues to elude us. Apart from the rare exception, such as the victories scored by Hizbullah in 2000 and 2006, the scales in the fields of battle and diplomacy have been tipped heavily in favour of Israel. If this tells us anything it is that there is some structural flaw in the Arabs' management of the conflict and we had better identify it and remedy it quickly. In this regard, one should note that in whatever activity we have engaged, whether on the battlefield or around the negotiating table or via the media, whether steered from Palestine or Tunisia, Mauritania or Oman, with rare exceptions there has been little if any proper coordination between Arab capitals. Second, Israel was the instigator of most wars and confrontations. Before and during the Nakba Zionist militias drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians from their towns and villages, using systematic genocide and wanton destruction. Under the eyes of the British mandate authorities they introduced terrorism to the region. In the field of diplomacy, on the other hand, it was the Arabs who almost invariably made the overtures for peace and who have showed willingness to make concessions. This suggests one thing -- the Arabs have been on the defensive in both war and diplomacy. We need to identify and remedy the reasons for this. Third, Israel has always had a clear strategy for dealing with the Arabs militarily and politically. Israel's military strategy is founded on the premise that Arab states and peoples constitute an actual or potential source of threat, now or in the future: consequently Israel must achieve overwhelming military superiority over the Arab countries together, must be perpetually prepared to fight a war on several fronts and by extension needs to accumulate a massive arsenal of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction to wield as a deterrent. Israeli strategists have always regarded the Arabs as a collection of tribal and sectarian chiefs with whom it invariably insists on negotiating separately, never collectively. More important, negotiations for the Israelis have never been more than a means to sow discord among the Arabs and fragment the Arab front. If it had truly been interested in peace it would not have constantly raised the threshold of its demands. First it agreed to the borders identified by the UN partition resolution as an acceptable basis for a settlement. It then insisted upon the 1949 truce lines until the 1967 war, then refused to accept the pre-1967 boundaries. Only on Palestinian refugees has Israel been consistent: it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for the problem. Israel has always had its aims and objectives clearly in sight whereas the Arabs never clearly identified their aims and objectives to begin with. It is surely time they did. Accepting the above we should be able to derive several important lessons. The first is that no Arab state or people stand outside the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is to say that the conflict has always been, and remains, an Arab-Israeli and not just a Palestinian-Israeli one. The Palestinians' conflict with Israel differs from that of other Arabs in degree not in kind. Naturally, the further away an Arab country is from Israel the less grave is its conflict with Israel, though the more Israel succeeds in imposing its conditions on the Palestinians and the countries bordering it the more Arab countries further afield are at risk of being drawn closer to the ever-expanding geographical presence and political influence of Israel. Of course, Israel will never be able to occupy these countries militarily. But we cannot rule out an attempt on its part to impose on them certain patterns of foreign policy behaviour and to intervene in their domestic affairs on the pretext of security or "normalisation". Since the struggle against Israel is a collective Arab one and since the go-it-alone approach that individual governments have long preferred has failed miserably to accomplish even individual governments' aspirations the Arabs obviously need to develop a unified strategy for managing the struggle with Israel, in accordance with which priorities and the allocation of roles and responsibilities are clearly and equitably defined. This strategy must be capable of mobilising all the Arabs' available energies and resources and it must avail itself of a combination of military and non-military means, both conventional and non- conventional. There must also be an institutional command for collective Arab action that can transform the strategy into implementable programmes and policies. For the foreseeable future at least that command must operate on the assumption of perpetual conflict for Israel has yet to demonstrate that it is ready or even mature enough for a comprehensive and just solution, nor will it be ready or mature enough for such a solution until it is made to see that this is its only choice. The purpose of any conflict management approach is to compel the adversary towards a settlement based on actual, as opposed to imaginary, balances of power. The third lesson pertains to the framework of principles. If a unified Arab strategy for managing the conflict with Israel is to be effective it must be prepared to shift to negotiations over a just and comprehensive solution, but it must be very clear from the outset upon the principles that Israel must accept as a condition for Arab agreement to negotiate. I believe that the Arab world could offer Israel the choice between two alternatives. The first is essentially a modified version of the Arab peace initiative, which would call for: Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territory inclusive of East Jerusalem, the return to the pre-June 1967 borders on all fronts and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and with the same sovereign rights and duties enjoyed by Israel; Israeli acknowledgement of its responsibility for the plight of Palestinian refugees and its agreement to permit them to return to their homes and to compensate them for suffering and lost property; a commitment by Israel to fully guarantee and respect the human, civil and political rights of the Arab community in Israel; a declaration by Israel that it is a state for all its citizens, without discrimination, rather than a state for all the Jews in the world, and the revision of the right to return so as to extend it to anyone who had previously resided in historic Palestine, regardless of religious or ethnic affiliation. The second alternative is to advocate a single democratic state founded upon the principle of equality among all citizens. To me this solution offers numerous advantages, the foremost being: it offers a more rational and less costly way out of the current impasse in the so-called peace process; it conforms to the spirit and principles of liberalism and democracy espoused in the West and, indeed, in Israel itself, would therefore echo powerfully abroad and potentially attract wide and influential support; it would facilitate the creation of original solutions to problems that have so far remained intractable, such as the status of Jerusalem and the cause of Palestinian refugees while simultaneously putting a stop to Zionist racism the success of which would pave the way for the darker forces waiting in the wings from taking centre stage; it will help promote solid democratic transformations in the rest of the region which has long been thirsting for a truly sustainable development process. Some might charge that to draw such lessons from the past and advocate such solutions is to take refuge in a world of utter fancy. Yet we desperately need to apply some imagination if we are to save ourselves from the brutal fate that awaits us if we continue with current policies. * The writer is a professor of political science at Cairo University.
