A Durable Peace

by Benjamin Netanyahu

  But what is even more amazing is the fact that the Arab-inspired myth of “Israeli expansionism” persists, even though in 1979 Israel, in pursuit of peace at Camp David, willingly agreed to give up 91 percent of the territory it had won in a war of self-defense, land containing billions of dollars of investments and the oil fields that it had developed and that met most of its energy needs. Further, Israel ceded additional territories to Palestinian control under the Oslo Accords. No victor in recorded history has behaved similarly. What other nation would give up its oil supply and become dependent on imported oil for the sake of peace?

  Clearly, however indignant some Arab leaders may be over the loss of territory in 1967, this loss cannot have been the cause of a conflict that began much earlier. If not the loss of territory, are the Palestinian Arab refugees the cause of the conflict? Prior to 1967, in fact, it was “the refugee problem” that was the constant refrain of the Arab chorus in explaining the Arab enmity toward Israel. But there was no such thing as the refugee problem when the Arabs embarked upon their first full-scale war against the fledgling Israel in 1948. On the day five Arab armies invaded the new State of Israel, Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League, declared: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” 16

  In several cases—as in Haifa, Tiberias, and in other well-known examples documented by the British authorities and Western correspondents on the scene at the time—the Jews pleaded with their Palestinian Arab neighbors to stay. This was in sharp contrast to the directives the Palestinian Arabs were receiving from Arab governments, exhorting them to leave in order to clear the way for the invading armies. No matter: The idea that Israel expelled the refugees, repeated ad nauseam, has caught hold over the decades since. But in the years immediately after the conflict, there were many moments of candor. For example, the Jordanian newspaper Filastin wrote in February 1949, “The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.” 17 And in the New York Lebanese daily Al-Hoda in June 1951:

  The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade…. Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down. 18

  In 1954 the Jordanian daily Al-Difaa quoted this telling comment from one of the refugees: “The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.” 19 As late as 1963, the Cairo Akhbar al-Yom was still able to write: “May 15th arrived.… [O]n that very day the Mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead.” 20

  Not only have the Arab leaders chosen to forget this history, they have created a new one, at once absolving themselves of any responsibility for the refugees and pinning the blame on Israel. Again, as with the territories lost in 1967, the consequence of the 1948 war—Arab refugees—was presented as its cause.

  But to make this scheme work, the refugees had to be maintained as refugees, permanently wretched, perpetually unsettled. Most people unfamiliar with the Middle East are shocked to learn that the PLO actually has acted to prevent Palestinians from leaving the refugee camps, as have various Arab states. For the PLO, these camps served as a propaganda bonanza and fertile soil for the recruitment of new “fighters,” and it was willing to resort to violence to keep them intact. For some reason, the Western press seems to have had little interest in reporting on this sordid bit of manipulation.

  The consistent refusal of Arab leaders to solve this problem is particularly tragic because it would have been so easy to do. After all, since World War II there have been well over fifty million refugees from many countries, and almost all have been successfully resettled. 21 The truth of this assertion is driven home by the fact that in 1948 Israel, with a population of 650,000 Jews and a crushing defense burden, successfully absorbed 800,000 Jewish refugees from the same war that produced the Arab refugees. Israel, of course, did not incarcerate its refugees in special camps as the Arabs did, but quickly integrated them into Israeli society. That the fifty million Arabs in 1948 could not absorb 650,000 Arab refugees—and have not finished the job even after half a century, and even after the fantastic multiplication of their oil wealth—is an indication of the merciless cynicism with which the Arabs have manipulated the refugee issue to create reasons for world censure of Israel. As Dr. Elfan Rees, the adviser on refugees to the World Council of Churches, noted: “The Arab refugee problem is by far the easiest post-war refugee problem. By faith, by language, by race, and by social organization, they are indistinguishable from their fellows of the host countries.” 22

  Indeed, after 1948 foreigners seeking to resolve the refugee problem were singularly impressed by the desirability of the refugees’ absorption into the Arab states. Thus, a U.S. congressional study mission sent to investigate the situation of the refugees in 1953 reported: “The status of the refugees as a special group of people who are wards of the United Nations should be terminated as soon as possible. The objective should be for refugees to become citizens of the Arab states.” 23 And a Chatham House study in 1949 concluded that, given international financial support, the great majority of the Arab refugees could be absorbed by Iraq and Syria, both of which boasted millions of acres of undeveloped land suitable for agriculture. 24 Similarly, a 1951 study by the International Development Advisory Board found that the entire Arab refugee population could be absorbed by Iraq alone. 25

  Still, despite the deliberate Arab policy to keep the problem alive, the reality that Dr. Rees noted has proved even stronger than Arab intent. For over the years, nearly all of the refugees have been absorbed into the economies and societies of the countries of their residence. Indeed, most Palestinian Arabs have homes. Many of them, in fact, live as full citizens in eastern Palestine—today called the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Similarly, most of the Arabs of Judea-Samaria are not homeless refugees; they live in the same homes they occupied before the establishment of Israel. The number of actual refugees is close to nil. Some live on the West Bank, but most live in Gaza (although most of Gaza’s residents are not refugees). Israel’s attempts to dismantle the remaining camps and rehabilitate their residents were continuously obstructed by the PLO and the Arab world. Now that the Palestinian population lives entirely under Palestinian rule, it is the job of the Palestinians themselves to dismantle the remaining camps.

  A serious case of genuine Palestinian homelessness was created in the wake of the Gulf War, when Kuwait embarked on a campaign of vengeance against its own large Palestinian population, which had collaborated with Saddam in conquering and occupying the country. More than three hundred thousand Kuwaitis of Palestinian origin were driven from the country (the largest forcible transfer of Palestinian Arabs in history). Almost all of them fled to Jordan, which accepted them all as citizens. If a comparable number of Palestinian Arabs in Judea-Samaria and Gaza remained unintegrated, until recently it was because political pressure from the Arab world and PLO terror have prevented their rehabilitation. Yet the theme of “homelessness” persists, having been repeated endlessly—not without success—as a powerful weapon in the Arab political arsenal against Israel.

  As the years passed, however, Arab propagandists discovered that their claims about “usurped territories” and “homeless refugees” could not withstand critical examination. Before knowledgeable audiences, the embarrassments of chronology and causality could not be waved away.

  They were compelled to resort, therefore, to a third and final argument. Brandishing the ever-popular slogan of “self-determination,” they asserted that the “Palestinian people” have been denied their “legitimate rights,” and
that one of the rights that has been denied, they claimed, is the right to a “homeland.” Significantly, the slogans of “Palestinian self-determination” and “legitimate rights” were introduced into common currency only after the failure of the Arab attempt to destroy Israel in 1967.

  For it is an uncontested fact that during the nineteen years of Jordanian rule over Judea-Samaria, the Arab leaders, the Arab media, and Arab propaganda said virtually nothing about a “homeland” or “legitimate rights” for the Palestinian Arabs living in Judea-Samaria. When “Palestinian rights” were spoken of, it was always in reference to Israel behind its 1967 lines, to Haifa, Jaffa, and Acre, and the message was crystal clear: Israel was to be destroyed in order for the Arabs to obtain those rights.

  It is noteworthy that under the British Mandate, it was the Jews of the country who called themselves Palestinians. The Pales-tine Post and the Palestine Philharmonic were Jewish. Likewise the Jewish soldiers who made up the Jewish Brigade of the British Army were called by the British “Palestinians,” a term that at the time referred mainly to Jews. There were thus Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs, although in those days the Arabs did not stress a distinct Palestinian nationhood but always emphasized that they were part of the larger Arab nation.

  This deep-rooted identification with the Arab nation did not diminish over the years. Passer Arafat, head of the PLO, has said, “The question of borders does not interest us. Palestine is only a small drop in the great Arab ocean. Our nation is the great Arab nation extending from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and beyond.” 26 And Zuhair Mohsin, a member of the PLO executive, put it this way: “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are one people.” 27 Yet soon after 1967, the Arab world began speaking with one voice about the newly occupied “Palestinian people,” as though a distinct Palestinian nation had somehow come into being out of thin air.

  The process of forming a separate nation is a complex one. The development of a unique “peoplehood” is always a long historical process, and its culmination is expressed by the emergence of several shared attributes, most often a distinct language, culture, religion, and history. But let us grant that through a miraculous telescoping of history, what took other peoples centuries was achieved by the Palestinian Arabs almost overnight, by dint of declaration, and that they are entitled to a national home. But who are the Palestinian Arabs, and where is their homeland? Let us hear what the Arab leaders themselves say.

  The PLO, supposedly committed to “Palestinian self-determination,” asserted from its inception in 1964 that its design encompasses the entirety of Palestine, both its western and eastern parts, both Israel and Jordan. This was underscored time and again, as in the Palestine National Council’s Eighth Conference, in February–March 1971:

  In raising the slogan of the liberation of Palestine… it was not the intention of the Palestine revolution to separate the east of the river from the west, nor did it believe that the struggle of the Palestinian people can be separate from the struggle of the masses in Jordan. 28

  Given the embrace between the PLO and Jordan after the Oslo Accords, PLO leaders were naturally reluctant to publicize this long-standing claim. But their candid statements in the past are revealing. For example, Chafiq el Hout, a PLO official, said in 1967, “Jordan is an integral part of Palestine, just like Israel.” 29 And Arafat made this same point in his speech before the United Nations in 1974: “Jordan is ours, Palestine is ours, and we shall build our national entity on the whole of this land.” 30

  Some would expect the Jordanians to contest this claim. But until some years ago they did not. In 1970, Crown Prince Hassan, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, said, “Palestine is Jordan, and Jordan is Palestine. There is one people and one land, with one history and one destiny” 31 King Hussein (also—significantly—before an Arab audience) said on Egyptian television in 1977, “The two peoples are actually one. This is a fact.” 32 In an interview with an Arab newspaper in Paris in 1981, Hussein said, “The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.” 33 And in 1984, he told the Kuwaiti paper Al-Anba that “Jordan is Palestine…. Jordanians and Palestinians must… realize that their fate is the same,” and that “Jordan in itself is Palestine.” 34 In 1988 the PLO leader Abu Iyad reemphasized precisely the same point: “We also insist on confederation with Jordan because we are one and the same people.” 35

  In recent years, to ward off the inevitable conflict between them over who will control eastern Palestine (Jordan), Hussein and the PLO had somewhat amended such pronouncements. But whether whispered or spoken out loud, these declarations of the Arabs themselves confirm what both history and logic tell us: The area of Palestine is indeed the territory of Mandatory Palestine, as decreed by the League of Nations, and comprises the present-day states of Israel and Jordan. It is absurd to pretend that an Arab in eastern Palestine who shares the language, culture, and religion with another Arab some ten miles away in western Palestine, an Arab who is often his close relative if not literally his own brother, is a member of a different people. Indeed, the PLO’s officials and Jordan’s rulers have been the first to admit this.

  We must therefore wonder: How many Palestinian Arab peoples are there? Is there a “West Palestinian Arab people” on the West Bank, and just across the border an “East Palestinian Arab people” in Jordan? How many Arab states in Palestine does Palestinian Arab self-determination require?

  Clearly, in eastern and western Palestine, there are only two peoples, the Arabs and the Jews. Just as clearly, there are only two states in that area, Jordan and Israel. The Arab state of Jordan, containing over four million Arabs, for a long time did not allow a single Jew to live there—it expelled those Jews who came under its control in 1948. Jordan also contains four-fifths of the territory originally allocated by the League of Nations for the Jewish National Home. The other state, Israel, has a population of five million, of which one-sixth is Arab. It contains less than one-fifth of the territory originally allocated to the Jews under the Mandate. In the territory disputed between these two states (Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem) live another 1,150,000 Arabs and 300,000 Jews (another million or so Arabs live in Gaza).

  The claim that none of the Palestinians have been granted “self-determination,” then, is misleading. For the inhabitants of Jordan—which Hussein’s grandfather Abdullah originally wanted to call the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine—are all Palestinian Arabs (Arabs from Palestine), and within that population western Palestinian Arabs—those whose families came from the part of Palestine west of the Jordan River—are the decided majority. It cannot be said, therefore, that the Arabs of Palestine are lacking a state of their own, the ultimate expression of self-determination. The demand for a second Palestinian Arab state in western Palestine, and a twenty-second Arab state in the world, is merely the latest attempt to push Israel back to the hopelessly vulnerable armistice lines of 1949.

  No one interested in the future of Mideast peace would challenge the legitimacy of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. I certainly do not. Regardless of the tortuous history of eastern Palestine, and the broken promises of the League of Nations to the Jewish people, the modern state of Jordan is a fact. By integrating its Palestinian population into all levels of Jordanian society, the modern state of Jordan has assumed a respectable legitimacy that all who are committed to peace should acknowledge. Equally, the Jewish people, while attached historically to the Gilad and Moab regions of Jordan, must recognize that the Jewish historical claim to these lands has no practical consequence at the close of the twentieth century. Moreover, it is in Israel’s best interest to see Jordan stable, secure, and prosperous. This is why, as opposition leader in 1995, I led the vote of the Likud party in the Knesset approving the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, thereby helping to seal the peace between Jordan and all parts of Israeli society.

  I believe that a permanent agreement of peace can be reached between Israel and t
he Palestinian Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. I have been advocating such a peace settlement because I believe it is in the best interest of Israel and the Palestinians alike. This final peace would achieve a balance between the Palestinians’ understandable desire to run their own lives and Israel’s need to preserve vital national interests, foremost of which is security. In fact, arrangements that would give the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza effective control over their lives have been in great part implemented by now, since the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo Accords directly controls over 98 percent of the Palestinian population. A final peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians would resolve primarily the outstanding questions of any additional territory (virtually empty of Palestinians) that might be handed over to the Palestinians, and the all-important question of who controls crucial powers such as external security. If peace is to prevail, Israel must retain these powers.

  The civil enfranchisement of the Palestinians is by now a moot issue, since they have their own flag, their own passports, and, most importantly, their governing institutions and the ability, however one may criticize it from a Western democratic perspective, to vote for their representatives and leadership. What I am stressing here is that the issue at the core of the Palestinian conflict with Israel is not lack of Palestinian self-determination as such, but the Palestinian demand for unlimited self-determination, beyond their current integration in Jordan and the arrangement for self-governance in a final peace settlement with Israel. That Palestinian demand for unbridled self-determination is not in itself a demand for greater freedom to insure Palestinian liberties, but a demand for the freedom to extinguish the liberty and life of the Jewish state. For unbridled Palestinian self-determination would mean a Palestinian state armed to the teeth, in league with such regimes as Iraq (whose leader, Saddam Hussein, has been repeatedly adulated by the Palestinians), and with powerful elements like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, inspired by Iran, all openly calling for Israel’s destruction. Such a radical state, strategically poised on the hills above Tel Aviv, would make Israel’s existence a precarious one at best.