MODERN HISTROY

SPEECH

At the root of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the Arab world's refusal to accept a non-Muslim political entity in the Middle East. Throughout the conflict, possible compromises and negotiations between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab league have been met with Arab responses of refusal because of this attitude, often causing violence, sometimes war, and effectively destroying any progress towards peace. As Israeli diplomat Abba Eban said, as quoted in the Jerusalem Post in 2002 - “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”.

Even before the creation of Israel, the Arab rejectionist attitudes were established with the refusal of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, Churchill White Paper in 1922, the 1930 Passfield White Paper and the 1937 Peel Commission regarding the escalating Arab violence within the Mandate of Palestine. Perhaps the most crucial rejection came in 1947, with the Arab rejection of the UN Partition Plan and the announcement by the Arab leaders of their intention to use force to resist the implementation of the Resolution 181. Despite this, King Abdullah of Jordan was secretly in negotiations with Jewish leadership in order to achieve his goal of annexing the West Bank, undermining the Arab’s intention of refusal. Despite this obvious sign of Arab political disunity, the Arab League remained publicly united in rejection, with the rejection of the armistice agreements of the 1948-49 war. For the next 30 years, they refused to acknowledge Israel and continued to direct their efforts towards destroying the Jewish state in the diplomatic arena and through the use of violence. Many world leaders, peace makers and revisionist historians have identified the recognition of Israel by the Arab states as a crucial ingredient for peace, yet the violently asserted opposition of the Arab league to the Jewish state has prevented this. Peace was further prevented by the failure of Arab leaders to accept Palestinian refugees as citizens, although the refusal of Israel to acknowledge the Palestinian right of return must be also considered, both of which inspired the PLO to radicalise, adding a complex new dimension to the conflict.

Arab rejection continued in the post Six Day War period, with the Khartoum Resolution famously stating that there would be “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel , and no negotiations with it”. In the years following Khartoum, a number of political and diplomatic efforts were made by the Arabs to assert their attitude of refusal, including the “controlled war” of 1973, but this began to change in 1978. Egypt entered into negotiations with Israel, representing the changing attitudes of the citizens of the Arab countries and resulting in the Camp David Accords, and a separate peace agreement between the two countries. The rest of the Arab League responded predictably, with rejection, and the expulsion of Egypt from the league, not to be revoked until over a decade later. With the outbreak of the Intifada in 1987, the onus of peace making fell largely onto the Palestinian Arabs and the PLO, who were more open to negotiations but still have underscored rejectionism with wave after wave of terrorism throughout the conflict.

The detrimental effects of the Arab rejectionism in the first 40 years of the conflict still echo in the Middle East. The non-acceptance of Israel's right to exist and support for terrorism has become a deeply rooted social value among Arabs, proving to be a major impediment to peace.