The Arabs' Historic Mistakes in Their Interactions with Israel

By Fred Maroun 

• We Arabs managed our relationship with Israel atrociously, but the worst of all is the ongoing situation of the Palestinians. Our worst mistake was in not accepting the United Nations partition plan of 1947.
• Perhaps one should not launch wars if one is not prepared for the results of possibly losing them.
• The Jews are not keeping the Arabs in camps, we are.
• Jordan integrated some refugees, but not all. We could have proven that we Arabs are a great and noble people, but instead we showed the world, as we continue to do, that our hatred towards each other and towards Jews is far greater than any concept of purported Arab solidarity.

In May 1948, Azzam Pasha (right), the General Secretary of the Arab League, announced, regarding the proposed new Jewish part of the partition: that, "This will be a war of extermination, a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."

This is part one of a two-part series. The second part will examine what we Arabs can do differently today.

In the current state of the relationship between the Arab world and Israel, we see a patchwork of hostility, tense peace, limited cooperation, calm, and violence. We Arabs managed our relationship with Israel atrociously, but the worst of all is the ongoing situation of the Palestinians.

The Original Mistake

Our first mistake lasted centuries, and occurred well before Israel's declaration of independence in May 1948. It consisted of not recognizing Jews as equals.

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