I read in a newspaper this week an article carrying this wise headline: If only the Palestinians had accepted the partition resolution . If only Nasser had accepted Israel s peace offer . If only they had not formed the Palestinian Authority and government.
Despite the contradiction in this title – between wishing the partition resolution had been accepted, which means not going to the 1948 War and the subsequent wars to liberate the land, on one hand, and the formation of the Palestinian Authority and government, which means the continuation of the liberation war, on the other – the headline actually expresses the wisdom adopted by some in retrospect, after the event has become history.
Thus, whenever a problem comes up, some of the wise say, “If only the Arabs had accepted Israel from the beginning to spare themselves all those wars; or if only Nasser had simply shrugged off the national hopes of the Arab peoples, whom he embodied, instead of pursuing the liberation of the Arab territories it occupied.
I do not know why we don’t build on this wisdom and say, “If only Sadat had accepted the occupation of Sinai and had not waged the October 1973 War that liberated it. For accepting the fait accompli imposed by Israel – embodied by statements such as “if only we had accepted the partition and “if only Nasser had accepted peace – totally contradicts the acceptance of waging the October War, which was meant to change this reality, not to accept it.
Yet, we say these statements are wise, putting those who made them in a superior position over the general Arab sentiment that refuse to be forced to give up their land, homes and farms for the interest of foreign settlers who keep coming to a land they weren’t born in or hadn’t even visited.
Others might say that such wise statements are also unfair because they judge values and principles from the perspective of transitory interests. They don’t recognize that not surrendering a nation or part of it is a matter of principle. We have not heard before that a country was compelled to surrender half of its territory so another country could be built on it. This argument is based on the fact that our strength at the time didn’t facilitate any form of objection; so we had to comply with everything that was imposed on us.
But some may be skeptical about the wisdom of this argument because it judges an event in light of the current status quo, and not by what was prevailing at the time of its occurrence. However, the circumstances that prevailed in 1947 at the time of the partition resolution were that the Arabs were in control of the entire land of Palestine, a situation that would not have prompted them in anyway to voluntarily surrender the nation or half of it to foreign migrants, toward whom the West felt guilty and wanted to compensate at the expense of those who had not wronged them.
If only the Arab rulers at the time had accepted this shameful and historically unprecedented surrender, they would have been turned from defeated leaders to traitors, tried by following generations for treason.
Nevertheless, I think that the utmost wisdom is to accept this logic, which often emerges at times of crises. If only we had accepted all that had been imposed on us, from the partition to peace; if only we accept anything that is imposed on us at any time without discussion, life would be much easier.
Using the same logic I can today tell Palestinians: I wish you are wise enough this time to accept the current occupation of your land in the West Bank and in Gaza, accept the blockade imposed by occupational forces; and accept the killing of children, the destruction of schools and hospitals so that you could correct the mistakes of the previous generations who refused to surrender your land to the migrants who came from abroad.
Mohamed Salmawy is President of the Arab Writers’ Union and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo.
