Nasser Hero of Lebanese Truce, But That Isn't the Whole Story

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When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser gets his name in the world's papers on the side of peace, this will do for openers, as old-time poker players say. Yet this wily coercer stands as the hero in cooling the caldron in the so-called Lebanon dispute. The causes of the crisis are a fascinating lesson in the Middle East situation, in which we have such a stake.

And the probable results of Nasser's intervention are something like the man who fell off the top of the Empire State Building and said to a first-floor resident as he passed him, "so far so good." Israel was founded on April 15, 1948. This U. S.-supported act alone made 100 million Arabs pale with fury.

Throughout all history the Jews have always been outnumbered, and the continuing Middle East war still comes down to 11 million Arabs against 3 million Jews. AL FATAH LEADERS Lebanon is in the forefront of the armed attacks against Israel — but not officially. The task is chiefly in the hands of the Palestine commandos or fedayeen.

The main commando organization, Al Fatah, is led by fanatical Yasir Arafat, a Cairo-educated Palestine Arab, with whom Nasser made his deal which is now in the news. The second leader is former diplomat Ahem Shukairy, who has represented Syria and Saudi Arabia. The third chief is George Habache, a Palestinian who became a doctor in Lebanon.

If all this news mystifies us it is probably because we fail to distinguish the Palestine Arabs from the other Arabs in the Arab world. Accordingly, who are the Palestine Arabs?

As a booty of World War I Britain seized Palestine under the Balfour Declaration, obtained a League of Nations mandate, and set up shop to enhance Britain's commercial and strategic interests — thereby violating every pledge Britain had given the Arabs in order to gain their help against the Turks in World War I.

It was then that the true influx of European Jews and the eviction of the Palestine Arabs began. In this development, and with the founding of Israel, the Palestine Arab evictees now total about 2½ million, many more than generally supposed.

In the 1948 Palestine war Israel took about 3,000 square miles more territory than the United Nations resolution of November 29, 1947, gave her. About a million of today's evicted Arab refugees date from that time — 21 years ago.

The largest number of Palestine Arabs, living mostly in refugee camps, are in the former territories of Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the west bank of the Jordan River and in what remains of Jordan itself. But there are also large and violently resentful groups in Lebanon, Syria and throughout the oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf.

NO POLITICAL LIFE Throughout all these years these fragmented people have had no political life. Fanatical Yasir Arafat and his Al Fatah commandos are mainly a political instrument dedicated to uniting the far-flung Palestine Arabs.

Arafat himself once summarized the Al Fatah objective to me: "The Palestine Arabs," he said, "can be mobilized only around the issue of fighting." He sounded like he'd been taking a course in "How To Talk Like James Cagney Telling The Mob What's What."

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

AN OP-ED COLUMN, not reporting — and the sharpest language in the batch sits here, in both directions at once, which is what makes it worth showing. Taylor writes that Britain 'seized Palestine', that the mandate 'violat[ed] every pledge Britain had given the Arabs', and that with the Balfour Declaration 'the eviction of the Palestine Arabs began'.

He puts the 1948 refugee figure at about a million and the total of 'Palestine Arab evictees' at 2½ million, 'many more than generally supposed', and he notes that Israel took about 3,000 square miles more than the 1947 partition resolution allotted.

For a syndicated American conservative columnist in 1969 that is a remarkably unhedged account of dispossession — the word he uses is 'eviction', four times, in his own voice.

And in the same column: Arafat is 'fanatical' twice in four paragraphs, Palestinians are 'violently resentful groups', 'these fragmented people' who 'have had no political life', and Arafat's one quoted sentence is answered with a James Cagney gangster joke. The column grants the history and denies the politics.

The dispossession is real; the people dispossessed are a mob with a spokesman. TERMINOLOGY — useful for the vocabulary question.

Taylor uses 'the Palestine Arabs' as his standing term and asks the question outright: 'who are the Palestine Arabs?' But he also writes 'George Habache, a Palestinian' — so 'Palestinian' as a noun for a person appears in the same column that otherwise insists on 'Palestine Arabs'. The two words are doing different work on the same page.

Cite this clipping

"Nasser Hero of Lebanese Truce, But That Isn't the Whole Story," The Baltimore Sun, 28 November 1967. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1967-068. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1967-068