The Palestine Arabs

By Henry J. Taylor

Transcribed from the clipping

“The Palestine Arabs WHEN Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser gets his name in the world’s papers on the side of peace, this wily coercer stands as the hero in cooling the cauldron 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 Empire State Building and said to a window-washer 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.

Commando Units 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 Nov.

29, 1947, gave her. About a million of today’s evicted Arab refugees date from that time — 21 years ago.

In Refugee Camps 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.

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 as if he’d been taking a course in ‘How to Talk Like James Cagney Telling the Mob What’s What.’

In effect, this group is moving to take the destiny of the Palestine Arabs out of the hands of the Arab world leaders and into their own. The result is an important new force in the dynamite-loaded Middle East, and a very hard one for the United States to influence.

The group reasons that its guerrilla warfare is the first and best step in forcing Israel to evacuate the Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and other outside lands Israel has held since the 1967 war. But they have also run wild inside their Lebanon base, have fought a recent bloody battle with Maj. Gen.

Emile Bustani’s (American-equipped) Lebanese army, an threatened the existence of Lebanon’s pro-Nasser government itself. Nasser’s intervention and the Lebanon truce he made with Yasir Arafat in Cairo was totally self-serving. His aim in his pressure-cooker part of the world is the ultimate military defeat of Israel.

And for this objective Nasser needs such disunity in the Arab ranks as the Lebanon explosion about as much as the Sahara needs more sand.”

Context added by this archive

A syndicated columnist setting out to answer his own question — who are the Palestine Arabs? — for American readers in 1969, and answering it with the word eviction. He writes that Britain seized Palestine as booty, violating every pledge it had given the Arabs, and that the evictees now number about two and a half million.

He also records that Israel took about 3,000 square miles more than the partition resolution gave it. Then he quotes Arafat from his own interview, accurately, and compares him to James Cagney.

Cite this item

"The Palestine Arabs," The San Antonio Light, 7 November 1969. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1969-011. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1969-011