'Peacemaker' Nasser Seeks Israel's Defeat

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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. 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.

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." In effect, this group is moving to take 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 last step in forcing Israel to evacuate the Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and other outside lands Israel has held since the six-day 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, and 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 this 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 Desert needs more sand.

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

THE SECOND HEADLINE ON ONE COLUMN. Identical copy, two desks: s098_2: 'Nasser Hero of Lebanese Truce, But That Isn't the Whole Story' s100_1: "'Peacemaker' Nasser Seeks Israel's Defeat" <- this one The first headline reports Taylor's hedge; the second reports his conclusion and puts 'Peacemaker' in sneer quotes.

Same mechanism as the three-headline AP set on slides 99 and 112, this time on an opinion column, where the desk is at least headlining an argument rather than a news report.

This printing carries the column complete, including the closing paragraphs that s098_2's scan cuts short — the guerrillas' reasoning ('the first and last step in forcing Israel to evacuate the Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and other outside lands Israel has held since the six-day 1967 war'), the Bustani battle, and the Sahara line. So this is the better text of the two.

The content is as described at s098_2: an unusually blunt account of dispossession ('the eviction of the Palestine Arabs', 'Palestine Arab evictees', 'evicted Arab refugees', Britain 'violating every pledge') set inside a column that calls Arafat 'fanatical' twice and Palestinians 'these fragmented people' who 'have had no political life'.

The history is granted; the politics is denied. No Palestinian is quoted except Arafat, in one sentence, answered with a joke.

Cite this clipping

"'Peacemaker' Nasser Seeks Israel's Defeat," The Daily Item, 7 November 1969. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1969-030. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1969-030