The Western view of the Arab/Israeli conflict is well documented and widely promoted.  This essay tries to give an insight into how the conflict is perceived through Arab eyes.

All readers of this article will be familiar with how the state of Israel was formed. Zionist agitation throughout the early decades of the 20th century, given renewed impetus by the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Europe in the 1930s and throughout the Second World War, eventually led in 1948 to Ben Gurion’s declaration of a new state – the state of Israel, thus fulfilling Jewish aspirations for their own homeland.

But what is seen in the West as a truly epic story, as the legitimate aspiration of a people to find a home, was and is seen in the Arab world as the ruthless and systematic persecution and dispossession of the Palestinians by an immigrant, if not a colonial, power. The land where Israel was founded was not a vacuum, waiting to be filled; it was Palestine, a land peopled by Palestinians for centuries. Thus, as one people found, or perhaps more accurately occupied, a home, another lost theirs.

Throughout the history of  Saudi Arabia, from the time of King Abdul Aziz, the Kingdom has resolutely supported the Palestinian cause and has condemned Israel’s conduct in the harshest possible terms.  King Fahd continued this policy and did everything in his power, politically, diplomatically and financially to fight for the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.

It is therefore essential to set out here the Arab perspective on the Palestine/Israel problem, partly to explain why King Fahd expended so much energy on trying to find a just solution to the problem and partly to attempt to counter one of the most pervasive distortions of historical truth, and indeed to expose one of the most serious political crimes, of the last century.

The Zionist movement (the movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine) was officially launched in 1897 by a Hungarian Jew, Theodor Herzl.   The objectives of the movement, as set out by the First Congress held in Basle, Switzerland, were clear enough:

"Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.  The Congress contemplates the following means of attaining this end:

1. The promotion on suitable line of the settlement of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers.
2. The organization and binding together of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, local and general, in accordance with  the laws of each country.
3. The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and consciousness.
4. Preparatory steps towards obtaining Government consent where necessary to the attainment of the aims of Zionism."

As the Zionists sat in Switzerland defining their objectives, it might have seemed to the casual observer that “settlement” on a foreign land (i.e. colonization) was a rather discreditable aim and expressions such as “suitable lines” and “appropriate institutions” to assist the Zionists in fulfilling their aims had a rather sinister ring to them.   It therefore has to be understood that the Zionists believed that Palestine was “the Promised Land”: i.e. the land promised to them by God as the descendants of Abraham, and that, in their view, their claim to Palestine transcended all other considerations.

It is difficult and generally pointless to argue with a zealot but it is worth pointing out that, even in their own terms, the Zionists position was riddled with contradictions.   The Arabs, descendants of Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham, are as much the seed of Abraham as the Jews, descendants of Isaac, and, in any case, according to scripture, possession of the Promised Land was conditional on the righteousness of the people.  In the event of failure, Moses warned: “The Lord shall scatter thee among the peoples, from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth.”

Leaving scriptural issues aside, we should perhaps examine, by more conventional standards, the legitimacy of the Zionists claim to Palestine. The Hebrew tribe, (later the Israelites), invaded the land of Canaan  (later known as Palestine) at some time in the second millennium before Christ.  The land at that time was peopled by the Canaanites who had inhabited the area from about 2000 BC. According to their own tradition, the Hebrews moved to Egypt where they were subsequently enslaved until Moses led them back to Canaan at some time in the 13th century BC.

At about this time, in the 12th century BC groups of settlers from thesea, who came to be known as the Philistines, established cities in southern Palestine. By 1100 BC, the Hebrews controlled much of Palestine.  Saul  united the tribes of the Hebrews and became their first King (c1020 – c1000 BC).   He was succeeded by David who reigned from c1000 – c961 BC, and David by Solomon who reigned from c961 – c922 BC.

When Solomon died his kingdom split in two; the kingdom of Israel (in the north) and Judah (in the south).  The Assyrians dismantled Israel in 722BC and assimilated it into Assyria; the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed the kingdom of Judah in 586 BC, sacking Jerusalem and taking many of the inhabitants into captivity. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, having added Babylon to his many conquests, freed the Jews.  The majority chose to stay in Babylon but it is estimated some 40,000 returned to Palestine which was now part of the Persian Empire.

Persian rule of Palestine was succeeded by the Macedonian dynasties of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids.   From about 150 BC until 63 BC the Hebrews achieved independence, as the power of the Macedonians dwindled and Rome’s power grew.

In 63 BC Pompey, the Roman General, stormed Jerusalem and Palestine became in effect a Roman province.  The Roman General, Marcus Licinius Crassus, famed for his victory over Spartacus, sacked Jerusalem in 54 BC.  In 70 AD, Titus, son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, sacked Jerusalem again and destroyed the Temple and, in 135 AD, the Romans built the city of Aelia Capitolina where Jerusalem had stood.

The history of the region for the next 18 centuries shows no record of a Hebrew, Israelite or Jewish state in Palestine.    A number of factors led to the dispersal of the Jews (the Diaspora).  Conquest by the great empires of ancient times, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and Jerusalem itself by the Romans in 70 AD, voluntary migration, all contributed to the dispersal of the Jews and the creation of Jewish communities throughout the ancient world and, in more modern times, in most countries across the globe.   It is of course true that many of these Jewish communities nurtured, through the generations, veneration for Jerusalem as the capital of the briefly independent Hebrew state of long ago and, in some, the desire to return to Palestine.   But, while they harbored such dreams in their homes in Europe, North America or other parts of the world, time passed, centuries passed.  Another people, indigenous to the Middle East, true to the traditions, values and culture of the region, dwelt in the land the Zionists coveted.

In the 7th century AD, almost 600 years after Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans, Islam was born.  Jerusalem, already holy to Jews and Christians, became the third most holy site to Muslims.  Islam became the dominant religion of the Middle East.  A great Islamic civilization spread east to India and beyond -  and west, across north Africa, up through Spain and into France.  The land of the Arabs stretched from Syria in the north to Yemen in the south; from Morocco in the west to Oman in the east - and, in the heart of this expanse, lay Arab Palestine.

As more centuries passed, various Muslim dynasties took control of Palestine.  In 1099, Christian Crusaders from western Europe captured Jerusalem until it was recaptured by Saladin in 1187.   Egyptians and Turks ruled the predominantly Arab population of Palestine for the next seven centuries.

By any reasonable criterion, in the context of the history of Palestine over the last 1,800 years, Jewish aspirations for a national home in Palestine in the 20th century were without legal or moral justification.

Throughout the Jewish agitation for a state in Palestine, the Zionists’ plans were opposed by the Palestinians in particular and the Arab world in general.  The ultimate objectives of the Zionists were clear.  In order to achieve their objectives, they would have to effect an extraordinary piece of population engineering.   Jews would have to be gathered in from around the world and, as far as possible, the existing Arab population must be driven out.

According to the best available estimates (the first Census under the British Mandate), the population of Palestine in 1922 stood at 752,000, of which only 83,790 (12%) were Jews.  The injustice of the Zionists’ intention became apparent to the British who were administering the Mandate in Palestine but British attempts to limit immigration prompted a Jewish campaign of terrorism against the British authorities in Palestine which eventually persuaded the British Government that their position was untenable.

This is not the place to recount in detail the methods used by the Zionists, in effect, to invade and occupy Palestine.  It is a story which, in the West at least, is seldom if ever told but, for the record, it is a story of ruthless determination in which deceit, terrorism, murder and ethnic cleansing played pivotal roles; in which hundreds of thousands of people were driven from their homes and their land  to remain in refugee camps for decades; in which the rights of the indigenous Arabs were treated with the contempt sadly typical of racist ideologies which teach that one people is inherently superior to another by virtue of their racial origin.

Even when Israel was preparing to declare itself a state, Arabs outnumbered Jews in Palestine by two to one (there were 1,380,000 Arabs; 700,000 Jews in 1947/48).  After decades of the Zionist ingathering, the Jewish proportion of the population of Palestine was still only one third.  Even within the proposed Jewish state, half the population was Arab.

A speedier way to improve the ratio of Jews to Arabs and to acquire more land for further expansion of the Jewish population was obvious.  The Arab Palestinians had to be encouraged to leave.   A policy of ethnic cleansing was adopted.  How far the atrocities committed were sanctioned by the Jewish authorities remains a matter for debate.   It is nevertheless clear from the record that nothing was done to prevent them and that the outcome fitted well with Zionist aims.

The 20th century saw many acts of terrorism perpetrated by people who sought freedom from colonial rule.  The Zionist atrocities were different.  They were enacted in order to impose alien rule on an indigenous people, in effect to impose the colonial rule of predominantly Western Jews on the Palestinians.

When the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the late King Abdul Aziz met President Roosevelt on the cruiser USS Quincy in February 1945, they discussed the issue of Palestine.  President Roosevelt gave a promise – or rather two promises – to the Saudi King;

he would never do anything which might prove hostile to the Arabs
the US Government would make no change in its basic policy on Palestine without full and prior consultation with both Jews and Arabs

Immediately after Roosevelt’s death, President Truman ignored these promises and, perhaps more concerned with popularity at home than justice abroad, worked tirelessly for the formation and recognition of the state of Israel – and thus for the dispossession of the Palestinians.

Whatever the reasons for President Truman’s decision to ignore the undertakings of his predecessor, this much is certain. When the state of Israel was declared, the worst fears of the Palestinians were fulfilled.  And the seeds of several wars, the sufferings of millions of refugees and the grim situation we still face today were sown.

Well, some said, that is all history. Israel and those who support her hoped that, with time, the Palestinian problem would fade away; that the Palestinians would be absorbed by other countries; and that their aspirations for nationhood and for the land of their fathers would somehow disappear. This has proved an irrational and extremely dangerous notion. The Palestinians can scarcely forget they have been dispossessed. Those who remain under Israeli rule are deeply resentful. The Intifadas, the Palestinian up-risings in the occupied territories, in 1988/89 and in 2000/01, in which hundreds of Palestinians, armed only with sticks or stones, were shot dead by Israeli troops, gives some indication of how deep that resentment runs. And the Palestinian refugees living in camps in other Arab countries have not forgotten the homes and the land which belonged to them.

To the Saudi Government it has always seemed (as indeed King Abdul Aziz explained to President Roosevelt) that with a twisted logic, in some way, the Palestinians are being made to expiate the crimes of the Nazis. And that, because of those Nazi crimes, the Israelis are somehow excused for whatever action they take against those whom they have dispossessed. If this is the case, it is time the West acknowledged that the crimes of one society cannot be expiated by allowing the victims of those crimes to perpetrate crimes against another.  For obvious historical reasons, the West has great sympathy for Israel. The persecution of the Jews by the Nazis led, understandably, to feelings of guilt both in the country of the erstwhile persecutors and amongst other Western countries who could have done more to save the Jews from that persecution.

But Arabs have never understood how justifiable sympathy for one persecuted people can somehow excuse the persecution of another. If it was wrong for the Nazis to deny the rights of citizenship to the Jews, it must surely be wrong for Israel to deny the rights of citizenship to the Palestinians; if it was wrong for the Nazis to use the military power of the state to oppress a people, it must be wrong for the Israelis to oppress the Palestinians. If it was wrong for the Nazis to arrest Jews without due process of law, it must be wrong for the Israelis to carry out mass arrests of Palestinians without due legal process.

Of course the parallel is not exact. But it is sufficiently close for any reasonable person to realize that similar issues of moral principle are involved.

The purpose of this brief historical résumé is to try to explain why the Arab world in general and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as guardian of Islam’s holy sites in particular have found it so difficult to accommodate what has been essentially a 20th century act of colonization.

It also helps to explain why King Fahd, following in the tradition of his predecessors, gave special attention to the plight of the Palestinians and used every means at his disposal to find a way to a just peace.

In August, 1981 Fahd, then Crown Prince, put forward an eight point peace plan.  The plan became known as the Fahd Plan. The Plan consisted of the following provisions:

1. Israel to withdraw from all Arab territory occupied in 1967, including Arab Jerusalem.
2. Israeli settlements built on Arab land after 1967 to be dismantled, including those in Arab Jerusalem.
3. A guarantee of freedom of worship for all religions in the holy places.
4. An affirmation of the right of the Palestinian Arab p eople to return to their homes and compensation for those who do not wish to return.
5. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip to have a transitional period under the auspices of the United Nations for a period not exceeding several months.
6. An independent Palestinian state should be set up with Jerusalem as its capital.
7. All states in the region should be able to live in peace in the region.
8. The United Nations or member states of the United Nations to guarantee the carrying out of these provisions.

The Fahd Plan was significant in several ways.

First, it showed that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was prepared to take the initiative in trying to solve the intractable problems posed by Israel.

Secondly, it indicated the type of approach King Fahd would take to international diplomacy.  From an Arab point of view, the proposal was bold in that, implicitly, it accepted the existence of Israel and its right to live in peace in the region, subject to the other provisions of the Plan.   The Fahd Plan recognized the reality of the situation.   The provisions of the Plan gave Israel a guarantee of security within agreed borders, a guarantee that would of course be enforced by the United States if the United Nations were to prove ineffectual.  At the same time, the Plan sought justice for the Palestinian Arabs or as much justice as was pragmatically possible.   This combination of boldness in taking initiatives, combined with pragmatism, all undertaken through quiet diplomacy, was the  hallmark of King Fahd’s approach to international affairs.

Third, it showed King Fahd’s commitment to the holy places of Islam (in this instance, Jerusalem) and his respect for the holy places of the other People of the Book (Christians and Jews) and their right to worship. The Fahd Plan was formally presented at the Arab Summit in Fez in November 1981.  Between August and November, the Plan had caused considerable debate in the Arab world.   It was contentious in that it recognized the right of Israel to exist; it was also contentious because it aimed to solve the Palestinian/Israel problem once and for all, thus rendering the Camp David process redundant and providing the Palestinians with the independence they sought.

While the PLO and many other Arab countries voiced support for the Plan, Egypt (which wished to reactivate the Camp David process) and Syria (which believed that no solution should be negotiated until the Arab side had military parity with Israel) opposed it.  Because of Syria’s close relations with the PLO, Syrian support was essential and, in its absence, the Plan was shelved at the Fez Summit.

Although the Fahd Plan was not adopted, it remains true that any settlement of the Palestine/Israel problem will have to be based on its provisions.  The collapse of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s attempts to negotiate a peace settlement in 2000/01 stemmed from his failure to grasp that the provisions of the Fahd Plan are the only basis on which a peaceful resolution is possible.

The years both before and after the Fahd Plan have not been happy ones for the Palestinians.  Throughout these years, in addition to diplomatic efforts to encourage the peace process, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been unstinting in its generosity to the Palestinian people.  It is clear that the plight of the Palestinians was in the forefront of King Fahd’s mind throughout.   A scrutiny of the minutes of almost any of the weekly meetings of the Saudi Council of Ministers will reveal mentions of the Palestinians and the aid that King Fahd personally, or the Saudi Government, or the Saudi people as a whole, have sent to them.