Kaduna — The Zionists of the 20th century had Lord Balfour, the Israelis of the 21st have President George W. Bush. Balfour it was whose (Balfour) Declaration committed the British Government to the creation of a homeland in Palestine for Jews fleeing incipient racism and persecution in Europe during the First World War.

George W. Bush on the other hand, in thrall to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, gave United States' support for Israel to retain parts of territories it had captured in its numerous wars against Arab countries. This stance is in direct conflict with international law which forbids acquisition of territory through force.

The Israeli intention to gain territory from its wars against the Arabs and the support offered this policy by the United States is what has stymied all efforts to broker peace between the country and its Arab neighbours.

Since the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is too well-known to require recapitulation; the emphasis here is on the evolution of Arab attitude towards Israel since the partition of Palestine. The first phase was that of utter rejection of the State of Israel, leading to the war of 1948. Israeli victory in that war and the dispersal of the Palestinians only embittered the Arabs the more, leading to more resistance and Israeli reprisal raids and, eventually wars against its neighbours, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. It colluded with Britain and France to invade Egypt in the Suez war of 1956. That attack and the June 1967 war against all the three countries fitted the pattern of Israeli attacks on Arab countries both to keep them off balance and underline its military superiority.

The October War (1973) proved a watershed in Arab attitudes towards Israel. The readiness of the United States to risk nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union in its support of Israel convinced Egyptian President Anwar Sadat of the impossibility of dislodging Israel from the Middle East. This realization propelled his peace overtures to Israel in 1977 which culminated in the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979. The bottom line for the Egyptian president was that Israel could have peace only if it gave up territory; and so it proved in the instant case as the border between the two countries has been quiet and peaceful ever since.

The comprehensive nature of the Israeli victory in the Six Day War strengthened Zionist politicians to press for Greater Israel - a version of the Jewish state covering all the territory of the Mandate Palestine. Israel would thus retain the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and Syria's Golan Heights - the latter for defensive rather historico-religious reasons. The Likud party of then Prime Minister Menachem Begin began to implement this vision of Greater Israel by, first annexing East Jerusalem and then systematically planting several thousands of Israel settlers in the captured territories. This strategy was called creating facts on the ground, thus making the conquests irreversible.

The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty however required Israel to give up "every inch" of captured Egyptian territory. This Israel did with much gnashing of teeth, calling it "a painful choice". It has however enjoyed peace on its western boarder ever since.

The withdrawal from the Sinai put Israel in a position to consolidate its hold on the Palestinian territories and bully unfriendly neighbours as and when required to punish and prevent attacks by the various Palestinian liberation movements operating out of those countries. One result of this strategy was the 1982 invasion of Southern Lebanon and its occupation for the next twenty years. The obverse of this strategy is that it gives birth to resistance movements fighting against Israel as happened with the Hizbollah in Lebanon.

The peace treaty with Israel caused a rupture among Arab countries, with those opposed constituting the "rejectionist front" that insisted on the liquidation of the Jewish State. The futility of this stand has been proved in the intervening period and the Arabs have had to modify their aims. Since 2002 there has been an Arab peace plan on the table. It offers Israel what it craves the most: recognition and acceptance of its right to exist. It however demands what Israel hates most to do: relinquish territory.

United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 provide the clearest guidelines towards resolving the Middle East conflict: Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders and Arab recognition of the State of Israel. The Arab peace plan tallies exactly with the provisions of these famous Security Council resolutions. There lies the rub. Israel quibbles about "defensible borders." Former President Bush asserts the impossibility of returning to the "Armistice Lines" of 1948, ignoring the fact that the lines have become the internationally recognized borders which Israel was prepared to defend to the death in all its wars.

There is the fact of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, for more than 40 years, the longest in recent history. It is also the most vicious and repressive since Nazi Germany's occupation of Eastern Europe in World War Two. The Palestinians are subjected to collective punishment, closure of towns and villages, destruction of homes and farmlands, targeted assassinations, mass arrests and detentions and confiscation of land and seizure and diversion of resources to Israeli settler communities. The latest phase of the occupation is Isolation and Encirclement. Palestinian towns and villages are isolated one from the other by strategically-placed Israeli settlements and are encircled by the separation wall. The combined effect of these measures is to make natural economic and communal life impossible for the Palestinians. No Palestinian alive today remembers a life free from Israeli menace and control.

Former U.S President Jimmy Carter, the architect of the Egyptian Israeli peace treaty has written a book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid detailing the transgressions against the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and the obstacles Israel has continued to place in the search for a just peace in the region.

There is the fact of Palestinian resistance to the occupation and the repression that accompanies it. This struggle by the Palestinians under various groups - from the PLO to Hamas - is what Israel and the United States call terrorism. Western powers rank Israeli security higher than Palestinian freedom. The Palestinians cannot give up the struggle - no matter how uneven it is in military terms - for freedom, independence and sovereignty. They do not want to become Israel's Red Indians or Aborigines. They and their Arab brethren have offered peace and acceptance but that is clearly not enough for an Israel still inspired by the old Zionist slogan of "A land without a people for a people without a land."