"Arabs recognizing Israel would mean suicide for the Arab cause"

An op-ed in Moheet by Mohammed Saif Eldawla describes Israel's historic claims on Israel and why Arabs can never accept it.

As he describes it, the Israeli narrative goes like this:

1) Israel is the land of the Jews

2) Arabs invaded from Arabia

3) The Islamic Arabs have been illegally living in Palestine for 1400 years.

4) Zionism is a national liberation movement meant for liberating their land from Arab settler colonialism.

5) the current state of Israel is the only legitimate state built on this land for thousands of years.

This alarms him, because not only does that (pretty accurate) narrative destroy Palestinian Arab nationalism, but Arab nationalism itself!

If the Arab presence in Palestine in 1948 is illegal, the current Arab presence in the West Bank and Gaza is also illegal, they are all the land of the Jews which should be freed sooner or later, when the balance of power and international and regional circumstances allow them to do so.

It also means that the Arab presence in Egypt and the Levant, Iraq and the rest of the region is illegal, since the invasion of the Arab Islamic of other people's lands, and that these peoples will recover their homelands sooner or later, when the balance of power and international and regional circumstances allow them to do so.

The recognition of Israel in this sense is a particular suicide.

What is interesting is that Eldola doesn't try to deny this narrative, because...it is entirely true! Arabs are colonizers and have been since the seventh century. Now, his conclusions based on that are a bit silly - there aren't too many Babylonians around to reclaim their ancestral homeland - but the facts are unassailable.

The Arabs know this, but they know they can't admit it aloud, because that would cause them to admit that everything they hate about the West applies to them far better..