will be of no avail. Mediators, go-betweens, peace brokers may be important as messengers in certain phases, but they are no substitute for direct confrontation between Israel and the Arabs.
* * *
Which Arabs?
This important question is often overlooked. The answer, to my mind, is, first of all, the Arab-Palestinian nation.
One unresolved question in the Middle East is whether the Arabs constitute one nation or a group of nations. In other words, whether all the Arabs can or should unite in one big Arab state, stretching from the shores of Morocco to the boundaries of Iran, or whether they should retain the separate existing states. The idea of unity is inherent in the Arab national movement. Arabs look back with longing at the time, glorious but short-lived, when the whole Arab world, indeed all of Islam, was united under the caliph. In modern times both the Baath ("resurrection") party, centered in Syria, and Abd-el-Nasser have been spokesmen for the idea of the great unitary Arab state. Yet it seems this idea has failed. As in Europe and Africa, and even in the Soviet bloc, smaller states stick to their own political existence and interests, even while recognizing a broader, unifying regional idea.
Each Arab people has its own state, save one: the people of Palestine. This people was the great loser of the 1948 war. According to the original United Nations partition resolution of November 29, 1947, an independent Arab state was to be set up in those parts of Palestine which were not allocated to the Jewish state. Such an Arab state never came about. The war, which the Arabs of Palestine themselves started in order to prevent the partition of the country and the establishme, of Israel, created new realities. During the war, which Israel did not want, Israel conquered part of the areas originally