If Israel offers the Palestinian nation assistance in setting up their republic, and if this offer is accepted by a responsible Palestinian leadership, one of the first moves should be for these leaders to go to Cairo and other Arab capitals, in order to canvass overall Arab support for this solution. My judgment is that Egypt and its allies-while not openly welcoming this plan-will make it clear that they do not object to it. Indeed, in one of his most extreme anti-Israeli speeches at the end of 1967, Gamal Abd-elNasser still emphasized that the Palestinian question is a matter for the Palestinians themselves to solve, and that from them must come the initiative for a settlement. This was interpreted by many Palestinian leaders as a green light to go ahead-cautiously.
But-some Zionists ask-are the Palestinians a nation? After all, there never existed an independent Arab state of Palestine. What right have the Palestinians to a state of their own?
There is a certain irony in the fact that these questions are raised by Zionists-for not long ago these same arguments were thrown into their own faces. Were the Jews a nation? Was even the Hebrew community in Palestine a real nation, deserving statehood? I remember that these same questions were raised by French propagandists and generals during the Algerian war of liberation, which I supported. I was often told by Frenchmen in Paris that there just does not exist an Algerian nation, that there never existed a united Algerian-Arab state.
The answer for the Palestinians, as it was for the Hebrews and the Algerians, is: people who believe that they are a nation, thereby do become a nation. This is the only valid criterion. Once a people aspires to statehood, longs for it and strives for it, they deserve it. Whether this state ever existed before, whether it has a history or not, is quite immaterial. Even today the Palestinian nation is stronger than many of the nations in the United Nations.
The merits of Palestinian-Arab statehood are not a