designated as "present absentees" (Arabs who had stayed in Israel but were not accorded Israeli citizenship) and even from the Arab citizens of Israel, most of whose lands were taken over. On these lands, a dense network of Jewish communities was created. Jewish immigrants were invited and even induced to come en masse.This great effort increased the State's population several times over in just a few years.
42 At the same time, the State pursued a vigorous policy of obliterating the Palestinian national entity. With Israeli assistance, the monarch of Trans-Jordan, Abdullah, assumed control over the West Bank and since then there has been, in effect, an Israeli military guarantee for the existence of what became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
43 The main rationale for the alliance between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom, which has already existed for three generations, is to prevent the establishment of an independent and viable Palestinian State, which was - and still is - considered by the Israeli leadership a potential obstacle to the realization of the Zionist objective.
44 A historic change occurred at the end of the 1950's on the Palestinian side when Yasser Arafat and his associates founded the Palestinian Liberation Movement (Fatah), not only for conducting the fight against Israel but also for freeing the Palestinian cause from the hegemony of the Arab governments. It was no accident that this movement emerged after the failure of the great PanArab wave, whose most renowned representative was Gamal Abd-el-Nasser. Up to this point many Palestinians had hoped to be absorbed into a united pan-Arab nation.When this hope faded away, the separate national Palestinian identity reasserted itself.
45 In the early 1960's, Gamal Abd-el-Nasser set up the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), mainly in order to forestall independent Palestinian actions that might involve him in an undesired war with Israel. The organization was intended to impose Egyptian control on the Palestinians. However, after the Arab debacle in the
Photo: David Rubinger