Arab journalist to Palestinians: Recognize Israel

Youssef Ibrahim, a respected journalist with a long and distinguished career in leading US newspapers, calls on Palestinians to recognize Israel, abandon fighting it. ‘War is over, struggle means less land and more sorrow,’ Ibrahim writes

Yitzhak Benhorin|Published: 07.10.06 , 22:27

While Israel continues its incursions into the Gaza Strip, which it had unilaterally evacuated 10 months ago, some Arabs recognize the new reality. The new position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is expressed in commentaries from Arab intellectuals in letters to editors and in political television programs in Arab-language television stations.

This new stance is stunning in its practicality. Basically it tells the Palestinians that the armed struggle against Israel is over and that the Palestinians, who lost, should negotiate in order to ensure the future of their children.

One such letter was written by senior Egyptian journalist Youssef Ibrahim and published in the New York Sun. Ibrahim served for 24 years as a senior reporter for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and had interviewed almost every Arab leader during those years. Since 2001 Ibrhim serves as a member of the "Council on Foreign Relations," a Think-Tank in New York.

Ibrahim begins by saying that the Arab world can continue to stand by the Palestinians ‘until it is blue in the face,’ but most ‘clever’ Arabs have abandoned the notion of the Palestinian conflict and the eternal struggle against Israel.

'Palestinians stuck with Hamas'

In the letter Ibrahim reminds the Palestinians that the State they could have had in 1948 was much larger than the one they could have established in 1967, which would have also been larger than any future Palestinian state. A struggle, according to Ibrahim, means less land and more sorrow and total isolation - and the situation is not going to improve.

Ibrahim also told the Palestinians that the Israelis have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or west Jerusalem.

The journalist slammed the Palestinians for allowing their children grow up to be illiterate, sick and suicidal while they live by the kindness of the United States and the United Nations. Every day your leadership begs for the daily bread allowance, continued Ibrahim, while the extreme, criminal Muslim government led by the Hamas continues to fan the flames of war which it cannot fight and has no hope of wining.

The Egyptian journalist went on to say that Arab nations bordering with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with Israel and have no intention of fighting Israel for the Palestinian cause. Arab nations located far from Israel, such as Iraq, do not really care what becomes of the Palestinians, he said, adding that only Syria continues to feed the Palestinians ‘fantasies’ that it will one day join the Palestine struggle.

Ibrahim concluded by saying that the ‘Palestinians are stuck with Hamas, another deceitful gang, like Yasser Arafat, who stole millions while Palestinian children played in the gutters of Gaza.