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Arab-Israel Conflict Lessons
(Al-Ahram-Egypt) Abdel Moneim Said - The U.S. Middle East peace plan invites us to look back and try to learn the lessons of the 120 years of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Jews built political, economic and social edifices in the land, while the Palestinians did not do much in the way of building the nucleus of a Palestinian state. By the time of the 1947 Partition Resolution, the Jews had everything in place to administer a state and they were ready to fight for it, whether by building universities or building modern armies. Nothing has ever been able to stimulate a major change in the geopolitical context of the conflict except direct dialogue between the Arabs and the Jews and between Arab states and Israel. It was Camp David that brought the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. Another set of face-to-face meetings led to the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty. In between came the Oslo Accords which established the first Palestinian national authority, creating an unprecedented Palestinian reality on the ground. The writer is director of the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.