PA Daily: "Israel was created in the heart of the Arab nation in order to prevent its unity and revival"
Excerpt of an op-ed by Bassem Barhoum, regular columnist for the official PA daily
“[Former Egyptian President Gamal] Abdel Nasser understood early on that the Palestinian cause is a cause that unites the Arabs, and therefore he made it the central cause of the Arab nation – which is counted to his credit. This understanding was not coincidental or emotional, but rather it stemmed from a rooted worldview according to which Israel was created in the heart of the Arab nation in accordance with the colonialist plan, and this was in order to prevent its unity and its revival.Therefore it is impossible to speak seriously about a true revival that will place the Arabs in a prominent place in the world without the liberation of Palestine…
What is the nation’s position regarding the idea of unity and the cause of Palestine today? Whoever thinks today that he is adjusting himself to the period and to the changes by establishing normal relations with Israel is deceiving himself (refers to peace agreements between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain; see note below –Ed.), and is attempting to forget the goal of this entity’s existence in the heart of the Arab nation…
There is no doubt that Abdel Nasser spoke in his final years about the peace with Israel, but he [also] prepared for war and waged a war of attrition to create a sort of balance that would achieve for him peace out of honor, and not out of submission, or peace for nothing in return.
This leader also would not have agreed to establishing peace with Israel without putting Palestine back on the map, even if only on part of the historical land of Palestine, and without a full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories that it occupied in 1967 (sic., Israel only withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in the peace agreement with Egypt, not all the land that it liberated in the 1967 Six Day War, and the agreement did not create a Palestinian political entity in the land of Israel).”