Publications

Since it was founded, the State of Israel has sought both peaceful relations with its Arab neighbors and acceptance by the Arab world as a legitimate political entity. The assumption was that the process of integrating in the Middle East theater was essential for Israel’s political and economic development, the mitigation of its security problems, and its guaranteed future. Until the 1970s, however, Israel was rejected by the Arab world, which found it hard to accept the resounding defeat of the 1948 war and still hoped to overturn its outcome. Even after the Arab humiliation in the Six Day War, the Arab world rejected every move towards acceptance of Israel. The most prominent expression of this rejection was the “three nos” of the Arab summit in Khartoum in September 1967: no peace, no negotiations, and no recognition of Israel. Despite the Khartoum resolution, however, the 1967 war proved to be a watershed in the Arab world’s attitude towards Israel: from then on, the strategic objective of most of the Arab world – although not all – became reversing the results of the war, i.e., regaining the territories won by Israel in 1967. The goal of overturning the results of 1948, a code phrase in the Arab world for Israel’s destruction, receded in Arab political discourse.