Let's Let Peter Hitchens Speak

From here:

...I would add that I am always amused by the enthusiasm which Israel's enemies now show for the pre-1967 border of Israel. Their alleged enthusiasm for it now is a fake. Their real objective, as enshrined for decades in the policy documents and propaganda of the Arab world, (though in some cases tardily, reluctantly and insincerely shelved for Western consumption) is the end of the Jewish state altogether. Every Arab political figure in the area has on his wall a map of the region, a map from which Israel has entirely vanished. Hizbollah works for the extirpation of Israel, from just beyond its northern border. Hamas (a movement whose treatment of fellow Arabs who oppose it is extremely repressive and violent) continues to make no secret of this aim. Racialist filth and Judophobic slurry are taught to children in the Arab states and broadcast on Arab TV stations. And until they abandon this aim, and this muck, there can be no compromise. How can you compromise with people who teach tiny children to hate you, and whose aim is your utter destruction? Every concession would merely be a further step towards death, not a step towards peace.

I am old enough to recall that these enthusiasts were not so enthusiastic about the pre-1967 border before 1967, when it was the border of Israel. No Arab state accepted it as legitimate, let alone lawful. So why are they so keen on it now? I guarantee that if the 1967 border were to be restored tomorrow, the Arab campaign against Israel (backed elsewhere by our strange Israel-haters, who can only find one country on the map of the world to disapprove of) would continue unabated. At that stage, before 1967, the official policy of the Arab world was to 'drive the Jews into the sea'. The 1967 border itself, a militarily indefensible and impractical frontier, was the cease-fire line at the end of the 1948 War, not an internationally agreed frontier between peaceful sovereign states. For most of its existence it was repeatedly violated.

The 1948 war was itself caused by the Arab world's rejection of the 1947 partition plan, which allocated Israel a much smaller territory even than the land enclosed in the supposedly sacred 1967 border. That rejection itself followed the similar rejection of the partition proposed by the 1937 Peel Commission, which was even less generous to the Jews than the UN would be ten years later. All this in fact goes back to Sir Herbert Samuel's choice (into which he was manoeuvred by the interesting Ronald Storrs), against the opposition of the Palestine Arabs, of the appalling Haj Amin al Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921, which set the Arabs of the region on the path of war rather than the path of civilised compromise. Storrs was one of many in the British colonial service who sought to backtrack on the promise made in the Balfour Declaration, of a 'national home' for the Jews - and it was their tireless lobbying and dirty tricks which in my view created the mess we're now in. I am of course concerned by any injustice done to the Arab people of the Middle East, and readily agree that Israel has often behaved very badly towards many Arabs. I've written a lengthy article on their flawed and foolish treatment of the Bedouin in Israel, and of the Israeli Arab minority. But much injustice against Arabs is done by Arab states, Arab rulers and Arab movements, and I would be more convinced of the genuineness of the partisan passion of persons such as Mr Lawson and his band of inflamed supporters (who rushed in to back him without bothering to read what he and I had written, which small effort would have shown that he was basing at least part of his attack on a misquotation) if they ever concerned themselves with Arab injustice towards Arabs.

For instance, they might condemn explicitly the persecution of Arab Christians by Arab Muslims in Bethlehem, or the Syrian state's mass murder (by artillery) of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in the city of Hama, or the discrimination against Palestinian refugees throughout the Arab world. But they never do. It is always Israel, Israel, Israel. My suspicion, until they show otherwise, is that they are more interested in attacking Israel then in defending unjustly-treated Arabs.

See, too, here and the comment of James Lawson at 04:26 PM.