Cairo The names could not spell the difference in perception more poignantly: While the 1948 establishment of Israel is celebrated as Independence Day in Israel, it is marked by Arabs as the Day of Catastrophe, or Nakba in Arabic.
To Israelis, it is the birth of their homeland after centuries in the diaspora. To Arabs, the birth of Israel continues to signify the death of Arab Palestine and the expulsion of the great majority of its people who now live in the diaspora.
The event in 1948 set the stage for six decades marred largely by bloody conflicts interspersed by endless rounds of talks, many UN resolutions, few treaties, and peace plans that have come and gone.
The 1967 Six Day War - the third of four conventional wars between Israelis and Arabs - was a turning point in the conflict. In six days, Israel made a swift victory over armies of three Arab countries and almost tripled its land size.
For Arabs, the scale of the defeat came as a huge blow that still weighs heavily on their collective memory.
Pictures, replayed on television screens on every war anniversary, of Israeli soldiers pointing their guns at captured Egyptian soldiers at the start of the war still deepen the widespread sense of resentment towards Israel.
Yet, the war also gave Arabs a sense of realism.
'After the military defeat in the 1967 War, there has been a shift in the Arab view towards Israel,' said Palestinian politician, Nabil Shaath.
'The shift was reflected in Arabs accepting UN resolution 242, which meant their acceptance of the existence of the state of Israel on 78 percent of Palestinian land,' said Shaath.
'Arab countries have come to accept that what they have to restore is only the remaining 22 percent of Palestine,' Shaath said in reference to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip occupied by Israel in 1967.
The famous UN resolution, which calls for Israeli withdrawal to its pre-war borders, became the slogan of Arab countries on the world stage and a symbol of their powerlessness as the resolution remains unimplemented.
Almost 10 years after the shock of the 1967 War, the visit of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Israel sent shockwaves through the Arab world.
Pictures of Sadat shaking hands with Israeli leaders, like Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan - perceived by Arabs as icons of the hated Zionism - were regarded by many as just as shocking as pictures of the Egyptian prisoners of war.
With Egypt and Israel signing the Camp David Accords in 1979, the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country became a bitter reality for many Arabs.
Accepting Resolution 242 was one thing, but signing a peace treaty and shaking hands with the enemy was going too far, many Arabs thought at the time.
Hence, the Arab League's decision followed to expel Egypt shortly after signing the treaty. The country was later reinstated in 1989.
In the years to follow, pictures of Arab and Israeli politicians not just shaking hands but kissing and hugging became commonplace as a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan was signed and the PLO officially recognized its historic foe.
The majority of Arab countries have come to accept the principle of land for peace.
Yet, the average Arab still harbours deep suspicions towards Israel as peace remains as elusive as ever.
Three decades after Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, few Egyptians travel to Israel because nearly all of Egypt's professional organizations bar their members from normalizing ties with the Jewish state.
Playwright Ali Salim was among the few who did not toe the line. He made no secret of his trips to Israel. As a result, he was shunned by his colleagues and expelled from the writers' union.
Defending his objection to the normalization of ties, Egypt's liberal Minister of Culture Faruk Hosny told an interviewer recently: 'Cultural normalization is not acceptable and not useful because of the ongoing blood spilling.'
Crass media portrayals of Israel in Egypt and Jordan remain as negative as they did before the signing of the peace treaties. And political cartoons and articles depicting Israelis as wily plotters in an international conspiracy continue to be common.
Shabaan Abdel-Rahim, an Egyptian pop singer purveying 'low culture' music, won the hearts of millions of Arabs in 2001 including condescending intellectuals and politicians, with a song that proclaimed bluntly 'I hate Israel.'
© Deutsche Presse-Agentur
THE UNMay 8th, 2008 - 21:17:41
started this mess - The UN should be the main party involved in the middle east, not the US.
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