The Forgotten Palestinians

Ramadan, Islam's holy month, ended last week with Id al-Fitr (Feast of the Fast-Breaking). As the new moon rose over the horizon, Arab families sat down to traditionally sumptuous meals of lamb, rice, mahshi and sharab (eggplant and yogurt), sticky sweets and fruits. The celebrations, dulled by the uncertainties in the Middle East, were unusually subdued among the 1,000,000 Arabs who live on the Israeli-occupied western bank and the Gaza Strip.

Since the war started, western bank Arabs have been torn by a variety of loyalties: love or hatred of King Hussein, grudging respect or extreme dislike for the Israelis, confusion about the aims of the Egyptians and Syrians and adoration or indifference toward that elusive something called "the Palestinian entity." The result has been near paralysis. As one Jericho farmer sadly put it: "I've been doing nothing, just sitting at home listening to the radio. We don't go out at night. We are afraid."

To be sure, there was a sense of euphoria in the early days of the fighting, as the Arabs listened to radio reports of Egyptian and Syrian battlefield conquests. Many of the 50,000 Arabs from the occupied territories who work in Israel stayed away from their jobs during the war. There were also instances of Arab children throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. On the other hand, most of the 400,000 Arabs who live in Israel appeared to support the government, largely because they have no other place to go and have lived in Israel since its birth. One Jerusalem paper reported that Israeli Arabs gave blood, bought war bonds and served as volunteers in the war effort.

The Palestinian guerrilla organizations proved notably unsuccessful in inciting Arabs in the occupied lands to subversion or sabotage. The main reason is that the Israeli government has been successful in wiping out the infrastructure of Al-Fatah and other guerrilla groups in the occupied territories. Another is that community leaders--in spite of their sympathy for the Palestinian cause--have by now become more or less resigned to Israeli rule. Thus terrorist efforts in the occupied lands were few and halfhearted. One Arab resistance group considered sprinkling tacks on West Bank roads to slow up Israeli military traffic, but, in the end, even this plot was abandoned as being both futile and too risky.

Third Front. The guerrilla organizations were active during the fighting, although not particularly effective. Palestinian commandos surfaced to fight in Syria and Egypt and opened a "third front" in Lebanon, by shelling Israeli settlements across the border.

The war did little to help the Palestinian cause. When the Arabs started to suffer defeats on the battlefield, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat jumped, with what many Palestinians felt was unseemly haste, at the cease-fire proposals. Observes a Western Arabist in Jerusalem: "It seems as if the guerrillas have been almost completely bypassed. The Egyptians seem almost completely preoccupied with recovering lost territory in Sinai, and the Syrians in getting back to the Golan Heights. Nobody is paying more than lip service to the Palestinian cause."

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