Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, I asked one of Kyiv’s diplomats how he would explain the difference between Russian and Ukrainian national identities to outsiders unfamiliar with the history and culture of each country.
He thought for a moment, then said: “The difference is that we Ukrainians look in a forward direction, to the future. The Russians are stuck in the past with their historical grievances.”
Much the same observation can be made about the Palestinians and their supporters, both inside and outside the Arab world. As is the case with the Russian regime, for them, history is not a guide to achieving a better future but a straitjacket that keeps them tied down in the past, eternally litigating bygone events in the expectation of attaining an absolute justice that is always out of reach.
This notion of history as a trap lies at the heart of an important new book with the invitingly provocative title, The Arab Case for Israel.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that its author, Hussain Abdul-Hussain, is a colleague of mine at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. But I also want to stress that even if I didn’t know Abdul-Hussain personally, I would still write about his book. It is essential reading for anyone who has wondered why the Palestinian cause has never achieved its goals. And it has become especially more relevant these past few years, when it is falsely depicted as the central issue upon which the peace of the world hinges, attracting millions of protesters in dozens of cities to march under slogans advocating for Israel’s destruction.
Written by someone who grew up in Arab societies and has been immersed in Arab politics throughout his career, Abdul-Hussain admirably addresses the key aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict in his collection of essays. These include the mythology surrounding the establishment of the modern-day State of Israel and the displacement of the Arab population, Qatar’s ongoing “soft power” war on Israel, and Iran’s strategy of using Arab proxies from Lebanon to Yemen to fight for its goal of annihilating the Jewish state.
But it is in the opening chapter, which shares the same title as the book itself, that he outlines his own approach to the conflict, in an engaging synthesis of personal biography with political analysis.
Abdul-Hussain explains that he is the son of an Iraqi Shia father and a Lebanese Shia mother, born in Lebanon prior to the eruption of the civil war in 1975. His family’s experience was a reminder of Leon Trotsky’s dictum that “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Though his parents showed little interest in politics, the sectarian strife in Lebanon compelled them to move to Iraq, then under the boot of Saddam Hussein.
In 1982, however, the family returned to Lebanon, with Abdul-Hussain’s father narrowly escaping the military conscription imposed by the Iraqi dictator as the war with Iran raged. In the predominantly Shia city of Baalbek, where the family settled, he writes, “posters of Ayatollah Khomeini were everywhere, and everyone was cursing Saddam Hussein—the opposite of what I was taught in Iraq, where we called Khomeini the hypocrite and Saddam the hero.”
As a teenager in Lebanon, Abdul-Hussain was open-minded, befriending members of the country’s Christian community and flirting with Marxist groups. Yet, as he incisively notes, “all the identities that I grew up or experimented with while in Lebanon had one thing in common: They all hated Israel.”
Even so, Abdul-Hussain’s intellectual curiosity overcame these received viewpoints. He began reading Israeli newspapers online, going on to learn the Hebrew language. He would even drive to the border with Israel, engaging in conversations with troops from the Israel Defense Forces stationed there and earning the opprobrium of the Hezbollah fighters who spotted him chatting away.
That willingness to consider the Israeli perspective, along with his desire to learn about Israeli society, deepened when Abdul-Hussain moved to the United States in 2004. Jews, he realized, “were like everybody else. They wanted to live a decent life while enjoying their heritage and passing it onto their children, like every other community on this planet.” As an Arab who grew up in a cauldron of hatred, many of his observations are telling and touching. “Israelis glorify their own who fell in battle defending the Jewish state,” he says, “but almost never vilify the enemies that they fought in these battles.”
Abdul-Hussain emphasizes that his book is not the product of a resigned realist imagination. “Arab peace with Israel,” he asserts, “should not be signed out of despair or fear, but out of a conviction that—as a friend and an ally—the State of Israel is much more valuable to the Arabs than ejecting it and constructing in its stead a Palestine that would, at best, be a mediocre state.” Should the fantasy of eliminating Israel become reality, he warns, Arab nations would be at the mercy of Islamists who will transform them into failed states, replacing the promise of modernity with the politics of vengeance.
The chapter closes with Abdul-Hussain expressing hope that other Arab intellectuals will feel confident enough to echo his views. In that sense, the current war with Iran is a significant opportunity.
It’s hard not to smile at the irony of antisemitic pundits in the United States and Europe pontificating that Israel dragged Americans into a war they did not choose when the loudest voices calling for the war to continue emanate from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The last month of missile barrages has brutally confirmed what many Arabs suspected about the Tehran regime’s true intentions, proving to all but the most witless Hamas acolytes that Israel’s disappearance would not miraculously deliver regional peace overnight.
Abdul-Hussain’s work gives the reader a glimpse of something more profound: a shared future where debates about history and responsibility are civil and rational, and where securing a prosperous destiny for all the region’s children is the guiding principle. Moreover, as he stresses, the Arab world is far bigger than the Palestinians alone. Arab nations should no longer feel that any ties with Israel should be determined solely by the Palestinian agenda.
As the Abraham Accords indicate, many Arabs have already arrived at that position.
Abdul-Hussain’s book is a clarion call for the remainder to follow suit. That includes the Palestinians, who face the same choice they always faced: to move on from their narrative of historical victimhood or to be swallowed by it.
