Sixty Years Later, Still the Same

In the course of answering a question after her June 19 presentation at the Council on Foreign Relations, Condoleezza Rice had this to say:

One of the things that I constantly think about is what it must have been like to those who worked in the State Department in 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1950.

You think we have challenges. Well, you win the war, and then in 1946 the question isn’t, "Is there going to be communism in Eastern Europe?" The question is, "Does it matter that 48 percent — the communists just won 48 percent of the vote in Italy and 46 percent of the vote in France?"

In 1947, 2 million Europeans are starving, and therefore you get the Marshall Plan. But in 1948, Harry Truman decides to recognize Israel, touching off conflict in the Middle East. . . .

What?

Relatively few people on this side of the War on Terror think it was Harry Truman who “touched off conflict in the Middle East.” 

What the Palestinians refer to as their nakba was the result of a war the Arabs started.  Had they accepted the two-state solution in UN Resolution 181, there would not be a single refugee today, and the Arab state would have celebrated its sixtieth anniversary last month. 

Sixty years later, the principal “obstacle to peace” remains the Arab failure to acknowledge any moral or historical responsibility for the nabka they created (as well as responsibility for the 850,000 Jewish refugees they caused). 

In 1948 the State Department opposed recognizing the state of Israel.  Sixty years later, one would not have thought an American Secretary of State would blame Harry Truman for “touching off conflict in the Middle East.”   But some things never change.