tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post98148356717391695..comments2024-03-18T22:21:33.261-07:00Comments on The Debate Link: Red State, Part IIDavid Schraubhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04946653376744012423noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-40848202407328362092011-06-06T09:53:53.024-07:002011-06-06T09:53:53.024-07:00Haaretz, 6 June 2011 ("The Naksa does not bel...Haaretz, 6 June 2011 ("The Naksa does not belong to the Palestinians"):<br /><br />QUOTE BEGINS: Then comes a Syrian killjoy and turns this claim upside down. "We must freely admit, there is no such thing as the Naksa. It is, very simply, a battle we lost during a long war... June 5 was the logical defeat for the opinions and policies that were cut off from reality," wrote Ahmed Hassan in the Syrian government newspaper, Al Baath.<br /><br />True, he can write this because according to the Syrian narrative, it was not Hafez Assad who was responsible for the defeat, but rather Syria's president at the time, Nureddin Atassi, and strongman Salah Jadid. Both were imprisoned after the war by Assad.<br /><br />These remarks are not new; acknowledgment of the defeat began during the war itself, and it became leverage to increase the magnitude of the victory in the Yom Kippur War.<br /><br />What is new is the writer's unwillingness to let others, that is, the Palestinians, co-opt this memory. "This is not the 'Middle East conflict;' it is the Israeli-Arab conflict. It is not a border conflict... it is a struggle for survival... Neither we nor the entire region has a natural future in the shadow of Israeli existence, and there is no place for Israel in our natural future or that of the region."<br /><br />Thus, there is no place for the Palestinians in this Naksa; it's an Arab matter, particularly Syrian, the last country to wave the banner of Arabism. And how is this vision to be realized? "Under the current circumstances the balance of power is not in our favor, and therefore our job now is to maintain the flame of the torch of the conflict." QUOTE ENDSAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com