Israel’s First Arab Minister Says War Cannot Solve Arab-israeli Differences

The first Arab to join Israel’s Cabinet said today that the vast majority of Arab leaders do not believe that the Arab-Israeli differences can be solved by war. “I am not saying they have become doves of peace.” added Deputy Health Minister Abdul-Aziz Zuabi. “Israel’s might, and her ability to defend herself have no doubt helped them to be more realistic.” But he stressed to the Hadassah Medical Organization plenary, part of the 57th annual national convention of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, that “I can say with confidence, from personal contacts and as a result of reading the Arab press, that public opinion in the Arab states now differs from what it was before the Six-Day War.” The result, he said, “has been that we now hear various Arab voices advocating a peaceful settlement.”

This, Zuabi continued, “may be because of a lack of ability to wage war, the high price of war or political realism.” but in any case it is “an encouraging fact which opens new vistas for political action on the part of Israel in an attempt to find ways of talking with Arabs for the sake of a suitable settlement.” The 52-year-old Zuabi, a member of Mapam and a former mayor of Nazareth, said he was convinced there was no conflict “between my Israeli citizenship and my Arab patriotism, which meet at one single point: a just peace between my people and my state.” He stressed that “I am not speaking for myself alone but for more than 400,000 Arabs living in the State (of Israel) and in the name of many of the inhabitants of the administered areas.” In that context, he said, he believed the 1967 war was “imposed” on Israel by Arab governments that in exhorting their populaces to war “are committing a crime against their own peoples rather than causing any harm to Israel.” The thousands of Arabs who visit Israel each year, he remarked, “realize what lies they have been fed.”