Israel's Treatment of the Arabs in the Occupied Territories

Chaim Weizmann, later to become the first president of Israel, once remarked-long before the establishment of the Jewish state-that the world would judge the Zionists by the way they treated the Arabs of Palestine.

It was a wise utterance, and a prophetic one. For a variety of reasons, half a century was to pass before the outside world gained a clear picture of the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Israeli-occupied Palestine. (Indeed, even today the world remains woefully ignorant about the situation of the Palestinians living under occupation.) But the increased awareness of the injustice suffered by the Palestinians, and of its results in terms of discrimination and spiritual and material hardship, has been one important factor in bringing about a reappraisal of international attitudes towards the Arab-Israeli conflict and the proper solution to it.

Michael Adams is the editor of Middle East International.