Indeed, the underlying assumption beneath the Arab refusal to negotiate, that time was on their side, not Israel’s, and the misleading analogy with the medieval Crusader states which they were fond of adducing, were both falsified by the first forty years of Israel’s existence. Israel had become a successful maximum-security state without sacrificing her basic aim or freedoms, and while retaining the negotiating flexibility and empiricism of her founding fathers. Time had proved to be on the side not of the Arabs but of the Israelis. Moreover, the very fact that the Arabs continued to prefer
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