A British royal commission investigating the struggle between Arab and Israeli 17 years ago arrived at a tragic conclusion. "Fundamentally," said the Peel Report of 1937, "it is a conflict of right with right." Last weekone world war and one local war laterthe judgment was still valid. The Jews were right, because 4,000 years ago the narrow strip of Palestine, where 1,670,000 today carve out their earthly Zion, became the cradle of their culture and religion. The Arabs were right, because for more than 1,000 years the land had been theirs.
The Arab-Israeli war, which the Arabs lost but the...