FOR months and perhaps years, debate will rage about the borders of Israel and about how much (if any) of its conquered territory it has a right to keep. That debate, while important, is secondary. The real issue is not Israel's specific size or shape but its basic right to exist. Most of the world has accepted and acknowledged that right, but not the Arabs. After their disastrous defeat, the Arab leaders still proclaim that their ambition is to build up enough strength to eradicate the state of Israel some day, even if it takes generations. They sound a little like Russian Czar Peter the Great, who remarked that he would force the Swedes to defeat him until "they teach us how to beat them."
Whether the Arabs really mean it—in the Western, rational sense of meaning something—or whether they are merely caught up in a phantasmagoria of words, is beside the point. The Arabs have shown time and again that they are the prisoners of their hyperbole. Their refusal to accept Israel as a fact of life is at the bottom of the whole Middle Eastern conflict, of the war just concluded and of the diplomatic battles about to begin. If the Arabs recognized Israel, a territorial settlement would be relatively easy.
Do the Arabs have a case that goes beyond mere fanaticism? That question is linked to a series of other, deeper questions: What is a nation? What is a state? How does a people achieve the standing of nation or state?
The Ways to Nationhood
History, political science and even that elusive discipline, international law, are in substantial agreement on the answers. A nation is "a body of people who feel they are a nation," says Harvard Political Scientist Rupert Emerson. What is essential is "the sense of common identity, the sense of a singularly important national 'we' which is distinguished from all others who make up an alien 'they.' " In the long jostling of history, a group would stake out a territory and fight to defend its boundaries against any "theys." In short, a nation becomes a state when it has the power to occupy and hold a given amount of space and when other nations recognize this fact. This may not seem just or fair. It may smack too much of raw force and various doctrines of "the survival of the fittest" or "the territorial imperative" that have been used to justify force. Yet these basic conditions—identity, tradition, ability to stake out a territory, govern it and win recognition—are the only real criteria for sovereignty.