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bouring areas can be seen in the light of history as

merely the last chapter.

The Israelis h~ve always claimed that if the Arabs would only “sit down and talk,” they would discover the Israelis . to be extremely generous at the negotiating table. Assured “regional partnership” by peace-treaty, Ilrael could indeed afford to be generoUs on luch questions as compensation to refugees, aid for their resettlement and ~kenrepatriation. Arab access to Mediterranean ports, joint desalination projects and Jordan River diversification schemel in the same fashion that one might say the United States has always been generous . to Latin America. Israel might even offer the Arabs her own version of the “Alliance for Progress” and a Jewish “Peace Oorpel”

For if there is any vagUely equivalent pattern to Israeli-Arab relations, it is to be found in the history· of the two Americas ; the European colonial and immigrant society in the North which disinherited and destroyed the indigenous Indians. and ita ultimate prey in the South -underdeveloped, largely Indian· stock societies wrecked by colonialism, iladdled with unstable, oppressive military dictatonhips, or at best proud but inevitably impotent nationalist leaderships who responded as well as they could to an unfid&lled continental vision of nationhoo.d based on ooe lansuageand a common white Western cUlture. Unlike nineteenth-ceotury America, Israel cannot hope to

become an induatrial power until sbe fint achieves the modern equivalent of empire. And the IOphistication of the Israeli m.

frastructure, the available skills of her overwhelmingly literate labour fOrce and the vast poteDtials of ovelleaS capital are economic:ally irreIevan~ unless·. they are COI\ioined with the opportunity to overwhelm the underdeveloped Arab economies a “regional partnership.”

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Israeli shortages of low-wage unskilled or semi .. ldlled labour could be filled by the vast labour reservoin in the neighbour- Ing Arab states. Since the June 1967 war, this low-cost labour