THE THREE NOs

When guns went silent in the Middle East after the 1967 six day war, Israel had handed a humiliating defeat to her Arab aggressors. The combined armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and other Arab countries bowed their heads in shame and raised their hands in the air as sign of capitulation to the IDF.

In an image redemption exercise, the Arab League gathered in Khartoum on 29th August 1967 where they passed the famous Khartoum resolution declaring the Three Nos. No peace with Israel, No recognition of Israel and No peace with Israel. This belligerent resolution constitutes the seed capital of the violence and wars witnessed in the Middle East since then because, it left only the option of war as the only means of engagement.

The bellicose repercussions of the resolution have had intifadas and the subsequent spread of radical jihadist propaganda as some of its fruits.
The genocidal war cry of wiping out Israel from the face of the earth, (from the river to the sea), can trace its ancestry to the Three Nos of Khartoum.

The utopian, but dangerously misleading ideology that Israel will somehow be disappeared in order to create a super state for Palestinian Arabs has kept frozen in time, a realistic solution to the conflict. The realization of a two state solution became stillbirth in 1967 and several times later, including during the Oslo negotiations because of the genetic seeds of strife and bigotry fertilized at the Khartoum resolution. Hamas terror, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other terror gangs are progenys of the three Nos.

If he was genuine when he stated that October 7th did not happen in a vacuum, Mr. Antonio Gutteres, the UN secretary general should have filled the vacuum with the Khartoum resolution.

Therefore, to make any meaningful progress Arab leaders must condition Palestinians for peace through nullification of the Khartoum three Nos and replacing them with Three YESs. Yes to peace with Israel, Yes to Recognition of Israel and Yes to peace with Israel.