Palestine was then, in geo-political terminology, part of Syria. On Feb. 3, 1919, the Syrian spokesman to the Peace Conference declared "Let the Jews settle in Palestine - if they form the majority there, let them be its rulers." Nevertheless, an Egyptian Brotherhood leader asserted "It is the nature of Islam to rule and not to be ruled...”⁴³  This statement reflected the awakening Arab nostalgia for a glorious past, revived once again in one mighty "Arab nation," with the decadent West once more in defeat withdrawing.

With fiery words the poets and intelligentsia within the Arabic world fanned the flames of nationalism within the framework of Arabic-Islamic world dominion. Meanwhile Western countries have remained unaware of the bitter contempt Arabs harbor  for the West, whose modernization they seek, all the while disdaining its ethics and culture. According to Arab ideology and propaganda, the West is corrupt, immoral, “imperia- list,” “colonialist,” and “capitalist.” Israel is regarded as being an instrument of the West intended to despoil and torment Arabs. Oddly enough, the cradle of Arab nationalism was Protestant and Catholic institutions of higher education, while the striking example of Zionism provided the incentive which in the 1920’s broadened the base of Arab nationalism. 

Other external stimulants were the Young Turks' promise of Arab home rule in the first decade of the 20th century and, in WW I, Allied courtship of the Arab princes against the Turks. Even though the Arabs' dream of their glorious past was once more realized, and the "pure" religion of Islam taking is proper leading position, they regarded it obstacled with the creation of the Zionist state. This ranks high among the reasons Arabs resent Israel so bitterly: because the Zionist state arose just as their “cosmic vindication” seemed within their grasp. And so the West humiliated the Arabs once more by supporting the establishment of a state quite like themselves, a Western "imperialist thorn” in the midst of Islamic purity and Arabic superiority. 
 
 

Furthermore, the proper world order had been made to stand on its head by the Jews suddenly constituting a sovereign people, surely the least likely people on earth. While we think of Jew and Arab as follow Semites, the denigration of Jews practiced by Muslims as well as Christians is a basic element in Arab hostility, albeit obscured and explicitly denied by all sides involved, including Western diplomats. Denied a claim to dominion in the Koran⁴⁴, and traditionally viewed as a subject people at the mercy of rulers and the occasional excesses of mobs, among both Christians and Muslims, the thought of the Jews as rulers suggests cosmic disorder, explaing the common Arab complaint of Jewish statehood as "abnormal,” “unnatural,” and “articifial.” 

The Muslim record of Jewish persecution, however, pales in comparison with the even more devastating Christian one. In all practicality though, the Arabs' denigration of the Jews is not much different than the Christians’, at least as regards their political subjection. Amazingly, this adamant Arab rejection of Jewish rule and sovereignity was utterly obscured in Western diplomacy and press, and actually never figured as a major, potential element in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Several reasons account for this curious consensus: 

Arab spokesmen invariably protest that their quarrel is not with the Jews, but with Zionism, using code-words not readily understood in the West like: “Jewish” means tolerance toward the "natural" condition of that people, as a protected minority; "Zionist" means the intolerable quality of Jewish sovereignty, while “Israeli” is not utterly unacceptable, if "de-Zionised,” i.e. "no longer a Jewish state.” 

According to (the late) King Hussein of Jordan, "the relationship that enabled Jews and Arabs to live together for centuries as neighbors and friends has been destroyed by Zionist ideas and actions."⁴⁵  And Mdme. Katy Antonius of Jerusalem's Arab high society complained to Kenneth Bilby, a British Government Official, "before you started promoting a Jewish state, I knew many Jews in Jerusalem and enjoyed good relations with them socially.”⁴⁶ Hence the childlike expectation among Arabs that the Jewish state will naturally somehow dissolve; also the belief that Jewish statehood is a thoroughly factitious phenomenon held together by crafty means against all nature; also the insistence that Jews are "merely" a religious group that cannot possibly constitute a nation (hence the Arab code, "secular" Palestine. Since a Jewish state is by definition religious, secularizing it is to abolish it). Indeed, Arabs appear genuinely puzzled that the Jews should act so totally out of character and issued a warning that their toleration as minorities around the world is jeopardized by the insistence of constituting the majority in one country, Israel.

It seems that not only the Arabs appear puzzled but also the Western “Christian” nations, which naturally assume the “right" of pressurizing Israel into making concessions and following the West's patronizing "good-will" advise.