**i INTRODUCTION A certain number o f basic premises inform the book's argument. One is the continuing existence o f a Palestinian A rab people. A n other is that an understanding o f their experience is necessary to an understanding of the impasse between Zionism and the A rab world. Still another is that Israel itseif, as well as its supporters, has tried to efface the Palestinian in words and actions because the Jewish state in many {but not all) ways is built on negation o f Palestine and the Palestinians, Until today, it is a striking fact that merely to mention the Palestinians or Palestine in Israel, or to a convinced Zionist, is to name the unnam eable, so powerfully does our bare existence serve to accuse Israel o f what it did to us. Finally, I take it for granted morally that human beings individually and selectively are entitled to fundamental rights, of which self-determination is one. By this I mean that no human being should be threatened with “ transfer" out o f his or her home or land; no human being should be discriminated against bccause he or she is not of an X or a Y religion; no human being should be stripped o f his or her land, national identity, or culture, no matter the cause, A t bottom I suppose that in this book I am asking the question, “ W hat is Israel, what is the United States, and what are the A rabs going to do about the Palestinians?” G iven the realities of the Palestinian experience, I do not at all believe, as President A n w ar al-Sadat and his various supporters would have it, that 99 percent of the cards are in U .S . hands, nor do I think that they are mainly in Israel's or the A rab states' hands; the whole point— indeed, what makes this book possible— is that there arc Palestinian hands, so to speak, and that they play an active role in determining Palestinian aspirations, political struggles, and achievements, as well as setbacks. A nd yet I do not deny that there is an important place in the question of Palestine for what Jews and Am ericans now think and do. It is this place to which my book addresses itself. ! mention what is perhaps an obvious thing in order to underline the existential bedrock on which, I think, our experience as a people depends. W e were on the land called Palestine; were our dispossession and our effacem ent, by