While its leaders may not realise it, the Arab world is not impotent. Realistically, after so many years of antithetical attitudes, such a transformation is most unlikely to occur. However, if Americans cannot be reached through their hearts or minds, they can be reached through their wallets.
Money is the true religion of the United States.
Since the only honest answers to these fundamental questions are racist ones, no credible answers could be offered publicly, and, with oil prices rising, stock market prices falling and no reversal of these trends in sight, these questions would become more insistent and Israel's defiant position could rapidly become untenable. Under pressure even from their only unconditional supporters, Israelis might well recognise, sooner than anyone would dare to hope today, that their own security will never be ensured so long as they illegally occupy any Arab lands and that full compliance with international law and UN resolutions, in Palestine and Syria just as in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, is profoundly in Israel's own self-interest, has in any event become unavoidable and should therefore be embraced sooner rather than later. While waiting for economic discomfort to stimulate common sense and produce the result that serves the interests of all, Arab and Islamic petroleum producers would suffer no pain or sacrifices. Each five per cent reduction in production would result in a greater than five per cent increase in prices, and moderate but regular reductions in production, unlike a sudden total embargo, should be technically, politically and psychologically sustainable. Palestinians, given a reasonable basis to hope again for lives with dignity, would be less eager to seek death with dignity in the streets of Palestine.