ABSTRACT
Egypt and the Arab states must begin to draw up a new contract. The dominant parties in the Arab world will have to come up with a realistic assessment of what has come to pass in Arab politics of that period and what it is the Arabs seek in the years to come. The audit on the non-Egyptian side is equally complex. The Palestinians for one had long rebelled against the trusteeship of other Arabs. Many traditional and privileged Palestinians felt, and feel, more comfortable with his kind of order than with the radicalism of Palestinian intellectuals and activists in Beirut. The break with ambiguity on the part of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestine National Council will require self-restraint in the Arab world and political backing for a new Palestinian policy based on territorial compromise with Israel. The Arab state system should say so in the next phase, and with sufficient clarity.
