ABSTRACT
The professional bureaucrats in the Near East and South Asia Bureau (ΝΕΑ) of the Slate Department and their counterparts in the CIA and the Pentagon have come to be known as Arabists. These are the experts who have responsibility for recommending and implementing America's Middle East diplomacy. Over the three decades since the creation of the state of Israel, the Arabists have consistently espoused a particular approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, characterized by a basic assumption about the source of the conflict and the core of instability in the volatile Middle East i.e., that they are both caused by the failure to solve the Palestinian problem. Since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Arabists have also assumed that this problem can be solved by the creation of a Palestinian entity in the West Bank and Gaza. In their view this is to be achieved through American-sponsored negotiations between Israel and representatives of the Palestinians. It is a common Arabist assumption that the Palestine Liberation Organization represents the Palestinians and that it is therefore the "wisdom of diplomacy" to have the PLO included in the peace negotiations.
