As Israelis and Palestinians work out arrangements to restore the ceasefire that collapsed many times, and as the number of innocent victims increases, the parties bring to The Proximity Talks different ideas, tragedies and collective memories, and when the mind is thrown back to the deepest recesses and the conscience is awakened, there is only one truth: Postponing the ultimate confrontation between Hamas and Israel, is only a matter of strategic perspicacity.

At the Biltmore conference for example, delegates of Zionist organizations gathered in 1942 to confirm the formal transfer of their headquarters from London to America; in so doing they displayed an uncanny strategic vision.

The incentive behind the decision was a growing realisation that Great Britain would emerge weakened from the Second World War and too feeble to hang on to its former colonies.

Furthermore,the clear victor in this war was the United States; it was quickly accumulating money through the Lend-Lease Act, which provided cash in return for military hardware, and insisted on the convertibility of the pound sterling in former sterling-only trading blocks.

In the final resolution, the gathered delegates, voted to confirm: “The new world order that will follow victory cannot be established on foundations of peace, justice and equality, unless the problem of Jewish homelessness is finally solved. “

More significantly, the Biltmore Conference endorsed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish state and not a homeland for the Jews, as was promised in the 1917 Balfour Declaration. This idea was given a new impetus with the discovery of concentration camps in liberated Germany. It became urgent and acquired legitimacy for the Zionists to claim that they were saving Jews.

President Harry Truman complained about the aggressiveness with which he was hunted down by Zionist leaders seeking his support for the Partition of Palestine Resolution. His former business partner, Edward Jacobson, had secured an audience from the president for a Zionist delegation.

Jacobson also seems to have overcome Truman’s opposition to Zionism’s fundamental tenant: Can a modern theocracy reconcile its policy of racial discrimination without abridging all of its citizens’ political, civic and cultural rights?

The most widely accepted plan for the future of Palestine crystalised over the telephone. The future of Palestine hung on the balance, and it was a telephone call that changed history.

Zionist leader Chaim Weissman, himself a great diplomat, told Truman: “You have the opportunity of the ages. If you’ll stay strong now, you’ll go down in history for all eternity.” Truman was duly impressed and called Warren Austin at the UN to inform him of the new American foreign policy and explaining why America had changed course, and was now backtracking out of the support for trusteeship.

The Trusteeship for Palestine provided for an interim measure. It proposed the establishment of an interim government, pending a more permanent arrangement.

L. Henderson, Director of the Near Eastern and African Affairs, warned Secretary of State George Marshall, in one of the most perceptive analysis, that the partition of Palestine was not workable and would lead to permanent conflict. He also added that this view was shared by everyone who had worked on the project. Henderson also informed Marshall that his view that self-determination and majority rule were conspicuously absent from the report.

When a number of Middle Eastern American ambassadors requested a meeting with Truman, one ambassador at the meeting, pointed out to him the unfairness of the decision to throw his weight behind the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. He shot back: “Gentlemen, I have hundreds of thousands of Jewish voters in my jurisdiction could you show me what the Arabs have.”

Though he may have acted with indecent haste, having waited only 20 minutes before throwing his weight behind the newly proclaimed state of Israel, he was firm in his decision.

Cold War calculations were never too far from Truman’s mind. Churchill’s Fulton, (Missouri), 1946 speech at which he spoke his famous line: “An Iron Curtain has descended”, likely inspired his sense of urgency to have a warm water port in Palestine before the Kremlin did.

Joseph Stalin, Secretary General of the Soviet Union Communist Party may have grossly over-estimated the subversive nature of the Jewish socialist elements in the Labour Party and their connections with Histradrut (trade union movement).

When Stalin passed away and was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev, he implemented a new foreign policy promoting peaceful co-existence and no-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

Soviet support for Israel declined with its subsequent participation in the Tri-Partite (Israel, France and England) aggression against Egypt in 1956 which had exposed the fallacy of Stalin’s reasoning and strategic calculations with regard to the peace-loving nature of the State of Israel.

We know now that over the next few decades, the Palestinian people suffered countless assaults, were deprived of fundamental freedoms and subjected to a brutal occupation and its thousands indignities.

Adel Safty is distinguished visiting professor and special adviser to the rector at the Siberian Academy of Public Administration, Russia. His book, Might Over Right, is endorsed by Noam Chomsky and published in England by Garnet, 2009.