In the wake of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948-49, about 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes or were encouraged by Israel to leave. Some were forcibly ejected from their villages which were then demolished. James McDonald, the first Ambassador of the United States to Israel, described the plight of the refugees thus: they are "a huge and pitiful multitude, uprooted, exploited and helpless". This was just the beginning.

Now that the Palestinian problem is fast moving towards a final solution the world helplessly watches the endgame as it did 60 years ago when an attempt at another final solution was underway in the Nazi-dominated Europe. There is, however, some difference. On the previous occasion the world did, temporarily and for good reason, feel helpless but was not in a state of morbid paralysis. The authors of the previous attempt at final solution had to pay a very heavy price as the collective wrath of almost the whole world descended upon them, and continued unabated till they were destroyed.

The present scenario is totally different. This time round those who can intervene are in no way helpless, but are in every way unhelpful. In fact there are many among them who, under the influence of a potent brew of racial and religious antipathy, have chosen to take a passionately dispassionate view of the fate of the Palestinians.

This antipathic indifference to the fate of the Palestinians has a long tradition, but let us go no further than the Balfour Declaration (1917) that officially and formally committed the British government to the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Its author, Arthur Balfour, justified the new covenant with the Jews with this magisterial pronouncement: "The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right or be it wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land."

Arthur James Balfour, whose mind worked in rather devious ways, had just the right credentials to make that kind of pronouncement. While he supported the creation of Israel for a people who lived elsewhere, he was an implacable opponent of home rule for the Irish whose rights there had an "age-long tradition".

In fact, as chief secretary for Ireland, he suppressed the insurrection in Ireland with such ruthlessness that he came to be known as "Bloody Balfour". One would like to add that he was kept aloft in politics by an indulgent electorate for an interminably long period of 50 years, due undoubtedly to the fact that the British public has always been rather suspicious of politicians who sound intelligent or clever.

That the Palestinians don't matter or don't even exist has been a constant theme in the Zionist lore. Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the leading lights of the early Zionists, argued that the Palestinians were "aliens", and their "transfer" if not accomplished voluntarily would have to be achieved against their will.

Then there was that curious case of a popular book, From Time Immemorial by Joan Peter, massively promoted by the Israeli lobby, claiming that there were no native Arabs before the Zionist immigration into Palestine. This book was shown to be a colossal fraud by Norman Finkelstein, himself a Jew and the son of Holocaust survivors. Again, as late as 1969, when asked about the Palestinians in an interview with The Sunday Times of London, Golda Meir brushed aside the question with contempt: "They do not exist", she said.

Having talked for a while about what exists and what doesn't, we are, I hope, prepared to face a question in the same vein that hasn't been asked at any time since 1948: Does Palestine exist? The short answer is: Palestine doesn't exist. In fact it ceased to exist within a few days of its birth as there was no legal or political authority, or organization, to take control of the state demarcated by the British under the partition plan.

Consequently, there was a scramble for land among the neighbouring countries, and the contenders took whatever they could. Egypt took the Gaza strip (bigger than the present one); Jordan (then Trans-Jordan) occupied the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem; and Israel took the rest, the most and the best. In the next phase (1967) the Israelis ejected the Egyptians from the Gaza Strip and much else, and the Jordanians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli occupation of the whole of Palestine (and Golan Heights in addition) was, thus, complete in 1967.

Leaving aside the Gaza strip (140 sq miles), one has only to look at the map of the West Bank (2,200 sq miles) to see that it is a rather complicated mosaic, consisting of five different kinds of areas: areas under the Palestinian control; areas under a joint Israeli-Palestinian control; areas under the Israeli civil and security control; areas consisting of Israeli civil and military facilities; and the Jewish-Israeli settlements (175 so far) scattered all over the place.

The word "area" can be misleading as none of these five kinds of areas is in one piece. Each of the different kinds of areas consists of numerous bits and pieces. Areas under the Palestinian control, for example, consist of enclaves joined by roads that are under Israeli control. Now that the Palestinian Authority has been dismantled, even this confusing, fractured and erratic Palestinian control over the designated bits and pieces doesn't exist anymore.

Thus, the best-kept secret of our times is that Palestine doesn't exist, and Greater Israel has come into existence. In fact, Greater Israel has been there since June 1967. But why, one may ask, Israel doesn't tell the truth by formally inaugurating Greater Israel? Well, there is a problem. The problem is that while Palestine doesn't exist, the Palestinians do. There are more than three million of them in the areas that are supposed to constitute Palestine, and about a million in Israel itself.

Even if the Palestinian refugees in the neighbouring countries (2.3 million) are not allowed to return, there would be 4.3 million Palestinians (Jews 5.5 million) in Greater Israel. Hence the existence of Greater Israel will be acknowledged only when the Palestinians are reduced to a small minority. This is what Ariel Sharon in now trying to accomplish through "one-way ticket" not only to Yasser Arafat but to as many Palestinians as can be persuaded to leave in the years to come. The Israelis are in no hurry. They are the best at any game of patience.

Meanwhile, we should get used to the fact that the Israeli forces will not withdraw from the West Bank or Gaza strip; the Palestinian Authority won't be resurrected out of the rubble; the Palestinian refugees won't be allowed to return; and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank will not be dismantled, but would continue to proliferate.

This, then, is a brief, perhaps the briefest narrative of the continuing Palestinian diaspora, pain and suffering begun more half a century ago. In the course of their travails they have been attacked and slaughtered by the Jews (Palestine), by the Christians (Lebanon), by the Muslims (Jordan), and expelled (Kuwait) from what they thought was a sanctuary.

At the present moment when even their young girls have been driven to acts of extreme despair; when their leaders are being surrounded, pursued, captured, tortured and branded as terrorists; when their houses are being bulldozed; there is no relief in sight. No country or group of countries is going to launch a rescue operation any time soon. They stand alone and forsaken.

But even in this darkest hour of their history, the Palestinians do have an option: they should renounce violence in all its forms and manifestations, accept the reality of the existence of Greater Israel, and declare themselves to be its citizens.