Abba Eban, former Israeli ambassador and Foreign Minister, once remarked that Israel's borders prior to the 1967 Six Day War were so narrow and militarily indefensible that they "have for us something of a memory of Auschwitz"--in other words, that the Arab armies would be able to overrun Israel and slaughter its Jewish citizens.

Yet Yasir Arafat has just launched a diplomatic campaign to reduce Israel to borders even more narrow than those pre-1967 "Auschwitz borders." This goes far beyond the territories for negotiation that are specified in the 1993 Oslo accords that Arafat signed with Israel.

Arafat and his Palestinian Authority have undertaken a worldwide campaign to revive United Nations resolution 181. That resolution was originally adopted by the U.N. in 1947. It recommended partitioning British Mandatory Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The tiny Jewish State was to consist of small pieces of land in the Galilee and the coastal plain, plus the Negev desert. Jerusalem was to be under international control. The Palestinian Arabs, and the surrounding Arab regimes, rejected 181 in 1947 and went to war to prevent the Jewish State from being established.

If the borders proposed in Resolution 181 were implemented today, many major Israeli cities would be in Arab territory, including Beersheba, Safed, Jaffa, and Nahariya. Israel's capital, Jerusalem, would be taken away from it. Israel would be reduced to less than half the size of New Jersey--so small that one can safely say the 1947 plan, if imposed today, would be a prescription for Israeli national suicide. If Israel were that small, the Arab regimes would believe that Israel were vulnerable enough that it might be possible to destroy it.

And that's exactly what Arafat has in mind.

Although the entire basis of the Oslo accords signed by Israel and Arafat was that the Palestinian Arabs would sincerely accept Israel's right to exist, in fact they never have.

The PA's official letterhead to this day features a map of all of Israel labeled "Palestine." I know about Arafat's maps first hand. During a recent visit to Israel, I saw the huge monument on the Bethlehem-Hebron road, a giant stone sculpture (dedicated to the "martyrs of the intifada") featuring the shape of a map of "Palestine," including all of Israel. I also saw photos that were taken of such maps on the wall of Arafat's office, in the official atlases used in PA schools, on official PA Television broadcasts, and on the uniforms of PA police officers. To every Arab who passes that monument or watches PA television or sees a PA policeman's uniform, that map sends a message, in a very visual and graphic manner, that Arafat's goal continues to be the eventual destruction of all of Israel.

Throughout the nearly six years since the signing of the Oslo agreement on the White House lawn, Arafat has, in speech after speech, assured Arab audiences that the agreement with Israel is just one phase in the PLO's infamous 1974 "Strategy of Phases." That strategy proposes acquiring various pieces of territory from Israel, phase by phase, until Israel is so small that the Arabs will be able to destroy it altogether.

Phase one was to get some initial land, as provided by the Oslo accords, and to establish the Palestinian Authority as the ruling regime there. Phase two is force Israel back to the pre-1967 borders --the "Auschwitz lines" as Eban called them-- which would mean a PA state in all of the Judea-Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza areas. Phase three will be the 1947 borders. Phase four will be the annihilation of Israel. Arafat believes he can achieve these aims through a combination of diplomacy, political pressure, terrorism, and, eventually, all-out war.

The campaign is already making gains. Just last month, Arafat and his allies persuaded a prominent United Nations agency, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, to endorse 181. Other international agencies may soon follow suit.

Arafat's campaign for resolution 181 demonstrates again that he is not sincerely interested in peaceful coexistence with Israel, but is trying to drive Israel back to indefensible borders in the hope of hastening the eventual destruction of the Jewish State. When will the Clinton-Gore administration wake up to this harsh but obvious fact? When will the administration stop pouring American taxpayers' money ($500-million so far) into the pockets of someone who is devoted to the destruction of a key American ally? And when will the administration stop pressuring Israel to make unconditional concessions, and start pressuring Arafat to sincerely accept Israel's right to exist?