The banner that was used in the streets of Nouakchott, Mauritania during last week’s Arab Summit there included a logo where the member countries of the League were represented by their respective flags overlaid on the outline of their maps.
Almost immediately, delegates from Morocco heatedly complained that the map of their nation did not include Western Sahara, the occupied territory that they insist is a part of their nation.
Dozens of articles were written about this, as Morocco threatened to boycott, or to refuse to host, future Arab League events.
However, there was very little protest over the map of “Palestine” that only included the West Bank and Gaza, with nothing in between. I only found one article about this in a Palestinian website.
This is usually the sort of thing that would bring a great deal of loud protest from the ever-thin skinned Palestinians. It is highly doubtful that they didn’t notice this map, especially after there was a small bit of online chatter about it besides the louder Morocco protest bringing the banner to the attention of the Arab world.
Apparently the Palestinian delegation was already feeling like they are on thin ice with the rest of the Arab League, especially since the support for their cause has been dropping both financially and rhetorically.
The Arab League wants the Palestinian issue to go away, and it could be that the Palestinian delegation calculated that if they would make a fuss over this, it would only take one fed-up Arab League member to say “well, why don’t you accept a peace plan already and stop pretending you will destroy Israel?” to have their protest blow up in their faces.
I’m fairly certain I know how the logo happened, though,and it wasn’t a direct insult to Morocco and the Palestinian Arabs.
The designer of the banner simply went online to look for a cool Arab League graphic, and found one at a stock photo site:
Mauritanian graphics designers are not likely to be as aware of border issues to double-check the graphics from a Western stock photo house. And Western graphics artists would naturally try to create accurate maps.
(h/t Bob Knot)
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