The last war I can remember the Arabic people winning is the war against the French in Algeria during the mid-60's. Technically this shouldn't count because the French are almost as bad warriors as the Arabs.

An outnumbered, outgunned Israel smashed them time after time.

The Algerians didn't really win more than Degaulle quit.  In a standup fight, even the French would prevail.  

There is a difference between winning the hearts and minds of a hostile population while engaged in a nasty civil war, and defeating a conventional army in the field.

Isreal couldn't win a battle like this, or they would already have retaken the West Bank and Gaza.

It is funny - the Arabs and the Persians have strong military traditions with superpower backing and can't whip an external foe.  The Iran-Iraq war degenerated into trench warfare with human wave assaults in the best traditions of the WW1 generals.

Israel can't do what it wants because world pressure is against just going in and kicking butt

But came close to loosing in '73. This is one of the reasons Israel decided to go along with the peace process. They can win as many times as they like, but the first time they loose they will be pushed into the sea.

The fact is, the average Egyptian is probably tougher than the average Israeli. But the Egyption (cerca '48 or '58 or '67) probably doesn't give a rat's ass for Israel either way--he is more interested in going home and resuming his fued with his cousins. Nationalism and organization prevail (and in '73, critical help from American satallites).

Of course, I have heard it reported that Berbers fighting the Arabs kicked ass one-on-one, and that Arabs wouldn't fight the Berbers except from behind walls. I guess this is the other side of the coin. Maybe the Arabs do suck.

Berbers are also Muslim. But from a different racial stock, right? Who the hell are they?

Well, DonS, I'm glad you asked. Berbers are a hamitic people found from Morroco to Libya. Another small subset of the Indo-aryan (Indo-european if you like) peoples. There were at one time over 2700 Berber dialects. But, today, most Berbers have been "arabdized." Some are trilingual (Arabic, Berber, French), but, this is becoming rare. The vast majority are Sunni. Few are Catholic. The two greatist ass-kicking clans (Berbers are clannish, not tribal as are Arabs) were the Almohads and the Almoravids. They were as fanatical as they come. This was also 750 years ago. History is fun.[:P]