January 1989, Page 15

Meeting of US Jews and Yasser Arafat: Good for Israel?—Two Views

It Was Part of the Breakthrough

By Jerome Segal

Events have been overwhelming. On Nov. 15, 1988, the State of Palestine was declared and the PLO launched its peace initiative. On Dec. 14, the United States announced that it would open a dialogue with the PLO.

Chairman Yasser Arafat took the Declaration of Independence as a mandate. In three successive statements he clarified and extended the stands taken in Algiers. First there was the Stockholm meeting with American Jews, second there was his speech to the United Nations in Geneva, and finally his press conference of Dec. 14.

The Stockholm meeting was important for several reasons. First, it resulted in a useful statement by Arafat in which he addressed the three US conditions using more explicit wording than had been adopted by the PNC. This was helpful, but in the end not decisive. The key phrasing only came with the Dec. 14 press conference.

The real value of the Stockholm meeting was that it spoke to the underlying domestic political environment within which the United States makes its foreign policy decisions on the Middle East.

Menachem Rosensaft, a member of the delegation, is the president of the Labor Zionist Alliance as well as head of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Rita Hauser is chairwoman of the American branch of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East, an organization which lists Abba Eban as its international chairman.

A year and a half earlier, in June 1987, a less well-known delegation of American Jews representing New Jewish Agenda, the Jewish Committee for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, and the American Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace met with Arafat in Tunis. Both meetings made it easier for the State Department to take the politically difficult step of opening dialogue with the PLO.

But the significance of such meetings goes deeper. Our focus on getting to the negotiation table tends to obscure the fact that there is every likelihood that negotiations will deadlock, break down, or simply go on interminably. An Israeli withdrawal from the country of Palestine will not occur as a result of a dictate from the United States. If there is to be any real possibility of successful negotiations there will have to be a change in the underlying relationships and attitudes between the Palestinian and the Israeli people.

As an initiative taken by Jews who were not representing any governmental body, the Stockholm meeting is symbolic of what needs to happen on a much wider scale. Just as it is the intifadah which has brought us to this new hopeful moment, real peace will similarly require mass action. What is needed, more than anything else, is the establishment of a normalized political environment that allows not just for U.S.-PLO talks, but for deep political interaction between the Palestinian and Israeli people.

It is the Israeli government which blocks the road. The Israeli government has made it illegal for Israeli citizens to have contact with the PLO, and has subjected the Palestinian population to a Kafkaesque reign of fear in which there is no framework of civil liberties within which ordinary Palestinians can engage ordinary Israelis in deep political dialogue. Faisal Husseini pointed the way when he spoke at a Peace Now rally and called for the two-state solution. The Israeli government responded by placing him back in administrative detention.

Jerome M. Segal is a Research Scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland. His book, Creating the Palestinian State—A Strategy for Peace, is available through A.E.T.

Politically, It Was Irrelevant

By Sol Schindler

Those who benefitted the most from Yasser Arafat's recent meeting with five American Jews in Stockholm were probably members of the Swedish Hotel Association. Politically, the meeting was irrelevant. Those five American Jews were, after all, Americans and they have the right to meet with virtually anyone they want. They exercised their right and had their meeting, but the impact in and on Israel was virtually nil. The five represented organizations with small memberships and narrow appeal. Why Yasser Arafat chose to speak to them, however, seems fairly obvious. It was good public relations. It made a few headlines, and on the theory that any publicity is good publicity—just spell my name right—it was worthwhile for the PLO. But which reader of this magazine can remember any of the five's names?

PLO Sought an American Opening

The meeting was important only because it once again underlined the PLO's efforts to create an American opening. There is an obsession in the PLO leadership that if only it can establish a working relationship with the United States its problems will be solved. It seems unable to face the fact that Israeli soldiers patrol the towns of the occupied territories because it was the Israeli army that conquered the territories, and if one wants to get the Israeli soldiers to leave one will have to talk to the Israelis. It prefers to work on the United States. Dealing with a superpower does much for one's amour propre.

As an American, I'm delighted that the PLO views us with the importance it does. And I also feel the events of the past three or four months reaffirm the efficacy of our Middle East policy. For years, and against the advice of Arabists in the Department of State, we have been saying that we would not talk to the PLO until they recognized the reality of the state of Israel and concurrently renounced the use of terrorism. Other nations, while expressing firm disapproval of terrorism, found it difficult to be firm in any other way. They allowed extradition requests to go unanswered, and even assisted known terrorists over their borders. We, however, stood firm, and after so many years of resolve now see the PLO has accepted our position. If this is not a foreign policy triumph, what is?

Shultz Can Declare Victory

Now, after 13 years, the PLO has met American conditions and a dialogue can begin. Now George Shultz, who has been dumped on by so much of the media, can declare victory.

It will indeed be a victory, but it will still be only a beginning. True peace can come only through talks between Israelis and Palestinians. The United States can play a constructive role, as it did at Camp David. The UN might even be helpful, as it has been at times in the past. But the UN writ does not run very wide. Ask any Lebanese how valid a UN-imposed peace is.

The Palestinians must learn to face reality. The coquettish act of "now-you-see-it-now-you-don't" must finally be put aside, and the basic fad realized that whatever it is they want can come only from the Israelis. It is to them they must turn, and on them use their powers of persuasion.

The much talked-about peace process, which barely existed before, is only now beginning to emerge. Let us hope it achieves some momentum.

Sol Schindler is a retired Foreign Service officer who writes and lectures on international affairs.