To Secure Agreement, Yasser Arafat Has Played Precious Cards

By Paul Findley

A recent glance through long-neglected files reminded me of a long and fascinating personal acquaintance and correspondence with Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat and the distance the Palestinian leader has traveled and the risks he has undertaken, beginning at the age of 19, for his people.

During a four-hour meeting in Damascus the night of Nov. 25, 1978, Arafat risked the fury of the many Palestinians who wanted Israel eliminated completely by making an extraordinary pledge. Going beyond policy positions taken by the Palestine Liberation Organization at that time Arafat, as its chairman, authorized me to report to the White House that the PLO would renounce all armed struggle and all other forms of violence and would live at peace with Israel in exchange for an independent Palestine consisting of only the West Bank and Gaza.

The same night, he dictated this message to President Jimmy Carter: "I am not a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I am not a Nazi, nor am I a communist. I am a freedom fighter, fighting for the benefit of my people who are refugees, living without any humane conditions, without a homeland, suffering. And I would hope that the human rights Your Excellency is talking about will not exclude my people, who have such great need."

His brave and constructive proposal for peaceful co-existence with Israel elicited non-response from the White House, curiosity from the media, and protest from Palestinian critics. After ducking media questions about the pledge, he wrote in a letter to me dated March 3, 1979: "Our goal is to regain our legitimate rights and to establish our independent state on any part of our homeland liberated or evacuated by the Israelis." Without disavowing the pledge, the letter was sufficiently reassuring to disarm his critics.

The November 1978 meeting was the first but not the last time the PLO chief told me his organization has very few cards to play in its relationship with the Jewish state and must play each with great care.

His principal cards: terminating Palestinian armed struggle and extending diplomatic recognition to Israel.

Through the years Arafat has maintained that Palestinian use of arms in its struggle for human rights is sanctioned in international law and that Israeli behavior in denying these rights and subjugating Palestinians is illegitimate. He denounced the autonomy stage Israel offered in the Camp David accords, insisting that it would legitimize Israeli control of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

He has cited the United Nations Charter, various U.N. and European Community resolutions, and the Geneva Conventions in denouncing Israel as an outlaw nation.

In Arafat's latest agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli leader risks little of his nation's fundamental and his own partisan interests, while the Palestinian leader puts nearly everything on the table.

Israel's principal concession is the redeployment of Israeli military forces from Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank—and even that is tentative. Geoffrey Aronson, who heads the Washington-based Foundation for Middle East Peace, gives this terse summary: "Like the Gaza agreement, which has left Israel in direct control of 40 percent of the strip, the West Bank redeployment gives Palestinians nothing that Israelis aren't glad to be rid of."

The agreement will give the Palestinian National Authority limited control over less than nine percent of the West Bank. The 150 Israeli settlements within the occupied territories and the so-called Israeli "state lands" there will remain under absolute Israeli control. So will East Jerusalem.

Israeli Control

Anytime Israel decides that Palestinian protests are getting out of hand, the whole process will be in jeopardy. The August closure of Israel to Palestinians in response to the Hamas-sponsored suicide bus bombing suggests the difficulty of Arafat's task in controlling anti-Israel violence and the consequent frailty of the new deal.

Ponder the proposed agreement's scope and effect:

1. Arafat's longstanding claim that Israel's military presence in the occupied territories violates international law will be weakened if not destroyed.

2. The Palestinian right of armed struggle is effectively bargained away.

3. The State of Israel gains de facto diplomatic recognition by Palestinians without extending reciprocity. Palestinians will remain stateless and separated into seven enclaves that are largely-isolated from each other and closely controlled by Israel.

4. The 150 Israeli settlements in the occupied territories attain a new luster of permanence and legitimacy.

Cynics may call the new agreement a hapless sell-out. A more fair-minded assessment is that Yasser Arafat is doing the best he can under existing circumstances. He entered the Oslo negotiations more isolated and vulnerable than when he was under bombardment in Beirut bunkers in 1982. This isolation was intensified by the sharp drop in international financial support, the withering of world political support, abject fawning to Israel and its U.S. lobby by U.S. President Bill Clinton, and Jordan's settlement with Israel of trade, border and diplomatic terms.

The latest agreement is a sharp break with the past—a risky, watershed event of monumental importance for Arafat and all Palestinians. It requires Arafat to play all the cards he has guarded so carefully through the years, betting on Prime Minister Rabin's prospects to retain power in the 1996 Israeli general elections and on Rabin's subsequent goodwill.

Both are long shots. Rabin's regime is heavily pressed by the opposition Likud Party, and his goodwill toward the Palestinians is yet to be demonstrated.

In the final status negotiations, Arafat will have few cards left to play in the absence of U.S. resumption of its almost forgotten role as "honest broker."

Former Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL) is chairman of the Council for the National Interest.