PLO: Agony, Frustration

Humphrey dropped in again the other day to pick our brains on the Middle East, and seemed to be his usual urbane self.

Q Look, you gotta tell me about—

A I'm fine, thank you, Humph, and I sure appreciate your asking. Would you like a cup of tea?

Q Nah, I already had coffee. Look you gotta tell me about—

A Boy, this guy's got thick skin!

Q What was that? I didn't hear—

A Uh, I was wondering if you have any sick kin—you know, how's your mother...

Q You crazy? I already told ya she's been dead for 20 years. Look, you gotta tell me about the PLO. I can't understand why it's so important which side wins. All those rebels in Tripoli—they're supposed to be extremists, right? But Arafat himself never wanted to make peace with Israel either—

A Whoa, there, Humph. Arafat tried to interest Israel in cutting a deal for about 10 years, but Israel never wanted to play with him and the U.S. stacked the deck against him. And that's putting it mildly.

Q Who said Arafat wanted to cut a deal? He spent all his time carrying out terrorist plots and refusing to recognize Israel—

A Baloney. Look, it's true that the PLO carried out a violently militant policy for the first half dozen years after the June, 1967 war. This was mainly because of frustration and bitterness over their perception that the Arab governments, which had been bearing the banner of the Palestinian cause up to then—particularly Egypt, led by Gamal Abdul Nasser—had bungled terribly and lost East Jerusalem, the rest of the West Bank, and Gaza to the Israelis. The reaction of the Palestinian leaders was to say, in effect: since we can't depend on others to get our land back—they're even losing more of it!—we'd better take over the task ourselves. Of course, they didn't have the military power to defeat Israel in a conventional way—although they did defend themselves well against a massive, conventional Israeli onslaught at Karame, in Jordan, in 1968—and opted for guerrilla operations, which included attacks on civilians. BUt they didn't kill even a small fraction of the civilians the Israelis killed in carrying out their reprisals for these attacks. And that's not counting some of the raids the Israelis made which were not reprisals for anything in particular—just made to punish the Palestinians on general principle.

Q Well, yeah, but if they had only recognized Israel there wouldn't have been—

A Try to see it from their point of view just for a moment. They didn't want to recognize Israel! The way they saw it, the United Nations had voted in 1947 to set up a foreign state on their land, without asking the people who lived there whether that was all right or not—

Q A foreign state?

A Yes, of course. Only a very minor portion of the Jews who were to live in the new Israeli state had actually been born there. When the Balfour Declaration in 1917 got the bandwagon going for the establishment of a Jewish "homeland" in Palestine, only eight percent—yes, eight percent—of Palestine's inhabitants were Jews. By the time of the U.N.'s 1947 partition vote, large numbers of Jews who had been born and brought up in other countries, most of them in Europe—they were, in fact, Europeans—had immigrated to Palestine, but even then Jews still formed only one third of the total population. The U.N., however, voted to give 54 percent of the land to a Jewish state—and divided up Palestine in such a way that the Jewish state was given the best, most fertile land. In the fighting which followed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians left the country—some fleeing in fear, while others were pushed out—and they were never allowed in again. Their houses and lands were confiscated and assigned to Jewish immigrants. In the meantime, much of the land which had been supposed to be an Arab state had been taken over by the new Israeli state—on the grounds that the Arabs should have accepted their own state while they had a chance. In other words, Humph, the Palestinians are said to have goofed because they refused to bow down and say thank you when outsiders came in and took over the land in which they were born—

Q So you're agreeing that I'm right! Arafat spent all his time carrying out terrorist plots and refusing to recognize Israel—

A This man is a dunce!

Q Eh? Whazzat? I wish you'd stop mumbling—

A Er, I said, I've told you once—but I'll tell you again: this is the way it was for the first half dozen years after the 1967 war. More specifically, up to 1974.

Q What happened then?

A Well, during June of that year, the PLO's National Council voted to abandon its 25-year-old policy of insistence on a unitary secular state in Palestine where Jews, Muslims and Christians could live together on an equal footing, and decided to settle for a state in the West Bank and Gaza that would exist alongside of, but not in place of, Israel. It also decided to try to achieve this goal through diplomacy rather than force. This was really a momentous shift of policy by the PLO, which was finally agreeing to accept Israel's pre-1967 borders—something the Israelis at one time had been begging the Arabs to accept. But now that the Palestinians had agreed, in principle, to do this the Israelis were no longer interested. The momentous PLO decision was ignored—treated like a non-event.

Q How come?

A Well, by this time, as the Israelis had grown to recognize how much more militarily powerful they were than the Arabs—thanks in no small part to U.S. aid—their appetite for taking advantage of this situation had also grown. Even before Begin took over and declared the West Bank to be part of the biblical Greater Israel, the Labor Party was eyeing large chunks of this territory for its "security" needs. It was also establishing Jewish settlements there. From 1974 until 1977, when Begin took over—and afterwards too, of course—there wasn't even a glimmering of an Israeli readiness to talk to the PLO, or any other Palestinians, about their idea for a separate state. On the contrary.

Q You mean—

A I mean that the Israelis scoffed at the very idea that there could be anything sincere about the PLO change of policy. To underline their point they did everything they could to paint the PLO as extremist—blaming it for terrorist acts that had been committed by groups which the PLO had disowned; referring routinely to all PLO members as "terrorists"; discrediting its most moderate leaders—

Q For Pete's sake, why would they do this?

A It should be pretty obvious. I think nothing looks more dangerous to Israeli leaders than the possibility that world public opinion might think that the PLO was actually trying to be reasonable. This might put international pressure on Israel to agree to firm borders, at a time when it hasn't yet come to a national consensus on how much Arab land it eventually wants to keep.

Q Nuts. This is all just out of your head. What proof do you have that they don't want the PLO to look moderate or—

A Look, I could quote you chapter and verse, but I don't have the time. But try this on for size: last June 19, not long before Shamir became Prime Minister, he said—I've got it right here—that he was "not afraid of the radicalization of the PLO." What bothered him were Arafat's "tactics" of diplomacy, which he said "are sometimes more dangerous to us."

Q Still, if only those PLO guys would recognize Israel—

A The PLO has already accepted its existence in umpteen different ways—including an announcement by Arafat that he accepts U.N. Resolution 242 and the U.N.'s partition plan, even though very few people paid any attention. But it's true that the PLO won't look Israel straight in the eye and announce its recognition. The main reason is that Israeli leaders have already said, many times, that even if the PLO recognizes Israel, Israel will never recognize the PLO—or deal with it. Some people say the PLO is dumb not to play this card right away. If they do, they say, the Israelis would be too embarrassed to say no. But Israeli governments have never been known to get embarrassed very easily—and if the PLO could shed its pride long enough to put out its hand and say: "We recognize you, so now could you please at least give us the West Bank and Gaza for our independent homeland," you can bet your bottom dollar that Mr. Shamir would answer: "Thanks but no thanks. Now buzz off."

Q What if Arafat got together again with King Hussein, and—

A Same problem. Here's something else Shamir said earlier this year: "We read in the press that King Hussein is seeking an Arab mandate to join negotiations. Such a mandate would be so extreme as to be rejected by all Israelis."

Q Yeah, but would the U.S. let them get away with that? I mean—

A You've got to be kidding. When's the last time you ever heard of the U.S. stopping Israel from doing anything? Besides, the U.S. has been just as down on the PLO—all of the PLO—as Israel has been. Just the other day, Undersecretary of State Eagleburger gave his current view of the two PLO factions: "They're both bad." Meanwhile, the U.S. keeps saying that the PLO should recognize Israel unilaterally, and not expect to be recognized in return. And what will the PLO get in exchange? The right to deal with the U.S.! No wonder the rebels are telling Arafat that his policy of moderation has been a failure.

Q Wasn't that bombing of a Jerusalem bus the other day a bad sign?

A It's not clear yet who actually planted the bomb, but there's certainly a chance we are seeing the beginning of a new ball game. No one should be surprised.

Q You sound kinda pessimistic about the outlook for an early solution—

A You can say that again!

Q You sound kinda pessimistic about—

A Skip it, blockhead. Bye-bye.

Q Hey, I heard that!