LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN

...Resolutions 242 and 338—were dismissed by many Jews as "just words" (although enemy words were taken seriously when they held hostile views on all three issues...

...There is a sad irony here...

...magazine, is the author of six books, most recently, Among Friends (McGraw-Hill, 1986...

...Assuming that Jews have a far deeper personal stake in the reform of the PNC than of the governments of Chile, Nicaragua, Poland, Lithuania, Romania or South Africa, it is illogical for us to celebrate the fresh winds blowing through those countries while meeting positive changes in the Palestinian movement with suspicion and disdain...

...magazine, "There is no place for the Jew in the Middle East...

...Also during that remarkable fortnight, I participated in a weekend retreat as one of ten Jewish women who engaged in intensive dialogue with an equal number of Palestinians, among them Najat Arafat Khelil, president of the Arab Women's Council of the United States, Hannan M. Ashrawi, dean of faculty at Bir Zeit University on the West Bank and Rana Nashashibi, a leading Palestinian nationalist from the territories...

...Well, you say, after what the PLO has done, of course we are suspicious...

...They remind me that Palestinians "say one thing to the world and another to their own people...

...We don't always take the trouble to distinguish the pacifists from the rabble-rousers, the territories from Tunis, the nihilists from the men and women who have helped their movement grow into political maturity...

...These leaders deserve support...

...The doubters, whether Israelis or American Jews, refuse to entertain the possibility that the PLO hard-line may have given way to a new pragmatism or that any Palestinian might be capable of change...

...Continued Jewish negativism only reinforces rejectionists, extremists and Moslem fundamentalists...

...Far worse enemies have been allowed to redeem themselves...

...Five years later, during preparatory meetings for the follow-up conference in Nairobi, the Palestinians were still insisting on a "democratic secular state" and demanding to return to their family homes in Jaffa and Haifa...

...A bloody history of Russian pogroms, the Hitler-Stalin pact, the Gulag, prisoners of conscience and rising anti-Semitism did not prevent most Jews from celebrating the healing powers of glasnost and perestroika...

...In 1980, at the U.N.'s International Women's Conference in Copenhagen, Palestinian delegates referred to Israel only as "the Zionist entity" and tormented Jewish delegates with threats of violence...

...How can Palestinians prove they have changed if Israel prevents their incipient leaders from speaking, publishing, traveling and putting their new policies into action...

...Shoah memories and lurking fears of a united Germany did not stop most Jews from welcoming the fall of the Berlin wall and the flowering of East German democracy...

...Such voices are heard periodically (when they are not silenced—by Israel and their own people—censored, administratively detained or deported...

...Of all those who have committed atrocities against the Jewish people, only the Palestinians are consigned to the status of the permanently loathsome...

...9 Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms...

...The exchanges were off the record but I can tell you my conclusion: The major architects of the Palestinian cause have relinquished their all-or-nothing dreams and are prepared to negotiate a settlement based upon peaceful coexistence within a permanent two-state (not two-stage) solution...

...Hanna Siniora, editor of Al Fajr...

...But last February, they said almost everything is negotiable...

...and the top leaders of the Palestine Women's Union, Zahira Kamal of the West Bank and Yusra Barbary from Gaza...

...We fail to decode the political significance of the intifada, decrying the stones and burning tires but never applauding the attempts at institution-building and self-government...

...Abba Eban says the world is losing patience with Israel because, "We refuse to take yes for an answer...

...Upon hearing this, some Jews accuse me of having been duped and manipulated...

...Last February, during an extraordinary two-week period, I had the opportunity to meet in New York, Jerusalem and Gaza with more than two dozen Palestinian leaders—including Faisal Husseini, a prominent nationalist figure on the West Bank...

...I know how far the Palestinians have moved because I remember where they came from...

...That is why I heard moderate views from all the Palestinians in my dialogue meetings and why, after years of claiming "no one to talk to," Israel can now choose her interlocutors from among many reasoned voices...

...Furthermore, I feel the need to challenge Jews who are willing to permit every people but the Palestinians the right of self-improvement...

...Two weeks of dialogue have persuaded me that the Palestinians are indeed saying yes to compromise and yes to peace...

...Israel's intransigence has made the Palestinians the refuseniks of the 1990s...

...The resolutions passed by that elected body are binding political POGREBIN continued from page 10 principles...

...but now that there are people to talk to, Israelis are prohibited by law from talking to them...

...Jews give all of humanity the benefit of the doubt and the chance to repair their errors except the people whose transformation we want and need most...

...Who trusts terrorists...

...And despite the fact that the Egyptians killed many more Jews than the PLO, Israel accepted Sadat as her partner in peacemaking and now sees Egypt as her advocate in the Arab world...

...The epochal breakthroughs of November 1988—when the PNC recognized Israel, renounced terrorism and accepted U.N...

...But when it comes to allowing Palestinians to start a new slate, no way...

...In Israel in 1978, a prominent Palestinian told our mission from Ms...

...Nabeel Shaath, chairman of the political committee of the Palestine National Council (PNC...

...Haider Abdal Shafi, president of the Red Crescent Organization...

...Many of us continue to typecast every Palestinian as a terrorist and deny an entire people their freedom because of a few madmen at the fringes...

...Of course, I cannot claim immunity to artful propaganda nor can I swear that two weeks' worth of discussions add up to the revealed truth...

...Positive responses to constructive policy changes would reinforce Palestinian moderates...

...Most of these conversations took place in small working sessions organized either by the International Center for Peace in the Middle East or the Dialogue Project between American Jewish and Palestinian Women...

...First, we don't have to trust the Palestinians, we have to test them (while insuring firm security protections which Israel, the fifth strongest military power in the world, is well-equipped to enforce) . And governments test whether political change is authentic by allowing people to act upon their best intentions, not by precluding them a priori from emendation...

...I call that progress...

...But I can report the facts: The Palestinians with whom I met came from remarkably diverse backgrounds, expressed their views in a nonprogrammed vocabulary, showed varying degrees of emotion, seemed comfortable disagreeing amongst themselves, yet uniformly put forth the opinion that beyond insisting upon Palestinian self-determination, almost everything is negotiable...

...Second, we have to start treating the Palestinians as equal opportunity enemies, not demons...

...She is currently at work on a memoir about her struggle to reconcile feminism and Judaism...

...Fayez Abu Rahmeh, head of the Lawyers' Association of Gaza...

...Without capitulating or putting herself at any greater risk than she already experiences from the intifada, Israel too can say yes to listening, yes to negotiating and yes to the possibility that even this enemy can change for the better...