Jimmy's Favorite Terrorist

...From the point of view of these advisers --Brzezinski foremost among them--the recent European initiative on behalf of the PL0 could not have been'more nicely timed...

...The effort began in February, 1977, when Secretary of State Vance declared that the United States would recognize the PLO only if it removed those provisions in its National Covenant which called for Israel's destruction and accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242, wh'ich assures Israel of secure and recognized borders...

...On October 1, 1977, the Carter administration went a step further and endorsed the "legitimate rights of the Palestinian people," a phrase widely understood to imply their right to a state...

...After crushing t h e i r rebellion, he executed their leaders and sent the rest into slavery...

...It said nothing about "communicating" with it...

...Yet nothing Arafat said or did appeared capable of dissuading American officials from reaching out to him...

...He also warned that any Palestinian who endorsed the treaty would be guilty of " t r e a c h e r y , " a warning not heeded by Sheikh Hasham Huzundair, a Gaza leader who, after hailing Sadat's peace initiative, Was murdered by PLO killers...

...At first, their task was easy...

...Above all else, though, they gagged on our diplomats being held hostage in lran...

...This endorsement was contained inaJoint Statement, issued by the United States and the Soviet Union, in which the two great powers undertook to convene a Geneva Conference by December to work out the details of a "comprehensive" settlement of tl~e Arab-Israeli conflict, "incorporating all parties concerned and all questions...

...Instead, they contented themselves with issuing a declaration of principle for the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict which ignored Camp David altogether, thereby enabling administration spokesmen to claim a " v i c t o r y " of sorts...

...The administration evidently believes that its failure to recognize the PLO has alienated potential Arab allies, especially Saudi Arabia...

...Julius Caesar, wisely mild in handling Gallic tribal leaders who resisted Rome, made an exception for the Breton chiefs who dared to arrest his envoys...

...Yet, despite its grave misgivings, the United States eventually endorsed the Sadat initiative and went on to playan important role in the ensuing negotiations...

...Israel insisted that it would not go with it...

...The PLO, after all, is a Soviet client: It depends on Moscow for its arms, its military training, and the prestige it enjoys among "progressive" circles.~ Since the Soviet Union is profoundly opposed to the Camp David accords-regarding them, with some justification, as an eft,: rt to exclude it from Middle Eastern affa~,~o---the PLO is hardly in a position to endorse them, even if it wanted to...

...whether they want to or not, they must continue to press for a Palestinian state...

...How can such bizarre behavior be accounted for...

...The first concerned the activities of UN Ambassador Andrew Young, who, after a good deal of subterfug e , finally admitted to i having previously misinformed the State J~When the Anti-Defamation League's National Director, Maxwell Greenberg, sharply protested the ~tction, Assistant Secretary of State Hodding Carter made the somewhat lame reply that although the PLO was a "proscribed" organization, a waiver was given to its Beirut director because he was cor~sidered a "moderate...

...Proponents of this point of view like to regard themselves as "realists" and to dismiss their critics as hopeless "cold warriors" who have yet to outgrow their "inordinate fear of Communism...

...That judgment, in turn, can only be based on the record of American behavior towards other" allies in the past, and that record, extending as it does from Nicaragua to South Vietnam to Taiwan, is unlikely to inspire much conficlence in the value of a pro-American foreign policy...

...That the exercise of power did not moderate the revolutionary ambitions of Lenin, Hitler, Castro, Nasser, or Ho Chi Minh, but served rather to whet their appetites for further conquests, is apparently irrelevant...

...Soon thereafter the scheme was discarded, Strauss became director of the President's reelection campaign, and the effort to involve the PLO in the peace negotiations, so ardently pursued in the wake of the Egyptian-Israeli treaty, was quietly' dropped as the President set about the far from simple task of getting himself reelected...

...Undeterred, the President decided to go even further...

...As is so often the case in recent history, what professors profess, politicians try to practice, especially when the politicians make professors their advisers...

...For the people who think this way, of course, the fifilure of the American military altempt to rescue the hostages was a cause for celebration...

...The Israelis, on the other hand, are very reluctant to offer any concessions in the current talks on the so far justified assumption that each concession will only be followed by new Egyptian and American demands for further concessions...

...The principle of diplomatic immunity, he f e l t , bad to be respected absolutely...

...I f the aim of American policymakers is to reward our enemies and to betray our f r i e n d s , " observes Mrs...

...Finally, in August, two rather bizarre :incidents brought the question of Ameri:can relations with the PLO to a head...

...They felt, however, that if the PLO were given a state on the West Bank and Gaza it would acquire a stake in the status quo and.would gradually reconcile itself to Israel's legitimacy...

...When Strauss conveyed his message, Begin told him that Israel adamantly opposed such an amendment and Sadat told him that it was "stupid...

...Whatever else may be said of the Iranian revolution, it has certainly tested the faith of classical American Puritans, for whom everything bad that happens in the world is the fault of the United States and all "revolutions" are at least presumptively good...

...J u s t how the Arab s t a t e s r e g a r d this intense American activity on behalf of the PL0 is far from obvious...

...Thus, the t e r r o r i s t PLO, concealing n e i t h e r its pro-Soviet sympathies nor its ultimate aims, goes from s t r e n g t h to s t r e n g t h , borne on a swelling tidal wave of Western delusion, avarice, and stupidity...

...Still the PLO refused to budge...

...The PLO's ties to the Soviet Union were reaffirmed on the eve of the Venice gathering, when EI-Fatah, the largest and supposedly most moderate faction of the PLO, vowed "to strengthen the strategic alliance with the socialist countries, especially the Soviet Union," and declared that "the United States stands at the top of the enemies of our people and our nation...

...Eager, if not desperate, to devise an arrangement which would permit the PLO to participate at Geneva, the Carter administration sought a formula by which it could recognize the PLO without violating its commitment to Israel...

...And King Hussein of Jordan is scared stiff of a Palestinian state on the West Bank--he thinks it would threaten his throne.** In fact, the on!y ones who seem genuinely to want a P a l e s t i n i a n s t a t e are the PLO and the Russians--and some of President Carter's advisers...

...Within three months of coming into office, President Carter called for the establishment of a "Palestinian homeland," a move which Brzezinski, now Carter's National Security Adviser, promptly dubbed "our Balfour Deckiration...

...Of course, Brzezinski and his colleagues recognized that the PLO was bent on Israel's destruction...

...Perhaps the most curious feature of the prolonged American effort to involve the PLO in the Camp David negotiations is that even a cursory familiarity with the politics of the region makes it clear that this effort cannot possibly succeed...

...and the general state of anarchy in which Iran was floundering...

...But if the " r e a l i s m " of the Carter administration .accounts for its willingness to court the PLO, the urgency of that courtship derives from its need to devise a policy to counter the spread of Soviet influence to the oil-rich Persian Gulf...

...Though the Carter administration has been forced to ease off on the Israelis for the duration of the election season, the...

...They dismissed the evidence of Soviet involvement as rabid anti-Communism, pointed to the Shah's reforms as evidence of the way modernity was riding roughshod over I r a n ' s t r a d i t i o n a l way of life, made the usual inferences from the United States' support of the Shah, and concluded the obvious: that the Iranian revolution was an idealistic revolt against imperialism, materialism, and capitalism and a r e t u r n to the Golden Age of P e r s i a n culEugene V. Rostow is Sterling Professor of Law at the Yale Law School and former Undersecreta...

...With this issue, they felt, 10 Till{ AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980...

...In the Spring 1975 issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Brzezinski, who was then the director of the Trilateral Commission, wrote an article with two other political scientists proposing that Israel accept "what would probably be the P.L.O.dominated state of Palestine on the West Bank and Gaza Strip" in return for gradual Arab acceptance of Israel's legitimacy...

...Inside the envelope were typed instructions from President Carter (later attributed to Brzezinski by Strauss's aides), ordering him to inform Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat that the United States, in yet another overture to the PLO, intended to amend UN Security Council Resolution 242 by adding a reference to the political " r i g h t s " of the Palestinians...

...As a result, the year-long autonomy talks have become effectively deadlocked, Egyptian-Israeli relations are steadily deteriorating, and...

...As Jeane Kirkpatrick has pointe d out, underlying this conviction are at least two others: that revolutionary movements are the "wave of the future" in the Third World and that the exercise of power will necessarily moderate the leaders of these movements, grad...

...That agreement, it seemed, simply barred the Unked States from recognizing or negotiating with the PLO...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 9 the future of the Egyptian-Israeli treaty grows increasingly uncertain...

...In its attempt to convene a Geneva Conference, however, the new administration was hampered by a legacy from the *The Balfour Declaration, issued by Great Britain in 19171 committed it to the e s t a b l i s h m e n t of a Jewish "national home" in Palestine...

...B ut while the Carter administration's courtship of the PLO cannot possibly secure the friendship Of the Arab world, it has already succeeded in undermining the administration's only significan t foreign policy achievement to d a t e - - t h e Camp David accords...

...Thus, reasoned Saunders and Hansell, the United States could engage in "informal" contacts with the PLO without violating its pledge to Israel...

...Only by "broadening" the Camp David accords to include the PLO, it is a r g u e d , can a "comprehensive s e t t l e - ment" of the Arab-Israeli conflict be achieved...

...The immunity of diplomats is indispensable to the functioning of the international state system and has been the first rule of international relations for millennia...

...That the effort will be resumed with an even greater intensity should Carter be returned to office is a prediction few would g;~insay...

...Professor F'alk, for instance, begins his "explanation" by concluding, regretfully, that it is impossible to find a legal'justification for holding diplomats hostage...

...On March 26, 1979, the American, Israeli, and Egyptian efforts were crowned with success when an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was signed, amid much fanfare, on the White House lawn...

...Europeans, like the good allies they are, *'The PLO regards Hussein's kingdom as no more than eastern Palestine and is pledged to destroy both Israel and Jordan...

...That same day, the United States renewed its courtship of the PLO--a courtship which had been suspended in the wake of Sadat's initiative--when President Carter told an Egyptian journalist several hours before the treaty's signing that the United States would "immediately start working directly" with the PLO once it accepted Resolution 242...

...Here, of course, he is right...

...The PLO replied by denouncing Resolution 242...

...In short, it was a Good Thing...

...Professor Falk acknowledges that the law today is quite as clear as it was in Caesar's time...

...Forced to resign on account of his mendacity, Young became an ardent advocate of closer U.S.-PLO relations...

...The Venice declaration also denounced Israel, endorsed the "legitimate r i g h t s " of the Palestinians, and insisted that the PLO be " a s s o c i a t e d " with ftiture negotiations aimed at resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, but Secretary of State Muskie managed to take these developments in his stride...

...At a press conference in September he stated that if the PLO were to accept Resolution 242 with reservations, "that would suit us okay...

...Whether these states decide to align themselves with the United States depends far more upon what they judge the likely consequence of such an alignment to be...

...Israel did, however, agree that Palestinian Arabs who did not identify themselves as PLO members might attend the conference...

...This Israel refused to do, despite what Foreign Minister Dayan subsequently described as a " b r u t a l " confrontation with Carter...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 7 Kissinger era: an American commitment to Israel not to recognize or negotiate with the PLO until that organization l"ecognized Israel's right to exist...

...Winning over" the PLO is seen by the administration as the key to "winning over" the Arab world, thereby securing vital Western oil supplies from Soviet encroachment...

...But it has not been changed yet, and cannot be changed while international relations are conducted by s t a t e s . All Falk can bring himself to say, and here Ramsey Clark joins him, is that the Muslim fundarr/entalisis led by Khomeini have been so deeply oulraged by the Shah's programs of modernization that they should not be blamed "too much" for taking "extreme" measures in order to win .justice or at least avenge those who in their view have betrayed tradition in lran...

...Is it any wonder, then, that a Kuwaiti newspaper recently argued that American support " i s harmful for those who accept it and those who agree with i t " ? That elements within the Carter administration believe that American recognition of the PLO would somehow restore Arab confidence in the United States only goes to show that the Occidental mind is truly inscrutable...

...These Arab countries, it reasons, would prefer to align themselves more closely with the United States but cannot do so as: long as the United States is not more forthcoming in its policy toward the PLO...

...therefore, he concluded, the lesson had to be made very plain indeed...

...But even for them this has not been easy...

...Speaking in Dallas, he declared: "I think as we let the other Arab entities, the PLO, Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis see the tremendous benefits of the peace betyveen Israel and Egypt, it's going to be much easier to bring them in the process and achieve a comprehensive peace throughout the Middle East...

...To be effective," they reasoned, "a solution must attempt m treat the whole problem and not simply bits of the infection...

...As matters turned out, the entire American effort came to nothing...

...Not so long ago this doctrine was called "appeasement...

...As if to make the process easier still, at the end of March the State Department announced that Shafiq al-Hout, director of the PLO's Beirut office, had been granted a visa for a speaking tour of the United States, despite the fact that American law expressly forbids members of terrorist organizations from entering the country.~ While the United States was thus engaged in sending conciliatory signals to the PLO, Yasir Ararat made it clear that he would not be easily conciliated...

...his s e c r e t police and recourse to assassination...

...Indeed, the United States seemed to move even closer to the PLO in April, when Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders and State Department legal adviser Herbert Hansell informed a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that the United States could " l e g a l l y " have contacts with the PLO under the terms of t h e 1975 U:S.-Israeli memorandum of agreement...

...The initial American reaction to President Sadat's initiative was quite reserved, - if not hostile...

...In August, Vance revised his offer by announcing that if the PLO would merely accept Resolution 242, that in itself would constitute implicit recognition of Israel, thereby justifying American recognition of the PLO...

...In accepting Young's resignation on August 15, President Carter had nothing but high praise for the outgoing ambassador, thereby associating himself, at least" implicitly, with Young's actions...

...Two days later, the President reaffirmed his determination...

...The Egyptians, after all, can hardly afford to appear less pro-Palestinian than the Americans in the current "autonomy" negotiations...

...Our European allies, it was widely reported, had gathered in Venice resolved to torpedo the Camp David accords and to embark on a Middle East initiative of their own, but were stopped dead in their tracks by stern admonitions from the White House...

...Congratulating the Europeans on their restraint, Muskie declared that the Venice declaration in no way contradicted the Camp David accords...

...As Raymond Tanter, Ronald Reagan's perceptive Middle East affairs adviser, accurately put it: "The Syrians don't want a Palestinian state--they think the West Bank, like Lebanon, ought to be p a r t of ' G r e a t e r S y r i a . ' The Egyptians d o n ' t want i t - - they' re sure it would be anti-Egyptian...

...That Muskie should have words of praise for a policy statement whose sole practical significance lies in the added prestige it confers on the terrorist PLO will hardly come as a surprise to close students of recent American foreign policy...

...It would resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, bring stability to the Middle East, and secure the uninterrupted flow of Arab oil...

...Kirkpatrick, "then American Middle East policy undoubtedly ranks as a brilliant success, for that is precisely what it has accomplished...

...Publicly, they applaud it as a f u r t h e r step toward the creation of a Palestinian state...

...Giving the PLO a state, they argued, would prove to be a blessing in disguise for Israel...

...One of the earliest and most influential exponents of American "realism" toward the PLO was Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski...

...ually transforming them from enemies into friends...

...9 / SEPTEMBER 1980 Joseph Shattan JIMMY'S FAVORITE TERRORIST Yasir, that's my baby...

...Instead of inducing the administration to abandon its courtship of the PLO, however, these setbacks have merely confirmed its initial reservations toward the Sadat initiative and have reinforced its determination to involve the PLO in the current negotiations...

...Denouncing the Camp David accords as a "Zionist-imperialist plot against the Palestinian people," Arafat predicted that Sadat would be "struck down," pledged his organization once again to Israel's destruction, and, in one of those flights of hyperbole to which he is prone, vowed to "chop off" President Carter's hands...

...Finally, in early October, the administration turned on Israel, demanding that it accept "low-level" PLO representatives at Geneva...

...On June 13, 1980, American diplomacy appeared to score yet another success...

...13, NO...

...In fact, however, "winning over" the PLO has virtually nothing to do with "winning over" the Arab states along the Persian Gulf...

...have obligingly taken up the slack...

...Despite this, the Carter administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to induce the PLO to endorse Camp David...

...The Europeans, after all, were merely acting on the principle, long acknowledged by the Carter administration, that the best way of dealing with anti-Western movements like the PLO is to win them over by meeting at least some of their demands...

...It is therefore "no coincidence" (as former Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov used to say) that the PLO has stated time and again that it will never participate in negotiations until the United States abandons Camp David...

...True, people like Ramsey Clark and Richard Falk---battle-hardened d e f e n d e r s of Hanoi during the Vietnam war--have tried to muster an "explanation," if not a defense, for the imprisonment of our diplomats...

...Among o t h e r things, they found it difficult to swallow Khomeini's attack on the equality of women...

...the "realistic" position...

...Part of the explanation, no doubt, has to do with the strange conviction on the part of Carter's most influential foreign policy advisers that the demands of radical, antiAmerican movements throughout the Third World--in Iran, Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe no less than in the Middle East--be accommodated wherever possible...

...Over time, however, they had trouble sustaining t h e i r f i r s t opinions...

...He argues only that it is out of date and should be changed...

...8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 Department about a clandestine meeting with Zehdi Terzi, the PLO's UN observer...

...Since the establishment of a Palestinian state was a critical Arab demand, such a state would have to emerge from an overall settlement...

...What remains noteworthy about the entire episode~ however, is the intensity of the administration's effort to involve the PLO in the peacemaking process, an effort in striking accord with the recommendations offered by Brzezinski in 1975 and by the Europeans in 1980...

...nowadays, however, it is known as "realism...

...Egypt's President Sadat, concerned that in its negotiations with the Soviet Union and with radical Arabs the United States was neglecting Egypt's interests, launched his own peace initiative in November, thereby preempting the Geneva Conference...

...The Saudis don't want it--they fear it would become a Middle Eastern Cuba...

...ture...

...These conditions the PLO refused to meet...

...his r e s t o r a t i o n of barbarous punishments...

...As Brzezinski and his coauthors saw it, Kissinger's cautious step-by-step approach would never resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict...

...American policymakers feared that Sadat was about to conclude a separate peace with Israel...

...Indeed, so far as the PLO is concerned, American realism predates Europe's by several years...

...g 0 Q U Q I Q Q i m Q Q 0 Q Q o i 9 I U 6 0 0 I i 0 0 o I o j I w D I Q Q Q I 8 U g o I 0 i 0 m Q I Q m Q Q i o o o Q 0 o O s Q 0 0 g U I 0 0 0 Q I 0 ~ 0 D Q D D 0 0 I 0 0 I i o ~ Q q o D a o i 0 6 o o D D Q D g 0 9 0 e I O I o 0 6 g g Q U I 0 0 I U 0 w I O Q e Q Q g i o O 0 0 U I D Q 0 0 Q ~ o I Eugene V. Rostow RESCUING MISSIONS Whatever the obstacles to rescuing our diplomats in Iran, international law isn't one of them...

...The second incident concerned the President's special Middle East envoy, Robert Strauss...

...And so the circle will at last have been completed: Prodded by the s t r e n u o u s American courtship of the PLO into a more "realistic" posture themselves, the Europeans' flirtation with the PLO will serve as the p r e t e x t for a still more " r e a l i s t i c " American position...

...While the French are probably Europe's leading "realists," their views might never have gained such wide acceptance throughout the rest of Western Europe had it not been for the fact that the United States has also lent its prestig e to Joseph ShaMan L~ a Hoover Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute...

...Were that to happen, they reasoned, the Middle East would be bitterly polarized, and the United States would be forced to choose between Egypt on the one hand and the rest of the Arab world on the other...

...Privately, though, no Arab state actually favors the creation of a new P a l e s t i n i a n state...

...Even the best among them, whose sense of guilt has been honed in a thousand demos, have found it difficult to fit Khomeini's revolution iato the pattern of their convictions...

...The Arab states, particularly Syria, insisted that they would not go to Geneva without the PLO...

...of State for Political Affairs (1966-1969...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ,, VOI...

...On August 16, as his plane was about the leave Washington for Israel, Strauss was handed a sealed envelope...

...Once the election is over and President Carter is safely ensconced in office, administration officials can be relied upon to cite the Venice declaration in favor of more accommodating American policy toward the PLO...