Why Israel Should Recognize the PLO and Invite Arafat to Jerusalem
ALPHER, JOSEPH
Why Israel Should Recognize the PLO and Invite Arafat to Jerusalem JOSEPH ALPHER "The time has come for the parties of the Right to offer negotiations wxtii any Arab actor that agrees, including...
...It could further the prospects of direct Israeli contact with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf principalities...
...But I will also consider the possibility that the first school of thought may be the better predictor that a constructive dialogue with the PLO is possible...
...Syria's Assad makes no secret of harboring these goals, yet we do not demonize him...
...Indeed, unconditional recognition is the best way to exploit the PLO's essential weaknesses: its extremism, its monopoly on Palestinian leadership, and the poor quality of that leadership...
...9 Ha'aretz, Pesach eve 1988 supplement, "The Uprising...
...King Hussein has reverted to a "fortress Jordan" mentality aimed solely at keeping the Palestinian uprising out of his own realm...
...At the time Rabin sincerely believed that a Palestinian settlement with Jordan was possible...
...If it were, the organization's real lack of flexibility and moderation would soon become evident...
...What frightens Israelis about Arafat is what frightens us about the Palestinians: the intimacy of the threat...
...But not from people like Rabin or Peres...
...The first thing Arafat would do in a democratic Palestinian mini-state would be to throw these Palestinian liberals in jail for sedition...
...Amirav claimed that he and al-Husseini laid out the basic framework for an autonomous Palestinian entity, and that their enterprise had the blessing of both Prime Minister Shamir and Yasir Arafat...
...By offering to talk to anyone— really, anyone—about a realistic peace settlement, we will project both strength and self-assurance...
...In either event, Israel should extend unconditional recognition to the PLO...
...Now, what was unique about the Arab position [was that] policy and design converged on the idea of the destruction of the State of Israel...
...Anwar Sadat, most Israelis acknowledge, did not make peace with us because he approved of our sovereign presence in the Middle East...
...They are not leaders...
...But he said to himself...
...We should do so before, out of pure frustration, the United States tries to give the PLO a constructive role in the peace process, despite our protests...
...In addition, at the last moment, they added a demand that the Israeli Jewish delegation recognize the Palestinian Arabs' "right of return"—to the homes inside Israel they abandoned 40 years ago...
...By preempting an eventual U.S...
...For the more veteran elements in the PLO, however, Palestine is Israel: They insist on returning to their homes in Jaffa, Acre and Ramie...
...See the MOMENT interview with Netanyahu, March 1988, p. 26.— Ed...
...But before we call Arafat's^bluff, however, we must deal with the American commitment not to talk with the PLO...
...In 1982, for example, in an opinion poll Israelis voted Arafat "Satan of the Year" by a 6 to 1 margin over Qadhafi, and 11 to 1 over Khomeini!5 This demonization process has occured under Golda Meir through Menachem Begin and continues under Yitzchak Shamir and Shimon Peres...
...administration will itself seek to integrate the PLO into the peace process, now is the time for Israel to seize the opportunity to unmask and neutralize the one single actor that is most effectively preventing a reasonable Palestinian settlement: the PLO...
...Unconditional Israeli recognition of the PLO is the best tactic Israel can use in its fight against the PLO...
...Israel is now locked in a face-to-face confrontation with the Palestinians that it can win only by political means, not military means...
...it assumes that Israel must maintain at least a strong security presence throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza for the foreseeable future...
...No Iraqis or Jordanians have taken the trouble to write such a document...
...Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet considered a moderate, March 1988s Israel should extend unconditional recognition to the Palestine Liberation Organization as the representative of the Palestinian people—and PLO leader Yasir Arafat should be invited to Jerusalem to negotiate directly with Israel...
...The grand design is to maintain an enlightened Jewish state in security and peace...
...will support direct negotiations (no international conference...
...I leave it to history...
...It was a testing of the wind that, predictably, generated angry Israeli reactions...
...yet knowing this did not keep us from negotiating with him...
...Hence Israel's policy must be to do anything that is practical and useful in order to achieve that grand design, including talking to Yasir Arafat...
...But so would, for example, Syria...
...Like Sadat, our leaders must do it for our sake, not for the sake of the enemy...
...Iraq and the Gulf states became preoccupied with Iran...
...By recognizing it we can either extract from it a reasonable peace, or, more likely, weaken it yet further, to our own advantage...
...8 Yehoshafat Harkabi, "Fateful Choices Before Israel-Strategic Implications of Palestinian Uprising," speech to Brookings Institution, April 11, 1988...
...8 Ze'ev Shiff, the distinguished military editor of Ha'aretz, concurs: "It is impossible to escape [the dilemma] without speaking to the Palestinians, and it is impossible to speak with the Palestinians without the PLO being involved...
...The Egyptians made peace...
...Israeli leaders must dare to take the same kind of psychological quantum leap that Anwar Sadat took in November 1977...
...The PLO remains the Palestinians' leader and political spokesman...
...Moderate politicians and strategists have long advocated conditional Israeli recognition of the PLO—conditional in the sense that Israel will reciprocate only if the PLO recognizes Israel, accepts UN Security Council Resolution 242, and renounces terrorism...
...and it recognizes that evacuation of Israeli settlements from most of these territories is a political impossibility...
...It is the grand design of the United States to see the collapse of the Soviet Union...
...Shultz's legacy to his successor may well be a recommendation to continue to pursue this approach until the world becomes accustomed to the reality of a U.S.-PLO encounter...
...But that is immaterial . . . We have to negotiate with the PLO . . . There is no hope for more moderate elements beside the PLO...
...Once the PLO is unmasked and discredited politically, perhaps Mubarak, Hussein and moderate Palestinians like Seniora and Abu Rahmeh would dare to present and support non-PLO alternatives...
...On the face of it, the demonization of Arafat and the PLO is odd...
...Suppose, however, the unexpected happens—after all, the Middle East is famous for its strategic surprises...
...And most American Jewish supporters of Israel shudder at the thought of unconditional recognition...
...Either he would find excuses not to sit down with us at all, or he would present such extreme demands—right of return, inalienable rights to all of Palestine—that Israel would demonstrate to the world, to its own skeptics, to genuinely moderate but intimidated Palestinians, to King Hussein, to President Mubarak (who now wants to ease the PLO into the peace process) that the PLO is not a potential partner for peace...
...it also remains bent on Israel's elimination...
...Menachem Begin invited Syrian President Hafez Assad—by all accounts an Arab leader with much Jewish (as well as Muslim and Christian) blood on his hands— to follow Anwar Sadat's footsteps to Jerusalem...
...And by placing the onus of a Palestinian stalemate on the Palestinians, Israel would be better able to protect its own vital interests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip...
...that the U.S...
...From a rumored secret meeting between National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Arafat in Algiers in November 1979, to a rumored visit by U.S...
...Recognizing the PLO will also rebuild our image—in the eyes of the world and ourselves...
...The PLO is an umbrella, organization, loosely bringing together a spectrum of Palestinian political opinion...
...Seniora's 1986 survey indicates that half the Palestinians under Israeli occupation support an interim mini-state (Harkabi would argue that they are already distinguishing between policy and grand design...
...But these threatened Arab states refuse to talk to Israel because Jerusalem rejects the PLO route to peace...
...Some advocate unconditional recognition of the PLO in the sincere belief that a dialogue with the PLO can be established, that ultimately this process will generate a moderate and pragmatic Palestinian position, and that this will culminate in a peaceful settlement...
...Even Israelis who have a more extreme Palestinian agenda—such as crowning Arafat in King Hussein's place— should at least want to talk to Arafat to coordinate their efforts...
...overt negotiations with PLO leaders are not...
...Why Israel Should Recognize the PLO and Invite Arafat to Jerusalem JOSEPH ALPHER "The time has come for the parties of the Right to offer negotiations wxtii any Arab actor that agrees, including direct negotiations with the PLO, zuith no preconditions . . . in order to prove to us all that we all aspire to peace and are prepared for any dialogue and any negotiations...
...But once the expressions of good will are over, you ask them about the "right of return," the principle of "armed struggle," and the Palestinians' "inalienable rights" that the PLO keeps talking about, then, at that point, these genuinely liberal Palestinians, open admirers of Israeli democracy, have no answers...
...The current uprising has led many Israelis on the right as well as left to reconsider their position regarding talking to the PLO...
...What if Arafat were to respond favorably to the invitation...
...Over a cup of coffee in a comfortable Tel Aviv suburb, it seems deceptively easy for Arab and Jew to agree on pragmatic solutions: a demilitarized democratic Palestinian mini-state in the West Bank and Gaza, living in economic and political equilibrium with Israel on one side and with Jordan on the other...
...King Hussein institutionalized peaceful coexistence...
...The advocates of unconditional recognition can be divided into two schools of thought...
...officials in Beirut are okay...
...Terrorism takes relatively few lives...
...That consensus is couched in moderate terms for Western consumption, and in extremist terms for Arab eyes and ears...
...Annexation by Israel would run headlong into the demographic issue: If the Palestinians stay, disenfranchised, Israel "becomes a South Africa...
...6 Mohammed Shadid and Rick Seltzer, "Political Attitudes of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," Middle East Journal, Vol...
...Many Israelis prefer retaining territories to making peace with anyone, and particularly with the Palestinians via the PLO...
...9 Some very distinguished Israelis, including many on the right, agree...
...they call them theirs...
...But Israel and the United States remain contractually committed to boycotting it, with diminishing effectiveness.7 Thus the parties interested in a pragmatic compromise solution to the conflict—the United States, Israel, Egypt and Jordan—have remained locked in a stalemate situation of Israel's making, created by the commitment Rabin managed to obtain from Kissinger...
...It started with Egypt, it spinned [sic] over to the other parts of the Arab world, including the PLO...
...We must offer to talk to the PLO because, unlike Hitler or Assad, the PLO is weak, stateless, and riven with dissension...
...And they mean it...
...Israeli leaders must dare to take the same kind of psychological quantum leap that Anwar Sadat took in November 1977, when he flew to Jerusalem...
...The intifada essentially localized—communalized—the conflict, and transformed it into a confined fight between Palestinians and Jews over the same land...
...The odds are extremely high that the PLO will prove incapable of responding to an Israeli invitation with any sort of pragmatic compromise proposals that might form a platform for discussion...
...If Israel recognizes the PLO, the Saudis might well regard this as a big step in the right direction...
...Even though more than 30 percent of Israelis are prepared to talk with Arafat unconditionally,4 the majority are not...
...Although we have demonized Arafat and the PLO, the Palestinians, more than any other Arabs, manifesdy lack Hitlerian capabilities...
...There will be no alternative...
...We must acknowledge this complex of ours...
...It was widely quoted in Israel as symbolizing a more aggressive Palestinian readiness to acknowledge extremist positions toward Israel under the influence of the uprising...
...Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states finance the PLO because they fear Palestinian subversion...
...One of the most articulate spokesmen for this viewpoint is Professor Yehoshafat Harkabi of Hebrew University, a former director of military intelligence for the Israel Defense Forces, who bases his hopes on the assertion that parties in conflict must ultimately make a critical distinction between grand design and policy: For instance, it seems to me that the grand design of the Soviet Union is to destroy the West...
...A mid-1986 opinion survey carried out by Hanna Seniora himself, together with American associates,6 clearly demonstrated that most Palestinians wanted Israel to disappear...
...It is Arafat himself who represents the mainstream viewpoint of Palestinians under Israeli rule...
...Israel has demonked Arafat and the PLO...
...Sadat continued to . . . consider that the world would be nicer [without] a Jewish state...
...Adherents of this approach are mostly on the Israeli left and center, as they implicitly accept the necessity of relinquishing territories...
...The PLO's weakness stems from the infighting that this range of opinion engenders...
...Nearly 80 percent of the Palestinians under Israeli rule favored a solution in which a "democratic Palestinian state [would exist] in all of Palestine...
...42, no...
...Autonomy imposed by Israel—a unilateral withdrawal from some of the territories— proposed from time to time by both left and right in Israel, is liable to produce a spontaneous declaration of Palestinian independence which the UN would immediately recognize, and Syria and Ira^i would rush to support...
...It seems highly doubtful that Arafat has changed his views since then...
...Some Israeli students of Arab affairs, buttressed by Arab moderates, profess to detect a genuine movement, however hesitant, toward accommodation among a growing faction of the PLO...
...It is therefore more likely that any PLO negotiating team would choose to retreat into "safe" intransigence—even assuming they decided to attend the negotiations...
...See also the author's "Why Begin Should Invite Arafat to Jerusalem," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1982...
...After all, terrorism does not pose a * It is also favored by Israel's former UN Ambassador and Likud rising star Benjamin Netanyahu...
...What if Arafat were to respond favorably to the invitation...
...it is not the policy...
...relations, or the frustrations of George Shultz and his successors in searching for a peace formula in the Middle East cause Washington to abrogate the commitment...
...1 Nikuda (the monthly organ of the Judea, Samaria and Gaza settlement movement), April 1988...
...Labor's "Jordanian option" is dead...
...But before considering these varying scenarios, we need to ask why speaking to the PLO is anathema to so many Israelis and their supporters abroad...
...The advocates of this position have, they say, considerable evidence of the potential for Palestinian moderation...
...Rather, he decided for reasons of realpolitik to come to terms with it...
...Typically, after disclosure Shamir disowned Amirav and rode him out of the party...
...We have allowed our demonization of Arafat and the PLO to give him a victory of sorts: Our horror at sitting down and negotiating with him is objectively inexplicable unless we are truly cowed by the psychological threat he poses to our right to live where we live...
...the State Department would be prepared to pay a heavy price for the ability to deal with the Arab states and the Soviet Union, free of the commitment not to talk to the PLO...
...We must disarm the PLO politically...
...If they do not, an Israeli government would be far more justified in the eyes of its own people and the world at large in invoking far-reaching unilateral measures to decide the future of the West Bank and Gaza...
...has been suspected of circumscribing its commitment to Israel with a long list of casuistic distinctions...
...Perhaps then we could pave the way for pursuing approaches to the Palestinian question that protect our vital interests...
...Even after Abu-Jihad's assassination in April 1988 PLO ideologue Khaled al-Hassan reiterated, in the course of the PLO's subsequent rapprochement with extremist Syria, his belief in a "two state solution" (i.e., Palestine alongside, not instead of, Israel...
...This mistrust is propelled by a long history of regional Arab rivalries, and by moderate Arab fears both of the PLO's radical tendencies and its collaboration with Islamic extremist elements...
...And face-to-face negotiations with the PLO, without the pressures of an international conference and with prenegotiated U.S...
...Nothing symbolizes this sentiment better than the PLO's attempt in February 1988 to send an "Exodus" ship to Israel carrying refugees whose exile dates back to 1948 and whose "return" can only be to long-abandoned homes in Jaffa and Haifa...
...Only the fact that these Arab countries, for a variety of reasons, are not now in active confrontation with Israel has prevented a war...
...Some PLO leaders may indeed yearn for a compromise settlement that allows them to live in peace beside a secure Israel...
...backing and guarantees for Israel's position, offer the best circumstances possible for Israel to attain peace while not conceding its security...
...1, Winter 19*88...
...Tsvi Tsameret, Jewish right-wing settler, director of Ben-^vi Institute, Efrat, Judea, April 19881 "The Palestinians expect a move from Israel...
...Finally, in March 1988 Secretary Shultz met with Palestine National Council members Edward Said and Ibrahim Abu Loghud, neither of whom, incidentally, approaches Seniora or Abu Rahmeh in terms of moderation...
...The researchers concluded that a "consensus exists among Palestinians that they need their own state, that eventually a Palestinian state in all of Palestine should be created, and that UN Resolution 242 is not a sufficient basis for peace...
...Get out of our land...
...If indeed there is a chance that unconditional Israeli recognition would produce a forthcoming attitude on the part of the PLO, then we would, for the first time in 40 years, confront the possibility of a genuine Israeli-Palestinian settlement...
...All in all, then, Israeli recognition of the PLO would enhance Israel's position internationally...
...Arafat and his associates have been telling leftist Israelis and Western diplomats and journalists for years that they are prepared to moderate their principles once they face off with Israel in a negotiating situation...
...Shultz's meeting with Said and Abu Loghud was clearly a step in this direction...
...will support Israel's negotiating position on such key issues as a genuinely transitional autonomy stage, demilitarization and the future of Jewish settlements...
...This translation is from the Jerusalem Post...
...Obviously, this course presents considerable risks to Israel...
...No Egyptian ever did that...
...move in this direction, the Israeli initiative would strengthen the foundations of the Israeli-U.S...
...Most recently, in 1987, a mid-level Herut Party stalwart, Moshe Amirav, developed a dialogue with the PLO's leading representative in the territories, Faisal al-Husseini...
...Ultimately, the intifada, coupled with the Shultz initiative that left out the PLO, led the PLO full circle, back to Damascus and reunification with the most extreme Palestinian and Arab elements...
...Demonizing Arafat and the PLO may be understandable and psychologically congenial...
...it is the source of our demonization of Arafat and our fear of the Palestinians...
...indeed, Arafat would probably refuse even to attend...
...I consider the PLO an ugly organization...
...During the last 10 years a growing roster of Arab countries gradually withdrew from active confrontation with Israel...
...it is not the policy of the Soviet Union...
...Jordan is an obvious target of Palestinian subversion—so it was in the past, so it will be in the future...
...Paradoxically enough, the PLO is to a great extent mistrusted by those same Arab states that so ardently press its case in international forums...
...In 1975, then-Prime Minister Rabin extracted from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger a commitment not to negotiate with the PLO unless it recognized Israel's right to exist, accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242, and renounced terrorism...
...3 Darwish's poem first appeared in an Arabic language weekly in Paris in late March 1988...
...The PLO Covenant denies our existence as a people...
...relationship...
...transfer" them out and Israel becomes . . . The combined opposition of half of Israeli Jewry, and the United States, to these "solutions" would prevent any Israeli government from adopting any of them...
...Its leaders, put to the test, would have to make an agonizing choice...
...But as a result of the conflict they started differentiating between grand design and policy, and that brought Sadat to Jerusalem...
...I'm ready to make peace...
...genuine physical danger to Israel in the way that Nasser was perceived to have done, or that Assad's missiles and chemical warheads or Khomeini's Islamic legions might...
...Indeed, the intifada has probably strengthened the PLO in its belief that its strategic situation should be viewed in the mold of Vietnam, or the Crusades: Eventually steadfastness and absolute dedication will force the "foreigners" to leave...
...That is why it is so unlikely that unconditional recognition of the PLO and an invitation to negotiate would lead the PLO to take a realistic, pragmatic position, even in the event it did agree to sit down and talk...
...Syria openly claims for itself the territory of Palestine and backs most steadfastly only its own loyal Palestinian factions—Saiqa and Ahmad Jibril's PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Council...
...The Saudis may be ready to improve contacts with Israel, but they have to ensure that their Palestinian flank is covered and their conscience is clear...
...Taken as a whole, the PLO leadership cannot possibly put its cards on the table in a negotiating situation with Israel without sharply antagonizing some of its own factions as well as some of its backers in the Arab world...
...between Israel and the PLO...
...This spectrum ranges from independents and some elements in Arafat's Fatah who, at times, state or imply, either for cynical or sincere reasons, that they would be prepared to live in a small Palestinian state next to Israel, all the way to Marxists and maximalists who openly advocate not only Israel's destruction but a restructuring of the entire Arab world in the image of South Yemen...
...They refer their Israeli interlocutors to their leader, Arafat, for answers—Arafat who cannot even bring himself to mouth a single, coherent expression of genuine recognition of Israel, let alone forgo the "right of return...
...The second school of thought—and this includes rightists as well as leftists—advocates recognition of the PLO as a means of restoring Israel to its pre-1967 image—relentlessly pursuing every avenue of peace, attempting in every way to clear the political air, and stirring the Middle East political pot precisely by showing all parties to the conflict that the PLO—perhaps, indeed, the Palestinian people—is incapable of acting rationally toward developing some mode of peaceful coexistence with a sovereign Israel...
...There is little doubt that Arafat would like to eliminate Israel and Israelis...
...The intifada itself has revealed the paralysis that overtakes Palestinians when they are asked to assume a leadership role and commit themselves to moderation...
...Give us just a military band to welcome official guests at the airport," say the moderate Palestinian spokesmen...
...By taking pressure off Egypt, Jordan and other pro-Western Arab states, Israel would further the peace process...
...It continues to maintain a 100-year tradition of bad Palestinian leadership and missed opportunities...
...A superpower is being held ransom by a regional power over an issue of untold sensitivity and importance for the superpower in its regional relations...
...Ben-Gurion regularly urged Egypt's Nasser to negotiate, even though Nasser repeatedly expressed his desire to destroy Israel...
...Israel will not and cannot abandon this grand design even if Arafat, and other Arabs, reject it...
...But recently persuasive advocates of unconditional recognition have begun to emerge...
...The time to take this step is now—today...
...Paradoxical though it may seem, unconditional Israeli recognition of the PLO is the best tactic Israel can use in its fight against the PLO and all it stands for...
...4\But the Sadat initiative showed how quickly most Israelis will rally to the cause of peace, and make concessions, when they perceive a genuine chance to negotiate with a sincere partner...
...Its strength lies in its ability to downplay this diversity and to present an apparent consensus stance to the world...
...only a few dare voice this opinion, however...
...Herein lies a trump card for Israel: Israel should negotiate with the United States for cancellation of the 1975 commitment...
...Since then, the Jordanian option has melted away...
...Israel should negotiate with the United States for the cancellation of the 1975 commitment not to talk to the PLO...
...A more recent survey, by the Israeli leftist weekly Koteret Rashit in March 1988, confirmed this view...
...No conditions or qualifications should be attached to this act of recognition and invitation to negotiate—but neither should they imply any concessions on Israel's part...
...This is an aggressive political move that even those on the right should support...
...In other cases, whenever Israel saw a pragmatic opportunity, she willingly talked with her most resolute enemies...
...On the one hand, "unavoidable social encounters" with PLO members and contacts aimed at securing the lives of U.S...
...It would be a diplomatic and strategic breakthrough that reflects—in Harkabi's terminology—a confluence oflsraeli grand design and policy...
...My own view is that it is very unlikely that an open political confrontation with the PLO will produce a constructive dialogue, but it will "clear the air"—and redound to Israel's security advantage...
...Israelis voted him "Satan of the Year...
...However I don't believe that the Arab position will moderate without Israeli assistance . . . Sadat came because he was sure that his moderating his position would be rewarded . . . I'm not in love with the PLO...
...If they actually took a stand, the PLO itself would probably disintegrate and the personal safety of the negotiators would be threatened...
...Had the intifada happened 10 years ago, it would have plunged the Middle East into a major Arab-Israeli war...
...Perhaps Israel could even negotiate the future of American aid to Israel...
...The "right of return" to their homes inside the Green Line and the principle of "armed struggle" (that is, the negation of any political compromise) are only two of the key verbal obstacles that obfuscate dialogue with even moderate Palestinians...
...It is only a matter of time until the vicissitudes of Soviet-U.S...
...Some of them are even on the right side of the political spectrum...
...Nor is any form of autonomy, Likud-style, a viable option, simply because there is not a single Palestinian who will openly collaborate in this effort...
...Unfortunately, the Palestinian people seem incapable of producing better leaders...
...Anguish over the intifada has moved Israelis of all persuasions to seek out people like Hanna Seniora, editor of the east Jerusalem daily Al Fajr, and Fayez Abu Rahmeh, a prominent Gazan lawyer, who express moderate views in Washington, Jerusalem and Amman with equal facility...
...It allows us to conceive of the PLO threat as Hitlerian in scope—absolute, a monstrous existential danger...
...Secretary of State George Shultz's recent proposals for an international peace conference ran out of steam essentially because no one could agree on the nature of Palestinian representation...
...They want our land, our homes...
...Harkabi has formulated these ideas in numerous speeches and publications...
...Egypt's sense of responsibility for Palestine's fate did not prevent it from making a separate peace with Israel, and, in late April 1988, when the PLO effected a reconciliation with Syria, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak denounced it...
...Once the PLO is unmasked and discredited politically, perhaps Mubarak, Hussein and moderate Palestinians would dare to support nonPLO alternatives...
...And, however grudgingly, virtually everyone now recognizes the PLO as the leader of the Palestinians...
...The truth is that, from the American point of view, the 1975 commitment is grating and galling...
...A subconscious link exists in the minds of Israelis—leaders and rank-and-file alike—between the Holocaust past and the Palestinian present...
...Israeli recognition of the PLO might also provide other collateral benefits...
...Other ideas for solutions are all nonstarters...
...This commitment has never been totally upheld by either party...
...If assassinating Abu-Jihad fits into the grand design, so should talking to Yasir Arafat...
...Whether or not the Israeli optimists are correct in asserting that the PLO will respond in kind to recognition and an invitation to negotiate (and I believe they are wrong), recognizing the PLO outright is a bold new policy option that Israeli leaders, right and left, should consider...
...they have no Arab followers to speak of...
...The invasion of Lebanon in 1982 taught Israel that force could disarm the PLO militarily—but could not defeat it politically...
...Ambassador to the UN Vernon Walters at PLO headquarters in Tunis in March 1988, the U.S...
...5 This statistic is cited, along with several other arguments mustered here, in the author's "From Wagner to Arafat: Demonology and Survival," Jerusalem Quarterly 33, Fall 1984, reprinted in MOMENT May 1985...
...Only 17 percent favored a "Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip" (although fully half backed this measure as an interim solution...
...More recently, both Labor and Likud's preferred political solutions to the Palestinian issue have proven unworkable...
...Moreover, clandestinely and quietly, all recent Israeli leaders have talked to the PLO— whether discussing prisoner exchanges, arranging a ceasefire in Lebanon in 1981, or sounding out West Bank personalities associated with the PLO concerning their impressions of the PLO leadership's positions...
...2 Jerusalem Post Magazine interview, Friday, January 29, 1988...
...This is because Israel has literally demonized Arafat and the PLO...
...Suppose we Israelis called his bluff...
...The verbal calisthenics involved in maintaining this image—Arafat will make conciliatory remarks to a Western interlocutor one day, and issue violent denials to the Arab press the next—are workable as long as the PLO is not called on to take a genuine negotiating stand or even to show up for negotiations...
...The intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began last December, changed the nature of the Arab-Israel confrontation...
...Any fairly robust society, it would seem, can successfully oppose or control it...
...In March 1988, a group of left-wing Israeli Jews met with Israeli and Palestinian Arabs to draw up a charter of coexistence based on the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza...
...In March 1982, Arafat told an American TV interviewer that to recognize Israel as Sadat had done would be tantamount to suicide on his part—"the people" would never forgive him...
...Shamir, even Sharon, are consistent...
...and that the U.S...
...Arafat denied all...
...Lebanon collapsed...
...It is preferable to negotiate with such people...
...It acknowledges that the PLO and its leadership are for the most part extremist terrorists bent on Israel's total destruction...
...The sum total of these contradictions is a delicate equilibrium...
...Although it was difficult to predict in advance when the conflict would reach this local stage, it had long been coming...
...give the Palestinians rights and Israel "becomes a Lebanon...
...And the PLO, despite endless setbacks, consistently succeeds in preventing other possible spokesmen, such as Jordanians or moderate West Bankers, from representing the Palestinians in a negotiating process...
...By placing the onus of a stalemate on the Palestinians, Israel would enhance its position internationally...
...So, in a way, did Arafat in April when he rejected the call by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to recognize Israel and its security needs...
...7 Abba Eban, who helped draft the 1975 memorandum of understanding regarding the PLO, recently became the first major Israeli political figure to recognize that it "was a mistake by Kissinger and by us...
...Quoted in Ha'areU, April 1, 1988...
...Then came the intifada, which brought the conflict home in a way unknown to Israelis since 1948...
...The Arafat-Hitler comparison is in fact a favorite with many Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.* And of course one does not offer to talk with Hitler...
...In return, Israel should seek to obtain an agreement from Washington that Israel, not the United States, will approach the PLO...
...From the viewpoint of Israeli politics, this proposal is more hawkish than dovish...
...Given the need for political movement on the Arab-Israel dispute, and the possibility that a new U.S...
...The only factor that may keep a new administration in Washington from moving more openly toward abrogation is Israeli, and American Jewish, ire...
...4 Akiva Eldar, Ha'arelz, March 24, 1988, citing survey results...
...Tediot Aharonol, March 21, 1988, report from Brussels...
...indeed, we tend to admire his cunning and tenacity as a national leader, albeit an enemy...
...They are already in the same strategic boat as Israel because of the Iranian fundamentalist threat to the Middle East...
...When it came time to sign, the Arabs refused...
...But here the parallel ends...
...Ibrahim Souss, PLO Paris Bureau Chief, January 19882 "live where you wish' but do not live among us It is time for you to get out...
Vol. 13 • July 1988 • No. 5
