Middle East Update/The PLO

...And when the peace will come it will not be unconditional...

...But here again, there's some value in the analogy we made earlier between the Jewish Agency and the PLO...

...They wanted to preserve and develop and consolidate the state-within-a-state they had developed in Lebanon, so they found it necessary to develop a kind of semi-regular army to fight against the Lebanese militias...

...The issue has become so entrenched in the political configuration of the area, as well as in the political consciousness and existence of the Palestinians that the PLO—or something like it—will continue to exist...

...And every time they turned down one plan, the next plan was less favorable to them, and they looked back with nostalgia to the one they had rejected before, they wanted to get it back...

...I said, "This presupposes that you are prepared to face Egypt in confrontation and war indefinitely...

...And today, part of the division within Fatah has to do with how badly certain commanders fought during the Lebanese war...

...We see today how sorry they are that they did not come into the pre-Sadat initiative negotiations back in 1977...

...And so, regardless of what transmutations it might undergo, there is a function that it fulfills, a necessary function, and the Palestinians will continue to provide support for any organization that fills that function, whether it is the present PLO or its equivalent...

...And once that happens, it is only a matter of time before the process eats up the organization, makes it less and less of a fighting organization...

...It reached the point where after the Baghdad summit they threw $450 million...

...We know that some of the people who adhere to the Begin line have something else in mind, not simply the challenge of building a pluralistic, bi-national democracy...

...it's unavoidable...

...The Palestinians should also know that...

...And in the meantime they will have built so many settlements that the West Bank can't be unscrambled...

...You will wish to resolve it, but may be unable to...

...That regular army was a sitting duck for the Israelis...

...At that point, you'll have in fact a bi-na-tional society and culture and economy and, to a large extent, even polity...

...They would like to take that back today...

...That's how they made their way, that's how they convinced Palestinians in increasing number that here at last was the kind of organization they were looking for...

...There are so many parts to it...

...But if you have that fact it will delay the day the peace will come...

...The pre-Lebanon PLO was, after all, recognized by even more countries than recognized Israel...

...Now, this means that one of the stated purposes of the war—according to Begin, the destruction of the PLO as an effective fighting force— was, in some sense, achieved...

...Except, of course, that the army became an inviting target, first for the Israeli air force and then for the Israeli army...

...It's easier—if avoiding the issue is what you want—to have a rejectionist opponent than a moderate opponent...

...Now, if you're an Israeli hawk, you might argue that the longer you can postpone coming to terms with the issue, the longer you can avoid it, the more chance you'll have to alter the facts on the ground...

...It's also much easier to have an opponent that is not credibly regarded by the other Arab and non-Arab parties, which will be the case now...

...The Palestinians were asked to agree to some fairly reasonable accommodation with the Jews, the Zionists...

...His comments in moment six months or so ago were quite explicit: Israel will have to deal either with the continuing problem of security or with the continuing problem of pluralism, and, as between the two, he prefers the problem of pluralism...

...And the other is also related to the same theme, to the growth in size and scope and ambition of the organization as such...

...Now, if you want to avoid the Palestinian issue, it's much easier to have such a PLO as your opponent, a PLO that cannot be taken quite so seriously as an authentic spokesman for the Palestinians...

...For example, the PLO as it existed before the Lebanon war was potentially much more troublesome for a government such as Begin's than another PLO might be...

...What's not speculative is that if it doesn't, some other will...

...Historically, there's an apparent paradox here...

...It was achieved in a convoluted way, not the way that had been predicted or intended or planned...

...So you may only be creating a problem that will be more complicated to resolve later...

...MIDDLE EAST UPDATE THE PLO NADAV SAFRAN Unlike our conversation of last month, where we were dealing with a straightforward subject—complex, but straightforward—here we need to piece the subject together...

...But there is no escaping coming to terms with the issue it represents...

...It might make a difference to Israel's maneuvers, its tactics, its leeway its elbow room...

...It will take Arafat some time to recoup and to make his PLO more homogeneous, but he still has the best chance of any to lead the group that can command the allegiance of the people in the West Bank...

...There is a possibility— just a possibility—that the split in Fatah might for a while leave Arafat's Fatah a minority, a small organization, maybe not very prestigious, not very powerful, not very significant, but there is a chance that that rump Fatah will become more politically homogeneous and more authentic and more able to follow a consistent policy line...

...For openers, it seems to me that something like the PLO has become necessary...

...If it did not exist, it would have to be invented...

...We are now identifying Arafat's Fatah as possibly,the organization that will fill the function that needs to be filled...

...They affect the attitude of the United States itself—they affect, in other words, the key strategic, indispensable relationship Israel has...

...It will have rid itself of the extremists...

...There will be a few who will do some fighting—but the thousands will live off the fat of the organization...

...Let's look at the Palestinians back then, before Israel's independence...

...The Israelis may find themselves very much in that situation again...

...You have to come to terms with reality, with history...

...I remember discussing it with him...

...In a way, it might be like the split in the Zionist Organization between the Revisionists and the Weiznaannites...

...Their view is that if we have five or ten years, and we establish settlements and strengthen our position in the West Bank, and we witness the provocation that will inevitably accompany the effort, the very process will generate pressure on the Palestinian residents...

...There will be oppression and repression...

...Here there is a partial analogy to the Jewish Agency in Israel's pre-inde-pendence period...

...the Palestinians need it...

...Let's look at the picture from the reverse standpoint...

...But the Zionist Organization eventually grew—because it was responsible, because those who had to deal with the Jews, the outsiders, especially the British, had to deal with it...

...They had their parades, they tried to do it their way, and Weizmann and the Zionist Organization were undoubtedly weakened for a while...

...Now you have a new PLO that will be rejected as authentic even by some of the Arab countries, perhaps by most of them...

...They are not as isolated as the Palestinians in the '30s were...

...Then, the only solution to the Palestinian question will have to be a "perfect solution"—which is no solution...

...Weizmann brought the Zionists to the verge—but then it was Ben-Gurion who played Joshua, who brought them into the land...

...Well, fortunately they didn't build a huge Yamit, because if they had, we wouldn't have peace with Egypt today...

...Once a certain stage of development had been reached by the Yishuv, the British could not, for example, recant on the Balfour Declaration...

...But there's a "however" here, yet another way in which today's approach may turn out to be disastrous later on...

...The present PLO, with the Fatah split, with internecine strife, with the Syrians having made a bid either to dominate the PLO or to split it and dominate a good part of it, looks like good news for Begin and people who think like him...

...If guys get killed in Hebron or in Ramallah, there are repercussions in Saudi Arabia and in the Gulf countries, and these repercussions may not shake Israel up in direct terms, but they shake up third parties who are very important for Israel...

...When the day came, didn't the builders of Yamit and the Israelis who had supported it wish they had never built it...

...Didn't it complicate life and matters...

...That is to say, the solution will have to involve political boundaries that will be merely lines drawn on the map, but no social or economic boundaries...

...They would have one of their summits, and they would throw still another $50 million or $100 million...

...I remember, back in the 1972-73 academic year, I was teaching a seminar on Middle East politics at the Hebrew University, and one of the students presented a paper about the PLO and how it was becoming institutionalized, developing administration, finances and so on...

...One had to take account not only of its military activities, its terrorist activities, but also of the fact that it had achieved a certain standing in the world...

...His reflections on developments in the Middle East, recorded in conversation with moment's editors, appear regularly in these pages...

...They did redeem themselves somewhat by their stand in Beirut, but overall, they took a very bad beating...

...It will be a fact like many other facts they will have to take into account...

...I will build Yamit and if the peace will come it will have to take that into account...

...And that takes us back to where we started...

...These are huge amounts...

...It formulated a consistent policy, and it ended up achieving something—even though the moment of its triumph was also, in a sense, the moment of its downfall...

...The Revisionists split, they left...

...Your chances of safeguarding your fundamental interests are much better if you try to come to terms than if you try to play tricks...

...This seems to me the case with the Palestinians and with the Palestinian issue...

...He said, "No, it doesn't presuppose anything...

...Didn't they wish they hadn't done it...

...I don't mean here only Meir Kahane, who makes no bones about his hopes...

...Arafat can still claim, and is the only one who can, that he represents the people on the ground, in the territories...

...That politicization requires a political organization...

...I take it for granted that while the Saudis may hedge their bets and give some support to the others, they will give Arafat at least enough support to keep him going...

...The bulk of the PLO will, I suppose, fall under the control of the Syrians, and it will not have its own autonomous position, and it will not be seen as the pre-Lebanon PLO was, as an independent representative of the Palestinians...

...They had to come to terms with the Yishuv, and that meant that they had to deal with some Jewish/Zionist organization...

...The conclusion the student proposed was that the PLO had become a truly strong organization...

...The process I'm talking about reached fantastic magnitudes...

...There were two reasons for their effort to develop a regular, or quasi-regular, army: One, when you have the money, you go and buy the stuff...

...So by the time you do have to come to terms, the conditions will have changed in your favor...

...What then...

...I said, "You are assuming that the peace will come and have an absolute momentum and thus it will take into account that fact...

...It might be called "PLO," it might be called something else...

...Now Moshe Arens clearly understands that that's the choice Israel is making...

...The PLO strength had been precisely in hit-and-run ability...

...From an American melting-pot or pluralistic perspective, this may be desirable...

...What the student was describing in his paper was not the emergence of a strong organization, but the beginning of its routin-ization and, broadly speaking, of its corruption...

...His initial conception, you'll recall, was huge—a port city with 200,000 people...

...This, in political-sociological terms, is basically what happened...

...that is a crucial fact to keep in mind...

...And what they really mean is that one way or another, the Palestinians will be pushed out...

...That kind of money corrupted the organization and tempted it irresistably to go in a direction—even militarily—that proved its undoing...

...Suppose, in other words, that the damage that's been done to this PLO means that it will be some years before the Israelis are compelled to face the issue again...

...Some of them will leave, others will be expelled, and basically you will achieve...

...You can't play tricks on reality and on history...

...And there's another element: As long as Arafat had a very mixed organization, he couldn't afford to respond to every Soviet slap, but if he develops a homogeneous organization, he may learn what Sadat learned, that the Soviets can help in war but not in peace, that the path to peace lies through Washington rather than Moscow...

...That won't mean much to a Begin government, but it could mean a great deal for those who want to confront the issue and not avoid it...

...And now you have the bitter disappointment about how quickly the PLO army collapsed...

...The PLO's success as an organization caught up with it...

...The Israelis knocked out that PLO, the PLO as we have known it...

...But they refused...

...Technically, you'll have separate sovereignties, but that won't mean much...

...As of the late '70s, each time there would be a problem with the PLO, whether in Lebanon or elsewhere, me Saudis and the Gulf countries would throw money at it...

...If you have a political agreement beforehand, and a reconciliation, and you gradually adjust to the reality of living together, you may end up having a pluralistic society...

...But from the perspective of nationalists, even classic Zionists, it's hardly the goal that they had in mind...

...To talk more concretely, suppose that through this action the Begin government, or, more generally, the Israeli hawks have gained five years or even ten years...

...That puts a rather different face on the matter of pluralism...

...I wouldn't be surprised if that dynamic were to operate against Israel in connection with the Palestinian question today...

...The strength of the PLO, I argued, was due to its character as a revolutionary movement...

...Arafat and the others were able to take over Shukeiri's PLO because they were genuine grass roots revolutionaries who had gotten off to a new start...

...It had managed to express its views from several sides of its mouth, and it had thereby impressed enough peoples, countries, leaders, that it included a significant moderate element that made it very troublesome for Begin...

...But if you are moving the other way, if you are starting by creating settlements and putting pressure on the Palestinians and some of you are trying to force them out, and there is an ongoing and deliberate effort by some people to force the hand of the government, then what you're going to get is not a pluralistic society but a society in a constant state of civil strife...

...There are other people who have in mind the same thing without stating it as bluntly as Kahane recently did in the New York Times...

...That's necessarily speculative...

...So I, being somewhat contrary, said that in fact the reverse was the case...

...Certainly in retrospect the demands that were made of them seem reasonable...

...Think of the analogy to the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization again...

...But if anyone thinks that they have thereby knocked out the Palestinian national demands, he is kidding himself...

...And the Palestinians are not today isolated...

...But the Israelis did neutralize the PLO...

...They took that money and went and bought tanks and anti-aircraft guns and gun carriers and so on, and tried to develop a regular army...

...I remember when Dayan was cooking the Yamit project...

...This was not a case where some notables had set up an organization under the aegis of Nasser...

...These were guys who rose up through fighting and sacrifice and so on...

...From the point of view of a government such as Begin's, or those who share its views, the nature and character of the political organization that speaks on behalf of the Palestinians Nadav Sqfran is Director of the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University...

...He said, "I don't like to talk about hypothetical situations...

...But this, however, takes us back to my first point...

...What an irony that it is the Revisionists who are leading directly to the bi-national solution...

...The politicization of the Palestinian issue, at least so far as the Palestinians themselves are concerned, has reached the point where it is irreversible...

...The demand and the national consciousness exist, and these will generate another organization...

...might make some difference...

...the euphemism is "an exchange of population...

...You'll recall that when the Yishuv—the term we use to describe the Jewish presence in Palestine before 1948—had reached a certain point, it could no longer be ignored...

...In any case, here we are with the existing PLO very much in flux, and we will have to wait to see whether it can recoup or whether a successor organization will come into being...