Letter from Kuwait

...But if Israel can absorb millions of Jews, why can't it repatriate a million Arabs...

...he had no answer to it...

...Though the doctor insisted he too was a socialist he was not convincing, and I had the uneasy feeling that men like Sayegh and Sha'ath were trying to superimpose a leftist doctrine on a constituency that for twenty-three years had thought only in mundane terms of going home...

...There is one millionaire, it is said, for every 230 people...

...In my opinion they have the wrong answer—a Jewish state—but they address themselves to the right problems, the genocide of Jews, the shameful anti-Semitism in so many places, the fraudulent protestations of sympathy from such governments as that of Richard Nixon and Edward Heath...

...Suppose, I said, that the Palestinian liberation army frees your village, what will happen to the forty-five dunams of land that belonged to your late father...

...Yet one got the feeling that he was describing a complex conspiracy, rather than a moving story in which conspiracy was interwoven with the many real tribulations of millions of Jewish people...

...Israel's Premier Golda Meir once told a London journalist that Israel could absorb millions of additional Jews from the Soviet Union and the United States by "building high"—by establishing industries based on skilled labor in skyscraper factories...

...Every war they lose is only a skirmish...

...A scrambled egg cannot be unscrambled...

...However, I wondered as I listened to him whether he could ever convince my doctor friend to accept socialism instead of the homestead to which he was attached...

...One is that this area must no longer be a bastion for Western imperialism which has a great stake in supporting both Arab reaction and Zionism...

...I am sure that if the Kuwaiti started a revolution the sheikhs would fight it with every tank and napalm canister at their command...

...A Zionist Israel can hardly survive by coming to the defense of the Husseins (as it threatened last September) and the Faisals and the sheikhs...

...It would be wise to plan for such an eventuality now, rather than wait for the other shoe to fall...

...Perhaps their organized armies—such as the one in Egypt in 1967—can be defeated once, twice, three times more...

...The professor from Beirut, whose writings on this phase of history are prodigious, related how Zionism had originated in response to pogroms and other persecutions of Jews, how it had tried from 1897 on to use major powers, including Turkey, Britain, and the United States to push the Arabs aside in Palestine, how some of its leaders projected a state under their control that might stretch all the way to the Euphrates...

...He conceded that the Palestinian commandos had been badly hurt, but argued that if the Jews —who used to be considered poor fighters—could become great warriors, the Arabs over a long period would also learn to do as well...

...It disturbed me that the two student groups which had organized the Symposium still clung to the notion of an area-wide "Arab community fighting Zionism," which I thought was about as realistic as speaking of an "American community" made up of Dave Dellinger and Richard Nixon "fighting militarism...

...The liberation of Palestine, he said, was possible only through armed struggle because radical forces in Israel, though they exist, are not strong enough to overthrow Zionism, and because U.N...

...In the third lecture, Nabil Sha'ath, a likable young man, proposed a democratic state as the Palestine of tomorrow, in which Jews, Moslems, and Christians would live together as in any advanced Western community...

...They are the leavening which gives Kuwait its substance, yet, unless they work for the government, they get none of the benefits of the Kuwaiti...

...I was puzzled about the criteria used in extending invitations, especially in selecting the American delegation...

...Four—A few in the American delegation, notably Rabbi Elmer Berger and Norman Dacey, author of How to Avoid Probate, who urged the assemblage to have faith in the American democratic process which would eventually bring the Nixon government to oppose Zionism...

...On making inquiries I learned that the two student groups sponsoring the event considered themselves revolutionary, close in outlook to the al-Fatah Commandos and the Palestine Liberation Organization...

...There were, in addition to Berger and Dacey, four or five professors3 all of whom damned Zionism in erudite historical papers but said nothing on the floor about how to solve the Palestinian problem...

...Sha'ath's speech, while not nearly so polished as those of Khalidi or Sayegh, was nonetheless as compassionate and humanistic a talk as one could ever hope to hear...

...The Palestinian Arab has as much right to come home—whether he left "voluntarily" or because the Mufti of Jerusalem told him to leave or because he became terrified by the massacre of 254 Arabs at Deir Yassin on the night of April 9, 1948—as a Jew had to return to Judengasse in Vienna after the defeat of Hitler...

...Thirty years ago it was a sleepy and unknown feudal society, but in the last fifteen years it has witnessed a remarkable transformation as its sand erupted in gushers of oil...

...But," I insisted," he also has a ten-year old daughter and she doesn't want to go back to Czechoslovakia...

...Yet here they were spending a quarter of a million dollars to pay for a Symposium in which many of the participants were radical and dedicated to guerrilla warfare and revolution...

...Palestine, I am convinced, is not Vietnam...

...And what of the Jew living there now...

...Two—A small group from Egypt, determined to focus on a negotiated pact with Israel...

...The stores are filled with luxury items from the West that can be bought as cheaply as in Paris or Rome because Kuwait has no excise, income, or sales taxes...

...middle-of-the road countries like Iraq, Syria, Egypt...

...the Middle Eastern revolution is as inexorable and as inevitable _as the one in Southeast Asia...

...Should Jerusalem be internationalized...

...Khalidi either left out from his discourse or underplayed the treacheries of Arab reactionaries...

...As I listened to Khalidi and the others, I wondered why there was such overwhelming emphasis on a distant past...

...The latter seemed to be politically diffuse, but it became clear enough that the common denominator involving all the delegates was rejection of Zionism...

...Perhaps it was done for public relations purposes, but the Symposium's composition typified for me the peculiar ambivalence of the Arab camp—a mixed bag of reactionary states like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, and the Gulf sheikhdoms...

...Most of his interpretations, I thought, were accurate...

...Hampered by this unpopular position—at least in that audience—the Communists sat and listened, without bothering to take the floor...

...That's ridiculous," he retorted...

...We were housed in lavish rooms at the Kuwait Sheraton and the Kuwait Hilton, dined (though not wined) at the palaces of sheikhs every evening, and shepherded around with courtesy and decorum...

...A refugee might either be given back his own farm or house, or be accommodated on other land nearby...

...But the Middle Eastern revolution is as inexorable and as inevitable as the one in Southeast Asia...

...Petroleum, exploited mostly by Gulf Oil and Anglo-Persian Oil, has made Kuwait so rich that statistically it boasts the largest per capita income of any nation on earth...

...The major powers and Israel must be required to put together a fund of hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, to make effective repatriation possible...

...Yusuf Sayegh on "The Palestinian Revolution...

...There are in reality only two issues to be dealt with in the Middle East...

...He warned against two extreme strategies, the "innocent" one which holds that the political structure of Israel can be undone quickly ("the imperialists will make Israel much too tough for that to happen"), and the "deterministic" one which claims Israel will come apart automatically...

...If I were a man from the moon just landing in Kuwait, I would never have known from Khalidi's speech that there were such forces as British or American imperialism, intent on dominating the Middle East for strategic reasons and on controlling its incredible petroleum riches...

...His books include "The Counterfeit Revolution/' "Radicalism in America/' and "Poverty: America's Enduring Paradox...

...The group from the United States, it seemed to me, revealed the political confusion of the sponsors...

...The first Symposium had been held in Amman, Jordan, last September...

...blazing radicals like those in Algeria, Libya, and the dozen groups comprising the Palestinian liberation forces...

...Those refugees want nothing more than to "go home...

...Inside the envelope was an invitation on behalf of the Kuwait Graduate Society and the General Union of Palestine Students to attend, with all expenses paid, the Second International Symposium on Palestine...

...They were lectures by outstanding Arab scholars— Walid Khalidi on "Palestine: Historical Background...

...Second, we must insist that our government stop arming the Israeli, Jordanians, and Saudi Arabians, and that the Soviets stop arming Egypt, Syria, Libya, and others...

...But these are, in my view, auxiliary questions easily solved within a broader context...

...Kuwait is a city, and also a state, 6,000 miles square, on the Persian Gulf between Iraq and Saudi Arabia...

...A revolutionary Middle East, on the other hand, will isolate Israel beyond even the power of Washington to save...

...It seems obvious—to me at least—that you cannot build a Jewish state—in which Jews from the diaspora are virtually the only immigrants and are immediately welcomed as citizens—without wanting to, and trying to, push the Arabs out of the country, or at least reducing them to second class citizens...

...There is now a parliament in operation and a small socialist opposition, yet the Emir and his sheikhs run the show with a mixture of paternalism and despotism...

...I asked him if that meant he wanted to expel the Jews from Israel...

...The other is that Israel cannot survive as a Jewish state...

...What bothered me even more was that listening to him one might come away with the impression that the only evil, or at least the biggest evil, in the universe was Zionism...

...Of the 750,000 inhabitants 300,000 are native Kuwaiti who are plied with impressive benefits—they can get sizable loans to build homes, tuition and living expenses from the government to attend almost any university in the world, free schools and kindergartens at home, and earn wages and receive family allowances that make them the best paid in the Arab world...

...These men had little faith in a commando movement that had been badly mauled and was, they said privately, in the process of disintegration...

...Three—A Communist faction from Europe, committed to the old theory of "socialism in one country...

...I've been out of my country for twenty-three years," he said, "and even though I'm making a lot of money I want to go back...

...Finally, we should support all forces in Israel and the Arab world that, mindful of the rights of minorities as well as majorities, seek to transform the Middle East into a democratic and revolutionary society...

...One day, the Arab liberationists will free Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Persian Gulf, and they will drive the other Arab countries still further to the left...

...On the other hand, the right of any Palestinian refugee who wants to return to his home or to an equivalent piece of property must be deemed absolute and unchallengeable...

...It would take an enormous spurt of political education to bring about such an ideological transformation...

...Even so, there is also a sizable middle class earning $6,000 to $50,000 a year, driving new European or American cars (purchased duty-free), living in comfortable air-conditioned homes...

...The hotels—among them the Kuwait Sheraton, and the Kuwait Hilton—are as modern as their counterparts in Chicago, but there is no liquor anywhere, there are no night clubs, and there is no entertainment except for a few coffee houses and cinemas...

...I left Kuwait with some stronger insights than when I arrived, but with no essential modification of what I think an American liberal or radical should do about the Middle East...

...What about her...

...The main support of al-Fatah commandos, as well as commando groups to the left of it, are the refugees...

...A few days later in Paris, speaking to a leader of the Matzpen, a leftist group in Israel and around the world which is opposed to Zionism, I was offered a similar solution to the refugee problem—once there is a socialist Middle East, said the Matzpen official, resettlement is no longer an issue...

...One of its spokesmen was badly heckled when he took the floor...

...Black market whiskey is available—as I found out by attending a private party—and on the outskirts of town there are "gardens" where "dancing girls" perform for the rich Kuwaiti, but these pleasures are not available to the poor and are so restricted as to be inaccessible to most tourists...

...But it is quite another to apologize for a Zionist government which drove or cajoled Arabs from their lands, and which denies them the right to return...

...Should Israel go back to its pre-1967 or pre-1948 borders...

...The next day the doctor told me this question had bothered him all night...

...Kuwait, as I expected, was a fascinating place, and the 300 participants were treated royally...

...Third, during a period of transition, a bi-national state would be a step forward, since it would offer cultural and political guarantees to each people and make it possible to ease off some of the existing bitterness...

...This four-point program skirts a few questions...

...There were people present from as far away as Japan, India, Ceylon, Australia, Finland, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, and the United States...

...There was, of course, more than "one idiot" who made statements about pushing the Israeli into the sea, including some voices heard over Cairo and Damascus radio...

...I want my ten-year-old daughter to see the homeland she has never seen...

...The Palestinians would win, Sayegh said, when they increased the level of attack to the point where it became too threatening for Jews from abroad to migrate to Israel, and when in the face of repeated Israeli setbacks a powerful leftist force would finally emerge in Tel Aviv...

...That, of course, should be given back to me," he answered automatically...

...Should the West Bank and Gaza be forged temporarily into a separate state...

...All of us there, including myself, were already convinced that Zionism was an expansionist force...

...There were, on the left, three members of the Black Panther Party from Algeria who were substituting for El-dridge Cleaver, two Trotskyists and one young New Leftist who were studying at the American University in Beirut, and myself...

...resolution 402 simply perpetuates the status quo before 1967 without resolving the problem of Palestinian nationhood...

...Each year he must dig up a sponsor and renew his living permit...

...Among them were four identifiable groups: One—The majority, opposed to any political settlement or negotiations with Israel so long as it remained a "Jewish" state, and determined to fight with armed force for "decades" if necessary until a revolutionary anti-Zionist movement emerged in Israel with which it could negotiate an agreement for a "democratic non-sectarian state...

...There would be many places where a refugee would be willing to go...

...Sayegh's speech on the strategy of revolution was more pointed...

...No Zionist has ever explained that to my satisfaction...

...We want to live with the Jews in peace...

...and Nabil Sha'ath on "The Palestine of Tomorrow...

...Sayegh insisted that by "liberation" he did not mean merely self-determination for Palestinian Arabs, but for Jews and Christians as well, all living together in a secular democratic state...

...In Vietnam the Provisional Revolutionary Government fights a puppet force under General Thieu which is totally unable to muster nationalist sentiment, which is simply a mercenary contingent of Washington...

...The correct strategy, according to this group, was to force Israel to give up its 1967 territorial gains through diplomatic pressures, and concentrate on building the "progressive" societies, such as Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Algeria, until that time in the future when the Palestinian problem could be dealt with more effectively...

...SIDNEY LENS, journalist and lecturer on national and world affairs, has written for many publications here and abroad...

...The Zionists—despite Premier Golda Meir's endorsement of the Vietnam war, and despite their racist attitude toward Arabs—are a nationalist force with enormous fervor...

...Outsiders, however, have a more difficult time...

...The Arabs are correct when they say that they are weaklings now but that someday, like the Israeli Jews, they will become great warriors...

...Therein, however, was one of the major problems of the Symposium...

...Given the will to establish a non-Zionist state, Sha'ath was sure that this would be only a minor problem...

...The nations of the area would long ago have been forced into a modus vivendi if the two great powers desisted from giving weapons to either side to strengthen their own positions in the Cold War...

...We were talking about revolution, but the bills, we learned, were being paid not by the sponsors but by a conservative government dominated by the ruling Emir and his sheikhs...

...First, it was wrong for Britain and America to give away another people's country to the Zionists, but Israel is there and its citizens must under no circumstances be removed or pushed into the sea...

...Well, he ought to go back to Czechoslovakia where he came from...

...He earns $50,000 a year, owns a fancy 1971 Oldsmobile, vacations in Europe once or twice a year, but feels out of place in Kuwait...

...I decided to accept the invitation...

...The figures are somewhat deceptive, for they lump together the $1,200 a year earnings of unskilled laborers with the $22.4 million salary of the Emir and the millions he and his family earn on a reputed investment of $1.5 billion overseas...

...For instance, the 150,000 Palestinians (few of whom ever lived in refugee camps) must each be sponsored by a native Kuwaiti, and must renew their living permits every year...

...During five days of discussions that ran from nine to nine, with a rest period in the afternoon, there were only three high points...

...In such a Palestine the land would be nationalized—in which case my doctor friend's forty-five dunams would be part of a cooperative—or a commission would resettle refugees as equitably as possible...

...First, because Kuwait—said to be the richest nation on earth—intrigued me, and second, more importantly, because I wanted to hear the Arab side of the Middle East conflict first-hand...

...Despite my basic differences with Zionism, however, Khalidi's speech annoyed me...

...this one was to be on a larger scale—the list of those invited included hundreds of* people from sixty-five countries...

...But Kuwait, despite all this, is no mecca of progressivism...

...The composition of the Symposium also revealed some of its problems...

...It is one thing to empathize with the six million Jews killed by Hitler and with the two and a half million in Israel who are entitled to remain there (especially since the United States, Britain, and other nations refused to make homes for them after the war...

...A Palestinian doctor whom I befriended at the Kuwait Sheraton was probably typical...

...The basic contradiction in the Arab world, Sayegh argued, was between the Arab states which seek "accommodation," thereby selling out the Palestinians, and the Palestinian movement which unequivocally demands the right of self-determination...

...Khalidi and Sha'ath are professors at the American University at Beirut, and Sayegh is an economist with the Palestine Liberation Organization...

...Only one idiot, Ahmad Shoukairi [former head of the Palestine Liberation Organization], made a statement about pushing the Israeli into the sea, and you Americans attribute such ideas to all of us...

...The tone of the country, despite its modern oil industry, is still a hundred years behind the times...

...But apart from that, when I probed further my doctor friend was not quite as clear on the subject as he thought he was...