My Friend the Enemy by Uri Avnery (Lawrence Hill: $19.95, hardcover; $12.95, paperback; 340 pp.

A month after Israeli tanks rolled north over the Lebanese border in June, 1982, one of their main targets, Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat was hiding in Beirut. Israeli forces occupied half the city and cornered Arafat and thousands of his followers. While the Israelis awaited the final order to finish off the PLO, one Israeli saw an opportunity to turn Arafat’s defeat to his own advantage.

For more than 10 years, Uri Avnery, an Israeli journalist and former member of the Knesset, had been trying to see Arafat to discuss face to face Avnery’s dream of a settlement of the Palestinian issue. Arafat, grateful for any sign that he was still a figure of importance, welcomed Avnery and immediately publicized the meeting. To many Israelis, Avnery had been consorting with the master terrorist at a time when Israel needed support from its citizens. Avnery returned home to cries of “traitor.”

Such criticism from his fellow countrymen is nothing new for Avnery. Born in Germany, he emigrated to Palestine in 1933, joined the Irgun terrorist movement, fought with the Haganah and helped found the Israeli state. He has served three terms in the Knesset and is currently editor in chief of the weekly news magazine Haolam Hazeh (This World). His commitment to Israel is obviously not in doubt. But he also believes that if his country is to survive, there must be long-term peace.

There are many Israelis who would agree with Avnery, but he and they tend to part company when he insists on talking to the PLO. For 20 years, Avnery has made no secret of his courting of the PLO leadership; and to Israelis who believe the organization is synonymous with terrorism, such contacts are difficult to tolerate.

In this book, Avnery recounts in fascinating detail his view of Israel, the Palestinians and possible solutions to a problem that has already caused three wars and, now that Israel is able to make nuclear weapons, could well touch off a much wider conflict.

History, like statistics, is often a matter of interpretation, and many may disagree with Avnery’s assessment of current problems and future solutions. The recent history of Middle East politics has become so enmeshed with today’s propaganda that it is virtually impossible to disentangle fact from fiction, right from wrong. But, as Avnery so convincingly points out, what matters is today’s reality and not yesterday’s debate.

That reality, so clearly set out by Avnery, makes miserable reading. At the heart of this tale lie the two main protagonists, the Israeli government and the leadership of the PLO, the former determined to hold onto conquered territory using the Bible to justify such expansion and the latter wanting to regain land and the status of a nation, which they believe is rightly theirs.

Both sides have brilliantly played the international political arena to their own advantage: The PLO has used blackmail and the propaganda of the refugee camps to gain Arab support and terrorism to gain international attention; the Israelis have played on Western guilt and sympathy for the terrible treatment meted out to Jews in World War II to create a climate where any criticism of Israel is an attack against Jews everywhere.

The allies of both sides, however, have become increasingly impatient at the apparent intransigence of the PLO leadership and Israeli government. Both have become more isolated and more extreme, and prospects for any settlement of the issues dividing them is as distant now as ever.

The new Shamir government in Israel is determined on a policy of expansion on the West Bank that will inevitably result in the forced displacement of thousands of Palestinians. That will only strengthen the hands of the militants in the PLO and result in more terrorism around the world. It is a vicious cycle fueled by a blinkered vision that sees all the PLO as terrorists, all Arab leaders bent on the destruction of the Israeli state and an Israeli government determined on the expulsion of all Palestinians from its territory.

But no Arab leader seriously believes that Israel will ever be removed from a map of the Middle East, and the PLO leadership, from Yasser Arafat down, believes that recognition and talks with Israel are essential and that even the majority of Israelis would welcome a rapprochement that would allow them to live lives outside the oppressive shadow of war.

The question Avnery addresses time and again in his book is: How can the two sides be brought together? The answer is littered with the bodies of moderate Palestinians killed by rivals, of Jews murdered by terrorists and with the good intentions and broken dreams of mediators and politicians from Fahd to Kissinger, Reagan to Brezhnev. All have foundered on the timing of PLO recognition of Israel with Israel’s agreeing to talk to the PLO.

Throughout the constant disappointments, the searching for new solutions, Avnery has clung to the rock of reconciliation. It is a dream that one can only admire, but in this book, he has nothing to offer beyond the old ideal of peace between Jew and Palestinian, the withdrawal of Israel behind pre-1967 borders and the establishment of a Palestinian state.