Peace Bid After Jordan Move : Implicit PLO Recognition of Israel Seen as Possible

The leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, groping for a way to meet the challenge posed by Jordan’s withdrawal from the West Bank, is trying to draft a formal peace proposal that will at least implicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist, PLO officials say.

Pending the resolution of some formidable technical difficulties, it has also tentatively agreed to form a “government in exile” after a meeting planned for next month of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s highest policy-making body, the officials said.

Both moves, if they come about, would represent an attempt by the PLO to move into the political vacuum created when Jordan’s King Hussein announced July 31 that he was severing his nation’s financial and administrative ties to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and turning those responsibilities over to the PLO in its capacity as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

“The king has given us a challenge he doesn’t think we can meet,” a senior Palestinian source said, summarizing the view of the PLO leadership. “We have enough problems now that we don’t want more with Jordan, but we have no alternative but to try to meet the challenge in a constructive way.”

The PLO’s peace proposal, to be drawn in part from a controversial document circulated earlier this summer by Bassam abu Sharif, a top aide to PLO leader Yasser Arafat, will be debated at the emergency session of the Palestine National Council, PLO sources said.

If approved, it will be formally announced by Arafat at the United Nations later next month, the sources added.

“The timing is very important. We want to have this made public before the Israeli elections” in November, a senior PLO official said.

Two-State Solution

He declined to divulge the details of the plan, indicating that they were still being formulated in the PLO’s secret councils. However, its basic idea, he said, will be a two-state solution, recognizing Israel’s right to exist in return for the right to set up an independent Palestinian state on territory to be evacuated by the Israelis.

This was also the solution proposed in the Abu Sharif document, which stirred interest in the West and controversy within the PLO when it was published in a PLO dossier at an Arab summit conference in Algiers in June.

Although the two-state solution is not, in itself, a new PLO proposal, the Abu Sharif plan was considered noteworthy for its extremely moderate tone and for the way in which it knit this and several other ideas together into a coherent whole.

Direct Talks Endorsed

Seeking to allay Israeli fears that an international peace conference, as proposed by Arab states, would put undue pressure on the Jewish state, the Abu Sharif plan endorsed direct talks as the key to any Arab-Israeli settlement.

“The Palestinians would be deluding themselves if they thought their problems with the Israelis can be solved in negotiations with non-Israelis,” it said.

Besides proposing direct talks, which Israel has said it favors, the plan calls for internationally guaranteed security arrangements for both parties and a “brief, mutually acceptable transitional period” before independence. It also challenges Israel to agree to an internationally supervised referendum in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It said the PLO would step aside should the Palestinians in the occupied territories freely elect an alternative leadership to represent them.

The Abu Sharif plan generated much controversy within the PLO when it was unveiled. Radical Palestinian groups allied with Syria denounced it as heresy, and even those closer to the mainstream disassociated themselves from much of its contents.

A fierce debate over the plan had been expected to dominate last week’s meeting of the PLO Executive Committee, the organization’s highest authority, in Baghdad, Iraq, but the Jordanian announcement severing ties with the West Bank relegated the issue to the background. However, the plan had already met with enough opposition for Arafat, who had approved its publication in Algiers, to shy away from publicly endorsing it.

‘Trial Balloon Punctured’

“Arafat realized he was fighting a losing battle and backed down,” a PLO source who attended the meeting said. “It was a trial balloon that too many people punctured.”

The source said the plan to be submitted to the Palestine National Council would be based on the Abu Sharif proposals, but with “modifications” to reflect some of the radicals’ objections.

He said it would, for instance, most likely call for a two-state solution based on the United Nations’ 1947 partition plan for Palestine. Under that plan, part of what is now northern Israel would be included in a Palestinian state, and the city of Jerusalem, which Israel has claimed for its capital, would be internationalized.

This source and others concede that they have no expectations of the plan’s being accepted by Israel, which still refuses to negotiate with the PLO under any circumstances and adamantly rejects the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

However, they suggested that the real point is not to engineer a breakthrough in the peace process but to show, in one official’s words, that “the PLO is capable of shouldering its responsibilities towards the Palestinian people” in the wake of Hussein’s decision to disengage from the territories.

‘Just an Opening Position’

As for the 1947 solution, the source said, it is “just an opening position” reflecting the consensus in Baghdad that “when you bargain, you have to start by asking for more than you can get.”

Even more important, the plan is meant to be a response to the expectations of the Palestinians leading the intifada, the eight-month-old revolt against Israeli occupation and rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The pressure on the PLO to do something constructive was augmented by Hussein who, in ceding his responsibility for the West Bank to the PLO, was also challenging its leadership to assume them. But the real source of this pressure has been the intifada itself. For months now, its leaders have been waiting in vain for the PLO to transform their accomplishments and sacrifices into political gain. Now, they are showing signs of restlessness and increasing impatience.

The underground leadership of the intifada recently served notice that it may issue its own “declaration of independence” in the occupied territories. It said it would consult first with the PLO, but the implication seemed to be that it would not wait too long for the outside leadership’s views before acting on its own.

Double-Edged Sword

Emanating from the territories, like the uprising itself, this kind of initiative underscores the fact that, for the PLO, the intifada has become a double-edged sword, observers note.

On the one hand, it has enhanced the PLO’s stature by demonstrating that the demand for statehood is not something advocated only by a small clique of “terrorists” scattered throughout the capitals of the Arab world but rather is the overwhelming desire of most of the 1.5 million Palestinians living under Israeli rule.

On the other hand, it has also narrowed the PLO’s already limited options by ruling out--as King Hussein himself has effectively admitted--the only alternative that the United States and some Israelis saw as a practical solution, namely, a confederation with Jordan. Moreover, it forces the PLO, divided internally and preoccupied until now with factional politics, to wake up to the fact that it has a real, politically conscious constituency whose support it must work to keep.

This could turn out to be a mixed blessing. Although it makes more moderate and potentially acceptable solutions such as a confederation with Jordan more difficult to espouse, it also rules out the more extremist views of radicals who insist that the “liberation of Palestine” be an all-or-nothing proposition.

‘Pressure Is on PLO’

“The pressure now is on the PLO to unify and to show that it can be an effective leadership,” one Palestinian source said. “If we fail to do this, then the intifada , which has its own dynamics, will get away from us.”

Within the PLO, this pressure has also led to the most serious discussion in years on finally forming a government in exile, Palestinian sources said.

Moderate Arab governments have long been urging the PLO to take this step, both as a means of winning wider recognition for itself and, more important though never explicitly stated, as a way of obliging it to put its divided house in order and adopt more responsible and realistic policies toward peace negotiations with Israel.

Until now, however, the divisions have always been too great, the practical obstacles too many and the prospects of peace too remote for this to be considered a serious option. PLO unity, to the extent it exists at all, has been based on an agreement to disagree among the organization’s disparate factions. And, like an elaborately balanced house of cards, that agreement was always considered too delicate to tamper with.

But at the PLO Executive Committee meeting in Baghdad “there was for the first time a consensus that the time has come for a government in exile,” one participant said. “There were differences in the degree of enthusiasm, with some people pointing out the difficulties. But there was also fundamental agreement that, whatever the difficulties, this has to be done now,” the source said.

Arafat Remains the Key

Although forming a government is certain to touch off another of the PLO’s periodic struggles for power and influence among the competing factions, there is also a consensus that, whatever the outcome, Arafat will have to be at the center of it.

“He will have to remain the key figure,” one source, who is considerably to the left of the chairman, acknowledged.

According to this source, Arafat hopes that the creation of a government in exile may even pave the way for a rapprochement of sorts with Jordan.

At the moment, Arafat cannot afford to give the impression of weakness that an attempt to patch things up with Jordan, by “running back to the king,” would convey, the source said. “But if we can form a government, if we can show we are capable of shouldering our responsibilities, then we can approach Hussein again and say, ‘Let’s coordinate as partners and equals,’ ” the source added.

The fallout from the king’s decision to withdraw from the West Bank will need a lot more time to settle before that can happen, the source conceded.

For now, both sides are saying that the idea of a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to a hypothetical peace conference is dead. Jordan is insisting that it will never agree to speak for the Palestinians, and the PLO is insisting that it will never allow Jordan to front for it in negotiations with Israel.

This situation may sound bleak, but if so, it is useful to remember that, in the political language of the Middle East, “never” has never really meant “never.”

Jordan’s King Hussein met with PLO envoys in Amman to discuss the West Bank. Page 15.