Listen to the Palestinians: PLO Is the Reality

There is a persistent illusion about the Middle East--one that people there never say what they mean.

Thus when King Hussein earlier this month severed links between Jordan and the West Bank, placing responsibility for negotiating an end to Israel’s occupation on the shoulders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, numerous voices argued that this was only a tactical ploy by the king to force the PLO and the Arab world to come crawling back to him to negotiate with Israel for them.

In this case the illusion was born of other, more profound, illusions. Key among these has been the notion cherished by Israel’s Labor Party and successive U.S. Administrations that a weak, pliable Jordan could be made to stand in for the fiercely nation-alist Palestinians, represented by the PLO.

Hussein has long argued that he cannot and will not play such a role. But most in Jerusalem and Washington refused to listen. The king has not renounced a role west of the River Jordan because he does not want to play it. He has tried to do so on many occasions since 1967. But in each case he was stymied by the intransigence of Israel, which would not give him back enough of the occupied territories for him to sell a binding peace treaty to the Palestinian and Arab constituencies that would have had to be satisfied by such a Jordanian-Israeli deal.

Realizing that he could not go it alone, the king grudgingly accepted the need to coordinate with the PLO, which could provide the legitimacy to make a less-than-ideal peace with Israel palatable to these same constituencies. This was the genesis of the PLO-Jordan tractates of 1983 to 1986, which ultimately floundered on the hostility of the United States and Israel to the PLO. Hussein’s recent moves are the logical response to both the failure of every one of his attempts to negotiate with Israel and to the uprising in the occupied territories, whose revolutionary potential he fully comprehends.

What all this means is that whether Israel and the United States like it or not, there is nobody to negotiate with except the Palestinians themselves. The king, who has no love for the PLO, has thrown the ball into its court, perhaps expecting that it will fail to pass it on. This may or may not happen, and a meeting of the Palestinian National Council, which will probably be held within a month, will determine whether the PLO is able to put together a credible political initiative that will put the ball in the American-Israeli court.

Such an initiative may involve the formation of a government-in-exile after a unilateral declaration of independence and a request for U.N. trusteeship over the occupied territories until the Palestinians can exercise their right to self-determination. It would have little effect, since any new government would be dominated by the same politicians who lead the PLO; Israel will refuse to allow the Palestinians to exercise their independence, and Washington will prevent any constructive U.N. action. But if the Palestinians couple their moves with an unequivocal call for a two-state solution in the context of a final peace, they would at least show that the real obstacles to peace are Israel and America--not Palestinian irredentism.

Hussein has understood better than most the implications of the uprising in the occupied territories: In the long run the Palestinians are ungovernable unless they are granted self-determination and statehood. Any attempt by Jordan, now or in the future, to try to rule them against their wishes would lead to consequences even graver for the stability of the Hashemite regime in the East Bank than its current travails in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are for the Israeli occupation.

Unfortunately, most Israeli politicians are still hiding their heads in the sand. This is one reason they cling to the tattered illusion that the king will come along to save them from their dilemma. Instead of speaking the harsh truth to their Israeli allies, American diplomats have been mouthing meaningless platitudes, like Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy’s recent statement that Israel should open communications with non-PLO Palestinians. It is as if the world’s most powerful nation has lost its eyes and ears, not noticing that after eight months of revolutionary upheaval in the West Bank and Gaza Strip there is hardly a Palestinian anywhere who claims that he is not represented by the PLO.

In this country, too, the illusion prevails that Arabs do not mean what they say, which in fact is simply a form of arrogance, meaning that you are not allowed to say what I don’t want you to say. Thus when the Palestinians say as one that they are represented by the PLO and that they will accept no less than an end to occupation, self-determination and statehood they are simply ignored by the powers that be. The message, however, has been heard and understood in Amman.

The question now is how long it will take to sink in in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and how long after that it will be before the cowardice and timidity of American politicians are finally overcome and reality can be accepted in this country.