Out of Faint Glimmerings, Hope : Palestinian Moves, Just Maybe, Could Be Watershed with Israel

According to the conventional wisdom, impending elections in Israel and/or the United States are supposed to move the Arab-Israel conflict into the diplomatic doldrums. In fact, the pace of events in the past few weeks has been almost frenetic, and more developments are likely before Israeli and American voters go to the polls in November.

No agreements are now being discussed, and peace is clearly not at hand. Still, there is a sense that something really significant is happening--the first faint glimmerings of a Palestinian political dialogue with Israel--and it could constitute a decisive turning point in the conflict.

Palestinians have communicated with Israel for a long time. But most of that time the dominant message was rejection and the primary medium was violence. After 1967 the Palestine Liberation Organization was responsible for most Palestinian signaling; a second channel was opened by residents of the West Bank and Gaza last December when they launched a prolonged and widespread uprising against Israeli rule--the intifada .

The Palestinians effectively communicated what they rejected--Israel in general and the occupation in particular and what they wanted, a state of their own--but they rarely made clear what, if anything, they were willing to give in return. Their behavior implied a desire to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without Israel, and their method was to impose unilateral concessions on Israel, either directly through violence or indirectly through pressure on third parties (the Arab world, Europe, the United States) that would then force Israel to surrender.

It is also true that there were occasional messages of a more conciliatory nature, but these were so hesitant, ambiguous and lacking in authority that they were picked up only by those few in Israel who closely followed Palestinian debates. The political antennae of most Israelis are much more attuned to dangers than to opportunities, and Israel responded to Palestinian negativism with a negativism of its own: no negotiations with the PLO, and no Palestinian state.

The events of recent weeks, however, suggest that all this may be about to change. In late June, Bassam abu Sharif, senior adviser to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, issued a statement acknowledging Israel’s right to live in security and calling for direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. At the end of July, King Hussein renounced any claim to the West Bank, thereby taking Jordan out of the diplomatic equation. In early August, someone leaked a discussion paper seized by Israeli security forces in the East Jerusalem office of Faisal Husseini’s Arab Studies Center that had been circulating among West Bank intellectuals and activists identified with the PLO; the document called for the declaration of a Palestinian state, whose provisional government would negotiate a peace settlement with Israel. And just recently, Abu Iyad, deputy leader of Arafat’s Fatah organization, called for mutual Israeli-PLO recognition and suggested that the Palestine National Council revise those parts of the national covenant calling for the destruction of Israel.

It is not altogether clear what led to these developments. Perhaps the PLO felt that continued rigidity would permit semi-independent forces in the West Bank to assume primacy in the Palestinian movement; perhaps Palestinians in general began to fear that failure to present a reasonable political platform after the violence related to the intifada had peaked in the spring would cause potential opportunities to be frittered away, as has so often happened in the past.

Whatever the reasons, some Palestinians are beginning to address themselves directly to Israelis in terms that not only demand Palestinian rights but also couple these demands with the vision of a more peaceful, secure future for both peoples. In other words, some Palestinians have apparently decided to adopt what well-intentioned bystanders have long argued is the only realistic Palestinian strategy--to play a more positive and constructive role in the Israeli political process, including the elections.

Furthermore, there are some signs that the message may be starting to resonate in Israel. The so-called “Husseini Document” did not arouse the emotional uproar presumably anticipated by those who authorized its release. And Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the Labor Party leader who contemptuously dismisses most signs of possible PLO moderation, reacted to Abu Iyad’s statement by agreeing, subject to some stringent preconditions, to direct negotiations with Palestinian representatives, thus endorsing an idea that his party had consistently rejected since it was first proposed in the 1970s.

Of course, none of these developments are sufficient to guarantee serious negotiations, much less a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians are still far from providing the authoritative and unambiguous reassurance needed to make a real impact on Israeli public opinion. And too many hopes have already been dashed by some terrorist outrage or by Arafat’s slipperiness and indecisiveness for anyone now to predict that the PLO will not disappoint once again. Moreover, for many Israelis the intifada has led to a hardening of attitudes toward the Palestinians. Likud leaders, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, are as determined as ever to discredit the PLO and prevent a Palestinian state, and some politicians are advocating more extreme measures, like unilateral annexation and large-scale deportations.

Nevertheless, there are at least some tentative signs of an Israeli-Palestinian dynamic that will reinforce conciliation, rather than belligerency. It is not easy for either side to embark on this route, and there will be desperate efforts to avoid it, both at the coming Palestine National Council meeting and during the Israeli election campaign. Up to now, the course of political reciprocity has been bypassed because some third party has always provided one side or the other with an escape hatch, an illusion that it could promote its major purposes while ignoring the fundamental concerns of the other. King Hussein provided a major service by eliminating one of these escape hatches. Other interested parties can make a similar contribution.

A serious political dialogue between the Palestinians and Israel is barely into the first stage of gestation, but if enough encouragement is given to the process, this pre-election summer may yet prove to be a historical watershed in Arab-Israeli relations.