‘It Would Ruin Everything’ : More Realistic PLO View May Confound Israel, U.S.

Earlier this year, a senior Israeli official close to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was asked a hypothetical question: What would happen if the Palestine Liberation Organization were to renounce violence and recognize Israel?

It will never happen, the official replied, launching into a litany of Israeli objections to the PLO, from its past use of terrorism to its 24-year-old founding charter, which still calls for the elimination of the state of Israel. But what if it did happen, his questioner persisted.

“It would ruin everything,” the official answered without hesitation. “It’s the one thing we Israelis could not possibly handle.”

Now, a lot sooner than anyone expected, the question is being posed again and this time not merely as conjecture. Indeed, as the PLO shows signs of moving closer to a consensus on recognizing Israel, the question is being asked in earnest by diplomats, government officials and other Middle East specialists seeking to assess the impact of such a move on the Arab-Israeli dispute.

While, on the face of it, Western governments would be obliged to say that they welcomed any move by the PLO to adopt a more realistic and constructive approach toward the peace process, the reality beneath the surface is far more complex, diplomats and other area specialists say.

How, for instance, would the United States react if the PLO were to recognize Israel? How, for that matter, would Israel, caught in the maelstrom of a popular Palestinian revolt that endures in the face of increasingly coercive efforts to suppress it, itself react?

“The Israelis really count on there not being a Palestinian option. For this reason, the uprising, which they haven’t been able to control, has them scared,” a senior Western diplomat said. “PLO recognition now would send them into a panic.”

PLO recognition of Israel would also pose a dilemma for the United States, this and other diplomats agreed.

No Direct Dealings

For years, U.S. policy has barred any direct dealings with the PLO even when circumstances clearly dictated the need for them. In 1982, for instance, U.S. envoys trying to arrange an Israeli-PLO cease-fire in Lebanon were obliged to adopt the awkward if ingenious pretense of sitting politely in the living room of the Beirut home of Shafik Wazzan, then the Lebanese premier, while Lebanese officials shuttled back and forth to the kitchen, where the PLO delegation waited. The two sides sat two rooms apart but could negotiate only by way of intermediaries.

Washington’s policy, formulated 13 years ago and passed into law in 1984, precludes contacts with the PLO until it accepts Israel’s right to exist, unequivocally accepts U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, which implicitly guarantee that right, and renounces terrorism. But the U.S. policy also implies that Washington will talk to the PLO as soon as it does meet these conditions.

Thus, were the PLO to meet those conditions for a dialogue, the United States would be forced into a situation where keeping its word could invite a major diplomatic crisis with Israel, a chance no administration is likely to take in an election year.

Alternatively, backing down by finding another excuse not to talk to the PLO would harm American credibility in the Middle East, reinforcing the already strong belief among even moderate Arab states that U.S. policy is biased and hopelessly subservient to Israeli policy.

Would Derail Shultz Plan

“Frankly,” said a senior diplomat closely involved in the peace process, “accepting 242 is the last thing (Secretary of State George P.) Shultz wants the PLO to do right now. Nothing would make him more miserable. Nothing would derail the peace process faster.”

There remains, of course, the strong possibility that the Reagan Administration’s fear of the Palestinians finally doing what it has been urging them to do all these years will, in the end, prove to be unfounded.

The PLO, internally divided, is still struggling to achieve a consensus on its next move. Meeting in Tunis last week, the PLO Executive Council failed to set a date for the next meeting of the Palestine National Council, the decision-making body that must approve major policy changes. Tentatively planned for mid-September, the council session may now be postponed until November, according to reports from Tunis.

While infighting may explain the delay, senior Palestinian officials and other sources insist that the basic scenario spun by the PLO leadership in a meeting in Baghdad earlier this month still holds. The PNC, when it meets, will approve the formation of a “provisional government,” which will then be empowered to negotiate with Israel according to the guidelines of a peace plan now being drafted by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and his senior aides, the sources said.

Two-State Solution

The plan, some details of which already have been leaked, will propose a two-state solution that would recognize Israel in return for the right to create an independent Palestinian nation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. A confederation with Jordan, which might be more acceptable to Israel, has not been ruled out, but it would have to come after the Palestinian mini-state’s declaration of independence, the sources said.

This could still fall short of an explicit, official, no-strings-attached acceptance of Resolutions 242 and 338. But PLO sources say that, for Arafat, the challenge lies in fashioning a plan broad enough to satisfy the PLO’s constituency, both inside and outside the occupied territories, and yet specific and constructive enough to be acceptable, at least as a starting point, to the Western world.

The sources said Arafat is hoping for considerable West European support and that the plan has undergone several refinements over the past month, in part to reflect the “intensive consultations” PLO officials have been having with diplomats at the United Nations.

Subtle Shift in PLO

This is reflected, the sources added, in the PLO’s recent shift from proposals to establish a “government in exile” to those supporting the creation of a “provisional government.” The difference, in the PLO’s view, is more than a matter of semantics. Whereas a government in exile would have to include the PLO’s top leadership, a provisional government, drawn from Palestinians both inside and outside the occupied territories, could consist of figures who are not prominent members of the organization, the sources said.

This is meant to deal with two difficulties. First, it zigzags around the infighting and jostling for position that would inevitably become obstacles to the formation of a government from within the PLO’s divided ranks. The PLO’s structure would remain basically unchanged, its status vis-a-vis the provisional government being a bit like the party-state relationship that exists in China, where the state handles the mechanics of governing but the party sets the guidelines and provides the overall direction.

Secondly, PLO sources said, it is meant to address Israeli and American objections to dealing directly with the PLO. The members of the provisional government would have the authority, in close consultation with the PLO, to speak for the Palestinians at peace talks but would themselves not be prominent members of the organization.

World Acceptance Sought

“The whole idea,” said an Arab diplomat who has had lengthy discussions with the PLO on this question, “is to have a government that would be acceptable to the world in terms of faces, program and charter.”

Another shift reflecting an attempt to make the PLO’s position more acceptable concerns the timing of the announcement of a provisional government. At the Baghdad meeting last month, the PLO leadership agreed that it should announce a government and present a peace plan before Israel’s parliamentary elections in November, in the hopes of influencing the outcome.

However, the diplomat said that some PLO officials “are now saying they should wait until after the elections so as not to force Israeli politicians into adopting rejectionist positions from which it will be hard to back down later.”

The question of timing still seems to be undecided and probably will be influenced more by internal PLO politics than by any astute interpretations of the Israeli election campaign.

New ‘Sense of Realism’

But the remarkable thing in all of this, the diplomat observed, is the new “sense of realism” implied by the PLO’s attempts to factor Western and Israeli opinion into its calculations.

“For the first time, you feel they are finally being realistic. They are talking not about what they can gain in terms of Arab politics, but in terms of international opinion,” he said.

Two factors have helped to forge the PLO’s new approach. One has been the nearly nine-month-old uprising in the occupied territories, which has energized the Palestinians’ sense of nationalism and bred a new, activist leadership in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The PLO is helping to coordinate the uprising, but it no more controls it than it began it or is capable of ending it.

The leaders of the intifada , as the uprising is known, still look to the PLO to represent them, but they have also been expressing impatience with the PLO’s failure so far to convert their sacrifices into political gain. They did so as recently as last Tuesday in a communique calling upon the PNC to “adopt a comprehensive and clear political program which will gain widespread international support for the national rights of our people.”

Jordan’s Move Factored in

The second factor was Jordan’s decision earlier this month to sever its administrative links to the West Bank and hand over, in theory at least, its responsibilities there to the PLO. This decision was also largely a product of the intifada and was not meant to be particularly helpful to the PLO. Nevertheless, it added to the pressure being applied to the PLO “to finally do something constructive for a change,” as one diplomat put it.

European diplomats in Cairo say their governments remain skeptical that the PLO can convert its new and perhaps still somewhat tenuous sense of “realism” into a constructive approach toward Middle East peace-making.