Arafat Hasn’t Fooled the Only Country That Can Grant His Wish--Israel

Like other recent major political events--the American and Israeli elections, for instance--the meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers and what emerged from it was a triumph of rhetoric over substance.

The meeting itself was celebratory in nature. It was the Palestine Liberation Organization embracing the Palestinian uprising and declaring an independent Palestinian state while at the same time turning to the world at large and presenting a face that gave the misleading appearance of being moderate and conciliatory.

The mood appeared to be triumphant, but what of the message? Expectations had been high for this meeting, in the sense that many observers felt that Yasser Arafat had an opportunity to take a definitive step toward peace. Yet, unlike the Israeli elections, no one at this meeting voted for peace. Instead, the PNC tried to give the appearance of being at peace with the United States, Western Europe, its own radicals and with moderate Arabs and Palestinians. Something for everyone--everyone, that is, except Israel.

The PLO message--its implicit recognition of Iraeli’s right to exist, its declaration of an independent state, its apparent disavowal of terrorism except inside Israel, its insistence that Jerusalem be the capital of the new state--was, for Israelis, a mixed bag of more of the same. Neither Likud nor Labor nor peace-for-territory advocates could find sustenance or hope in the PLO message. It left Shimon Peres even more out on a limb, having already been exposed by King Hussein’s disengagement from the Palestinian issue. But, then, the message was not meant for Israeli consumption.

Arafat had an opportunity to do some truly startling things to break the logjam of the peace process. He could have asked for a meeting with either Peres or Yitzhak Shamir, in the manner of Anwar Sadat. Or he could have asked for time to address Israelis in Tel Aviv--an offer that even Shamir might be unable to refuse. Arafat and the PLO had a historic opportunity, and he chose not to use it, failing to understand that it is only from Israel and the Israeli people that he can and must seek the return of what he sees as his share of Palestine. The United States, Western Europe, the Arab moderates and radicals--none can get Arafat a Palestinian territory. Only Israel can do that, and Arafat totally ignored Israel in his message.

Arafat may have sounded moderate to some ears. But he certainly didn’t to Israelis, especially when he belligerently challenged Israel by declaring Jerusalem the capital of the new Palestinian state.

Arafat talks about peace, but what kind of peace? He supports U.N. Resolution 242, and the world applauds. But Resolution 242 calls for only conditional or implicit recognition. Every question that Arafat was asked about explicit recognition was turned aside. An Arafat representative told American consulate officers in Jerusalem that he would indeed and eventually declare openly an unconditional peace, but that was nothing more than a way to keep Washington involved and to hope for an eventual U.S. recognition of the PLO. The United States and President-elect George Bush were the principal audience of this PLO public-relations campaign. Arafat badly wants U.S. recognition, but he is no closer to it than he was after 1967, 1975, Camp David in 1979 or even a year ago. Once again he called for an international conference, which Israel under Likud leadership has repeatedly said that it would not participate in. The loathsome PLO charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel, remains intact. Bush and the Reagan Administration responded cautiously, negatively, but the U.S. media seemed often to misunderstand what had happened--or, rather, the fact that nothing substantial had happened. “PLO recognizes Israel, declares independent state,” announcers and commentators said, failing to see that the first did not happen and that the second cannot happen without the first.

What the PLO has actually done is to undermine the successes and efforts of the intifada , and to leave the political arena to the Israeli militants whose political strength grows with every Arafat insincerity, with every PLO attempt to go over the head of Israel.

The PLO will not get a state, will not engage Israel or gain recognition from the United States through a public-relations blitz. The Palestinian issue is a lot more complicated than that, and public relations will not gloss over the contradictory tensions existing within the PLO itself.

None of the real and revolutionary concessions that the PLO could have made--renouncing all terrorism inside Israel, calling for unconditional direct negotiations with Israel, renouncing the PLO charter, and so on--were made in Algiers. But that shouldn’t be surprising. As Prof. Yehoshafat Harkabi noted in “Israel’s Fateful Hour,” published this year, there are contradictory sides to the PLO. “The signs of moderation in the PLO,” he wrote, “its inclusion in a settlement, is not a simple matter. The split within the PLO has always been a spur to extreme positions. The revolutionary pretensions of the PLO beget a style of thought in which compromise is disdained. The PLO has become accustomed to the fact that it is not a state and that the restrictions normally imposed on a state do not constrain it. Terrorism corrupts, and the practice of terror is no training for the diplomatic give-and-take of negotiations. The PLO’s ideological heritage is a heavy burden. The PLO also has spawned many functionaries who have a vested interest in the conflict. A settlement would cost them their jobs, and they are therefore fearful of one.”

The PLO, in trying to approach peace, is faced with a problem of identity. “For the PLO to acknowledge coexistence with Israel,” Harkabi wrote, “is tantamount to the negation of its entire raison d’etre . The PLO, as its name denotes, was meant to ‘liberate’ all of Palestine.”

What the meeting in Algiers truly showed the world is that the PLO remains the PLO. Arafat can call himself a pragmatist, but the simple act of speaking doesn’t make him a pragmatist.