Palestinian State Has Become Inevitable

George Shultz finally did what no one expected he would do: agree to talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The decision is a fateful one for both the Palestinians and Israel; it will inevitably lead to the Palestinians’ cherished goal: a Palestinian state. Despite an arcane last-minute debate over supra-legalistic formulations primarily of significance to Shultz himself, in the end it was Shultz who changed his position more than Arafat did.

Let’s be frank. The Reagan Administration has never really wanted the PLO to do what the Administration has always said it wanted the PLO to do: accept U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, recognize Israel and forswear terrorism. For Shultz, the prospects of PLO compliance with U.S. conditions was always the bad news, not the good. PLO compliance only launches the United States into ever more complex and treacherous political shoals in the Middle East.

Several factors had been at work, gradually eroding the U.S. position on contact with the PLO. First, the intifada, the uprising in the West Bank and Gaza, had wrought more change in the PLO over the past year than almost any other event in the organization’s history. For the first time West Bank Palestinians--with a homeland to protect--had themselves taken decisive action to change their own destiny. The PLO leadership, faced with a potential rival leadership in the occupied territories, felt compelled to translate the intifada into political gains for the West Bank by adopting more moderate positions, which further legitimized the PLO in the international community.

The Soviet role cannot be discounted, either. Over the past several years the Soviets have been attempting to drill a greater sense of political realism not only into Arafat, but especially into the more radical left-wing factions that look to the Soviet Union for support. In addition, Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new political thinking” has repeatedly spoken of diminishing the “zero-sum game” aspect to U.S.-Soviet relations in the Third World. Increased Soviet influence over the PLO is no longer perceived as an automatic threat to U.S. interests. Britain and Egypt were similarly valuable midwives to the process.

But from one point of view, Shultz’s fear of stepping onto a slippery slope was not unfounded. Administration policy for years has indulged in the thought that the conflict somehow might be solved by other Arab states that could speak for the Palestinians and contain them, thereby softening the primal Palestinian vs. Israeli confrontation. This bubble of illusion was pricked by the intifada , which swept away any last pretense that some other state could speak for the Palestinians. King Hussein of Jordan was the first to recognize this. The second illusion was that some “other” Palestinians might replace the PLO. This view overlooks the fact that a great majority of West Bankers for nearly two decades have looked only to the PLO to speak for it. Washington has now been compelled to confront these two realities.

Washington has done no more than open a dialogue with the PLO. Whether we like it or not, however, the process is inexorably leading to the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank. In saying this I am not making a statement of political preference, but expressing an analytical conclusion. The overwhelming force of events in the region is leading inevitably in this direction. The trends of the last several decades, especially the continuing survival and evolution of the PLO as a political organization, point in this direction. The last barriers to PLO “legitimacy” are now collapsing.

The process will undoubtedly be a long, painful and troubled one, especially for Israel and the United States. Many barriers remain. Israel must choose among wrenching trade-offs involving national security, the preservation of a truly Jewish state, the rending of society in the debate over use of force on the West Bank, the religious significance of Judea and Samaria (West Bank), and Israel’s relations with the external world. In addition, there is no evading the fact that there will be more terror. Regardless of Arafat’s commitment, radical splinter factions of the PLO--and perhaps the Syrians--will have powerful incentive to sabotage any peace process through terrorist acts. Will these nullify commitment to negotiations with a mainstream PLO? And what of future borders of any Palestinian entity?

The United States cannot impose a solution. Nor can any American Administration compromise with Israel’s ultimate security. But the definition of that security must be examined realistically, particularly when Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir assures us that nothing that the PLO ever can say will change the fact that it is a deadly threat to Israel’s existence. Yet, ironically, a future Palestinian state and government on the West Bank would be more nakedly vulnerable to Israeli political and economic pressure--and Israeli military reprisal--than the PLO as a distant and scattered political movement ever could be.