For Everything, a Season : Now, Jewish Americans Should Watch How They ‘Help’ Israel

Thirteen years ago an American Administration pledged itself not to talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization until it met three conditions: Recognize Israel’s right to exist, renounce terrorism and endorse the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. This was, at the same time, an open invitation to the PLO to gain significant U.S. acceptance by showing a credible commitment to peace.

Until last week the PLO evaded the invitation but conducted a “peace offensive” of its own, growing more effective over the years. No explicit, formal commitments of the kind that Washington insisted on were made--indeed, PLO actions directly violated them--but private assurances were given that, if PLO conditions were met, there could be “peace” in the Middle East. For years impatient bystanders pressed the American government to accept these intimations as sufficient proof of a real commitment; they accepted the argument that Arafat could not go further without giving up his bargaining position or risking assassination. The United States held out and got (more or less) what it wanted.

The first question that arises is: Why this rigid insistence on explicit public statements rather than implicit or private assurances?

For the State Department, the requirement it promised in 1975, in return for major Israeli concessions to Egypt, was perhaps reason enough. But there is another reason of still greater importance. The only reliable basis for peace between the Israelis and the Arabs is a change in popular attitudes and perceptions. What a government says to its own people, in terms that they clearly understand, is a factor of major importance in shaping their views. Fair words in English, carefully crafted or privately delivered so as to ensure “credible deniability,” have no effect when the opposite impression is conveyed publicly in Arabic, or in well-understood code language. Anwar Sadat radically altered the terms of Israeli-Egyptian relations in his own people’s mind by the form of his “peace initiative”; its effect was not diminished by his assassination.

The American government has every reason to hope that, by extracting the explicit responses that it got from Arafat, it has turned another corner in the tortuous peace process.

The second question that arises is: How did this come about; why now, after all these years?

For 40 years continual Arab efforts failed to undo the original U.N. decision that led to Israel’s creation. Four rounds of war by Arab states only left Israel enlarged and strengthened. Arabs were able to regain some ground by political pressure, yet the popular impression remained of catastrophe at the hands of Israel. This led the Arab states to abandon direct involvement except through unremitting pressure in the United Nations, economic boycott, general propaganda and diplomacy. Direct action was left to the PLO, with disastrous results for that organization.

The dead end of paramilitary action left only propaganda and diplomatic pressure as the weapons of last resort for the PLO as well. But unlike the rejectionist Arab states, which could content themselves with aggressive posturing, the PLO had to show some advance toward its proclaimed goals in order to survive. Only a “peace offensive” could conceivably bring success. The intifada , the popular civil disobedience and rioting of Palestinians, gave the PLO the necessary moral security for its “peace” policy. And a stubborn, principled stand taken by Secretary of State George P. Shultz compelled Arafat to move from evasion to a forthright commitment--a commitment, as Arafat put it, to peace “as a strategy,” not a “tactic.”

The Soviet Union must certainly have been a decisive element in the background of Arafat’s shift. Not only the Third World bloc but also America’s friends in the European community have done little to press for greater PLO concessions. Instead, the Europeans exerted severe pressure on the Americans to drop their longstanding demands and accept the PLO evasions. If Arafat made his move anyway, one must suppose that the overriding need for continued Soviet-American rapprochement was a major factor.

The final question that arises is: What now?

Let me confine myself, as an old-time Jewish activist, to some remarks addressed to my own ethnic community.

It is time to drop the old defenses of First Amendment rights and freedom of speech that are voiced almost automatically by those who express opinions at variance with official Israeli positions or the negotiated consensus of American Jewish communal organizations. Those rights are beyond question, and they have been fully exercised despite frequent complaints of moral intimidation. Whatever issues arise, from “who is a Jew” to the state of human rights in the occupied territories, there will continue to be free expression of the whole range of American Jewish opinion.

What took place when five well-meaning American Jews went to Stockholm to give Arafat a convenient platform was not free speech but private diplomacy. The “delegation” lent itself to be used as a cat’s-paw to facilitate a form of negotiation that sought to predetermine Israel’s political future behind Israel’s back. It involved a transparent pretense (whether or not the participants themselves claimed this status) that a significant part of the American Jewish community was ready to throw its weight into the balance against the negotiating position of Israel, whatever that may ultimately be, alongside such powerful forces as the Muslim-Third World-leftist combine already in play. The sad, comic aspect of this maneuver does not redeem it from blame, and it adds little to the credit of those who let themselvesbe used.

If there is to be peace, as we may now have more reason to hope, it will be won only by a meeting of minds among those now at war--Israelis and Arabs, Palestinians and other self-styled belligerents. All other elements that might be involved, even international bodies or governments, can help only if they ease the way instead of blocking it with their own agendas. There is too much underbrush of this sort to clear before an effective engagement of the directly involved parties can be achieved; there is no need to add still more. There are already too many matchmakers at work for the good of this long-delayed marriage.