Mapping a New West Bank Reality

A political earthquake has shaken the Middle East, with Israel at the epicenter. Old principles and pieties are rubble in a profoundly altered political landscape. Prior maps lead only to confusion. All who want a lasting peace have to orient themselves to the new realities.

The Palestinian uprising, the intifada , unleashed these forces. A captive people, inert and docile for 20 years, has asserted identity--and done so in a way that commands widespread sympathy. Intifada appears as a stone-throwing David against an Israeli military presence that has seemed deliberately, with Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s “iron fist” policy, to cast itself in the brutish role of Goliath.

Labels and signposts are new. The designation, “Arab-Israeli conflict,” is out of date. What is in progress is a Palestinian-Israeli struggle. The object is “the state of Palestine,” which now has an official observer mission at the United Nations. For the first time, the Palestine protagonist is not nondescript “inhabitants” but the “Palestinian people.” The epithet “terrorist” no longer sticks. When the United States formally started talking to the Palestine Liberation Organization last week, it tacitly abandoned the charge that the PLO--although it certainly includes terrorists--was a terrorist organization. And, inferentially, Washington accepted the people of the uprising as fighters for legitimate political rights.

Israel’s distress at this abrupt change is understandable. Recognition can only invigorate the demonstrators, making them aware that they are not isolated, as Israeli Gen. Rafael Eitan once put it, “like cockroaches in a bottle.” Washington’s action, following the PLO’s declaration of an independent state, lifted the intifada above the level of civic disorder. It now serves a national purpose commensurate with the price the people have paid in the past year: hundreds of dead, thousands of wounded, more thousands imprisoned, demolition of homes and exile.

This national purpose emerged in practice, little by little. The Palestinian flag displayed everywhere gave it expression. The intifada, spontaneous and self-enforcing, was itself a multiple declaration of independence--not only from Israel but also from the Arab states and, in a sense, from the PLO as well. What happened is not surprising in this age of nationalism. But it took the Palestinians a long time to become a critical mass. In their heretofore mainly agrarian life, exploited by absentee landlords, feudal notables and political demagogues, they lacked direction. Paradoxically, while always subordinate, their experience of the more advanced Israeli society apparently taught them a great deal.

These days, the Palestinians--upwardly mobile, industrious and eager to learn--are known as the Jews of the Arab world. They are the professional people, the lawyers, doctors, educators and administrators who make things work all through the Arabian Peninsula. Their talent has been rewarded, but not with acceptance into the societies of their hosts. As individuals and as refugees in the hundreds of thousands, the Palestinians were only tolerated. Fulsome Arab lip service to their cause contrasted with the meager political support they received. The average Palestinian has long suspected that Arab leaders used his problem to serve their ends.

Finally, the intifada was not initiated by the PLO. Yasser Arafat, like the Israelis, was taken by surprise and only lately has been catching up. There is little doubt that most of the people accept the PLO and Arafat as the only incorruptible champions of their struggle. But the PLO’s record has been less than glorious. An ill-advised confrontation with King Hussein of Jordan in 1970 brought disastrous defeat and mass expulsion. In Lebanon, the creation of a PLO state within a state, and the squandering of millions of dollars on a miscast army, set the stage for the tragedy that followed--civil war, Israeli invasions, massacre and another exodus. For 20 years, Arafat worked almost entirely on preserving the appearance of unity in the discordant coalition that constitutes the PLO. The intifada dragged Arafat down to earth, to the real concerns of the 1.5 million people under Israeli occupation.

New facts should change the course of the search for peace. The so-called Jordanian option--an amorphous notion of Israel as the West Bank landlord, Jordan as the caretaker for the autonomy of Palestinian residents--really died years ago. King Hussein, one of the most imaginative statesmen in the Middle East, might have made it work. He was never given half a chance. Last July, he formally withdrew and, with that withdrawal, buried the idea of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation at future peace negotiations. The rush of Arab states to recognize the independent state of Palestine indicates that there will be no joint Arab-Palestinian delegation either. The Palestinians will do their own negotiating and, as things stand now, will do it through the PLO.

The new Israeli government, like the last Israeli government, declares its determination never to talk with the PLO--whatever the United States does. The word never is highly suspect in human affairs and Israel’s incantation seems more conspicuously unreal, even to many Israelis. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir speaks vaguely of autonomy for the West Bank, although Menachem Begin destroyed that option before the ink was dry on the 1978 Camp David agreement. Shimon Peres, head of the Labor Party, also limps far behind events when he mentions local elections and says he will speak to any Palestinian who is not a “terrorist.” Recalling the expulsions of mayors chosen in 1976 following the only elections ever held, as well as Israel’s response to the intifada, Secretary of State George P. Shultz has protested that Israel cannot stifle the emergence of Palestinian leaders and then complain that there is no one to talk to.

Shultz’s own complicated suggestion earlier this year--of transition through interlocking negotiations, with Israel transferring authority to the Palestinians--is clearly a paper exercise. The U.S.-PLO talks, although not likely to move swiftly or smoothly, do confront current reality. They can move toward agreement on some basic points: an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza to a negotiated, secure, boundary; Israel’s right to exist in peace and security; commercial, economic and social ties between the now-occupied territories and Jordan, and a new status--not as extra-territorial outposts--for Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Differences between the United States and the PLO--over an independent Palestinian state and the status of Jerusalem--are negotiable.

The strains in relations between the United States and the Israeli government, as well as between American Jewish communities and the Israeli political-religious Establishment, are not momentary misunderstandings but additional, crucial new facts. Together with the other changes in the Middle East, they are urgent calls for a fresh direction in the search for peace.

DR, RICHARD MILHOLLAND / for The Times