What Exactly Does Arafat Mean?

It’s clear enough what Yasser Arafat said in Paris, but what exactly did he mean ? Asked by a French interviewer how the Palestine National Covenant’s call for the elimination of “the Zionist presence” squares with the Palestine Liberation Organization’s current claim that it is ready to coexist peacefully with Israel, the PLO chairman described the covenant as “caduc,” a French word his official hosts later acknowledged they suggested. In the context in which the question was put, that word means “null and void.” But is that, in fact, what Arafat intended to convey?

Apparently not. The day after the interview Arafat and his aides insisted, in English, that he was only trying to suggest that the covenant, approved by the Palestine National Council in 1964 and rewritten in 1968, has been “superseded” by political declarations made by the PLO late last year. Now supersede means to set something aside, while null and void means that something is invalid, a dead letter, without legal force. The distinction is a definite one, and because of what the covenant says and its significance for the PLO, that distinction is of more than casual semantic and political importance.

Taken at face value, which is the way all political charters deserve to be taken, the covenant absolutely rules out the chance that the Palestine that existed until 1948 under the British Mandate can be divided between a state of Israel and a Palestinian state, or that Palestinian and Israeli states could peacefully coexist alongside each other. The language is unambiguous: Palestine is “an indivisible territorial unit . . . Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine . . . and to eliminate the Zionist presence . . . The partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of Israel are fundamentally null and void . . . “ and so on. The covenant, in short, represents something less than a departure point for good-faith negotiations. On the contrary, it is a monumental impediment.

That’s why the United States, France and other countries have been urging the PLO to amend or abrogate the covenant. The PLO, whether its leaders acknowledge it or not, has a major credibility problem. It says it is ready to reach a political settlement with Israel that provides for mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. But it remains bound to a charter that explicitly rejects any such possibility.

Arafat and his supporters claim that recent PLO resolutions and statements take precedence over the covenant, but saying that they also stop short of repudiating its call for Israel’s extinction. Arafat implies that his words of today should be seen as having greater value and relevance than the solemn document that has guided the PLO for a quarter-century. He says he can be trusted because he was chosen to speak for the PLO by a democratic vote of the Palestine National Council. But that same council long ago determined that the National Covenant can be amended--or superseded, or made null and void--only by a two-thirds vote, and not just on one man’s retractable say-so.

Arafat in Paris did little to clarify the PLO’s position or advance its political program. On the contrary, between saying one thing in French one night and something quite different in English just hours later, and then flatly refusing to clear up the contradiction, he only made the issue of the PLO’s willingness to coexist peacefully with Israel murkier, and his own penchant for deviousness more pronounced. Does the Palestine National Covenant mean what it says, or does it not? Arafat typically has done nothing to clarify that fundamental question. Instead, once again, he opted for semantic sleight of hand over substance.