PLO Leaders Face Crisis in Hewing to Moderate Path

The Palestine Liberation Organization, reeling after a major setback at the United Nations and a threatened cutoff in dialogue with the United States, is struggling for a foothold amid one of its worst crises since the landmark decision to renounce terrorism and embark on a path for peace with Israel.

Palestinian leaders here, while disavowing any connection with last week’s abortive sea raid on crowded Israeli beaches by a disaffected PLO faction, said the moderate leadership is besieged by demands for a more radical course and must respond to a constituency that views the guerrilla leader that led the raid as a national hero.

“If the PLO continues its current (moderate) political course, we will be like a leadership without a base, like generals without soldiers,” Salah Khalaf, the PLO’s second in command, said in an interview Sunday.

“In this moment, the Israelis and the U.S. have to deal with all forms of extremism, from fundamentalists to nationalists and terrorists,” said Khalaf, also known as Abu Iyad. “We are committed to the Palestinian peace initiative even more than before. But frankly, we have to change our form of working.”

PLO officials declared Sunday that they will refuse U.S. demands to denounce last week’s attempted raid on Israel by Abul Abbas, head of the PLO’s Palestine Liberation Front faction and an inactive member of the PLO executive committee, and will also not comply with a U.S. request to immediately expel Abbas from the organization.

“The request is refused, absolutely. . . . We have never committed ourselves that we are going to stop our military resistance,” Khalaf asserted.

“When (we) announced in Geneva in 1988 the PLO recognition of Israel and the renunciation of terrorism, the U.S. government immediately agreed to hold direct talks with the PLO without asking, ‘What is the terrorism which we mean?’

“From the beginning, we made it clear to the American ambassador in Tunis that we are committed to renouncing terrorism outside the occupied territories and Israel, but we didn’t commit ourself to stop our armed struggle.”

With the Abbas affair, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat is walking a perilous line between maintaining credibility with the West and placating the increasingly vocal extremist elements within the Palestinian community, PLO leaders say privately.

In a strongly worded communique on Thursday from the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, the United States demanded that the PLO “clarify its position” on the Abbas raid, denounce it as a terrorist act and move to expel Abbas from his position as a member of the PLO executive committee.

But PLO sources said that Arafat is too fearful of reprisals from extremist factions to publicly denounce the operation--and in any case finds himself with more to fear from his own rear guard than from threats by the United States to cut off its dialogue with the PLO.

“He feels now that he will be alone,” said one senior PLO source, who asked not to be identified. “Look at the psychology of the leader: he’s looking for any gate to be in. He was angry at the operation, I’m sure. But he didn’t deny the operation because he couldn’t. Why should he deny it? For what? He’s going to lose.

“If this status quo goes on,” the official added, “we are going, believe me, to war. No one, including Egypt, can prevent war. If this status quo exists--no peace, no war--what will the solution be? We have to prepare ourselves to kill no-peace by peace, and no-war by war.”

Security at PLO offices and villas throughout this picturesque seaside community, always heavy, has been visibly tightened in recent days. Dozens of young guards, many with machine guns at their sides, loafed in the yard outside Khalaf’s residence. Key PLO officials walked to their cars surrounded by bodyguards and traveled across town at high speed. Visitors’ passports were scrutinized, and window shutters were kept drawn.

In the diplomatic aftermath of the week’s events, the PLO is now beginning to ask what has been accomplished in its 18-month-old dialogue with the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, Robert H. Pelletreau Jr. In particular, the PLO cites the recent collapse of efforts to set up a direct Israeli-Palestinian dialogue in Cairo and last week’s veto by Washington of a U.N. Security Council initiative to send a fact-finding team to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The veto was a bitter setback for the PLO, which has long sought international mediation to resolve its conflict with Israel.

“Actually, we haven’t benefited by anything concrete from this dialogue. It is public relations contact, not more,” Khalaf complained.

“During this dialogue, while it is going on, what did the U.S. give us? Several vetoes in the U.N., against our people’s rights and against any resolution denouncing Israel. During this dialogue also, the Congress passed a resolution that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Also during this dialogue, the deal was struck between the U.S. and U.S.S.R about the mass Jewish immigration to Israel. While the dialogue was going, we accepted (Secretary of State) James Baker’s (peace) plan. The Israelis refused it. And we didn’t find any American officials who dared to denounce Israel for her abortion of this plan.”

Some PLO officials are banking that the United States will find it in its own interest not to cut off official contacts with the PLO, recognizing, they said, that it is necessary to deal with both parties to the conflict if there is to be a resolution.

“I’m not worried about the dialogue,” said Bassam abu Sharif, one of Arafat’s chief advisers and his principal spokesman. “The U.S. is a superpower with big responsibility toward world peace and world stability. Part of its duty is to help solve regional problems and political conflicts. To do this, you must deal with the parties directly. The U.S. cannot turn its back and say, ‘We have nothing to do with the PLO.’ The U.S. has its commitments.”

The future of Abbas, already a controversial figure because of his masterminding of the 1985 Achille Lauro ship hijacking, is not yet certain, and PLO officials were toying with the idea of convening the organization’s executive committee this week to take up the matter.

Both Abbas and PLO officials have denied that Arafat had any advance knowledge of the planned raid on Israel’s Mediterranean beaches, whose target reportedly included the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, and they have publicly denied any PLO connection or endorsement of the raid.

Israel’s chief military intelligence officer, Maj. Gen. Amnon Shahak, gave support to that in an interview published in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. On Friday, Shahak said, “We don’t have information pointing to the fact that he (Arafat) knew ahead of time.”

Several PLO sources said Abbas has been under suspension as a member of the Executive Committee since 1988, attending no meetings and handling no PLO business, though he continues to draw a salary.

At the same time, some sources said privately, any move to expel Abbas would likely prove unpopular among the radical elements that are gaining ground within the organization.

“For our people now, they consider Abul Abbas a national hero,” Khalaf said.

Arafat has said it is up to the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s “government in exile,” to decide Abbas’ future. The PNC is not scheduled to convene until November. But PLO sources said an internal investigation is under way to determine whether Abbas was correct in his claim that the operation was limited to military targets, not civilian ones.

No Israelis were injured in the raid, which left four Palestinian guerrillas dead and 12 captured, and PLO officials say initial evidence suggests that the raiding party deliberately avoided shooting civilian sunbathers.

The issue is crucial, because it determines whether the raid was in compliance with PLO policy as a military operation, or whether it violated the organization’s strictures adopted in 1988 and earlier, in the so-called Cairo declaration of 1985, against terrorism.

“If it’s a terrorist act, the PNF (Palestine National Front) will be ousted,” said one PLO official, though he said the action would have to be taken by the full PNC.

The executive committee, when it meets, will also take up the issue of how to respond to the U.S. veto of the initiative to send a U.N. fact-finding team into the territories to investigate claims of abuses by the Israel Defense Forces. The PLO has said it will seek to take the matter before the full U.N. General Assembly, and several key PLO officials are meeting this week with U.S. allies to encourage political pressure in favor of a fact-finding team.

The PLO has also called for Arab workers throughout the Middle East to boycott work on all American air carriers and other transportation services in the region on Tuesday, but officials said there are no plans to step up the level of violence in the 30-month uprising, or intifada, in the occupied territories.

“Our choice for peace is not seasonal, it’s strategic. More Israeli terror will beget more resistance, but our instructions are still no to violence, and we will stick to that,” said Abu Sharif. “We will not give (Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak) Shamir pretext to commit larger crimes.

“But Shamir’s policy and the support of the U.S. to Shamir’s policy can only help the extremists,” Abu Sharif warned. “Arafat is in control, but how long, if such a policy continues, how long can the control remain?”