Palestinian Meets With L.A. Jewry : Diplomacy: Faisal Husseini is joined by Moshe Dayan’s daughter in peace mission. There has been speculation that he is among those capable of leading a future state.

He has been called the most prominent Palestinian nationalist in the West Bank; a leader of the intifada , the Arab uprising against Israeli occupation; the main representative of the outlawed Palestine Liberation Organization within the Occupied Territories. Seldom does a news analysis on the Arab/Israeli problem appear in print without including a comment from Faisal Husseini, usually adding that he is considered a must on any future negotiating team.

Not the sort of credentials to gain entree to the heavily secured Jewish Federation Building on Wilshire Boulevard. Yet there stood Faisal Husseini last week as he faced 100 members of the Jewish community who had gathered at the invitation of the American Jewish Congress.

Ironically, Husseini, who has urged Soviet Jews to think twice about emigrating to Israel, stood before a huge blue and white backdrop proclaiming “Operation Exodus: Join the Campaign to Rescue Soviet Jews.”

The son of a Palestinian military commander who was killed in Israeli war of independence in 1948, Husseini was traveling with an unlikely companion, Yael Dayan, the daughter of the legendary Israeli general Moshe Dayan. They were brought here for a two-day visit sponsored by Americans for Peace Now, a support group for the Israeli peace organization that advocates a political settlement--accepting a so-called two-state solution--with the Palestinians.

Their visit was promoted with the statement, “Our Fathers Fought to the Death, Now We’re Struggling to Make Peace.” It was a theme they reiterated during numerous private and public functions, mostly within the Jewish community. One luncheon was given by local Palestinian businessman Mahmoud El Farra and attended by about 50 members of the Arab community.

The visit coincided with President Bush’s decision to suspend U.S. talks with the PLO and is happening at a time when Israel faces the most hard-line government yet on the question of Palestinians. Nonetheless, Husseini urged his listeners to use that situation to their advantage to campaign for peace--in their respective communities and “on the Hill.” Both Husseini and Dayan described initial anger and dismay at Bush’s action. But on second thought, each used the same phrase to say they were heartened by a clear message to the Israelis: “The ball is in your field.”

At the Jewish Federation, Husseini was asked to clarify his position about Soviet emigration.

“I accept Israel as a state,” Husseini answered. “That means, practically, I accept it can give its passport to whoever wants one. So we have nothing to say about immigration to Israel. But the problem is, this immigration is also to the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem--places we believe must also solve the problem of Palestinian refugees in the future.”

Nevertheless, he said, “We are not against Jews living in the Palestinian state in the future, including in Jerusalem. But not (at the expense of) our own people.”

If Husseini is a leader, he is a quiet leader. He displays little emotion, does not raise his voice, engages in no grand gestures or histrionics, and, in short, is not a charismatic figure. During his visit, his manner was the same among the Arabs as it was among the Jews. He comes across reasonable and diplomatic, but not conciliatory.

He seemed to have trouble holding onto his calm just once, at a private reception in Brentwood, when responding to the by-then frequent question: Why won’t Yasser Arafat and his followers more clearly disavow and condemn terrorists such as Abul Abbas and the Palestine Liberation Front, which led the aborted raid on the Israeli beach last month?

Standing in front of a large coffee table, his listeners seated on deep, chintz-upholstered sofas and chairs, sipping wine or designer waters, he sought to bring the reality of the conflict into the drawing room.

Husseini reminded the group that he has always advocated nonviolence and condemned terrorism, and that he did so again in this instance immediately after the attack. But with the increasing demands from the U.S. State Department concerning the manner of the condemnation, he said, it became more difficult for him.

“Maybe it’s difficult for Americans to understand what it is to be under oppression. You have not been ruled by another government,” he said, his face tensing and his throat tightening as he spoke. “You can’t understand how painful it is to us to be told, ‘Do it this way, not that. Do it now.’ ”

That, he said, is how Arafat was treated in 1988 when he appeared in Geneva, accepted the existence of the Israel and renounced terrorism. The Americans then said, “ ‘Now you’ve proved you are good boys. But we are going to talk about peace now. So get out of the room. Go behind the curtain.’ Our people said, ‘What are you doing? To be out behind the curtain!’ There was a lot of pressure inside from our people.”

So much, he said, that he came to this country earlier this year to try to persuade officials at the White House and State Department to upgrade the level of negotiations between the United States and the PLO. To no avail.

He then returned to Jerusalem and joined other Palestinian leaders in May in a 13-day hunger strike, calling for a U.N. observer team to monitor Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

“We do what we can to help the Palestinian people to go on with nonviolence,” he said.

Faisal Husseini was born in 1940 in Baghdad, where his father lived after being expelled from Palestine during the rebellions of the late 1930s. Except for brief visits, he did not come to live in the city of his ancestors, Jerusalem, until 1964. His family, a wealthy and influential one, traces its ties with Jerusalem back 700 years.

He talked briefly about his life last week, between public appearances. Seeming exhausted, he said he had not slept in two days. At one point, when he seemed overcome, he pulled out an inhalator and acknowledged he is an asthmatic.

His father was killed when he was 8, and he grew up in Cairo, finishing high school and making two stabs at studying geology, first in Baghdad, then Cairo.

“I didn’t take it seriously,” he said. “It didn’t move.”

Not, presumably, because he was a playboy?

The thought startled him and he burst out laughing, shaking his head.

“No, I was not a playboy. Unfortunately.”

What he was, was a political activist, joining other Palestinian students, helping found the General Union of Palestinian Students, with headquarters in Cairo.

He went to East Jerusalem in 1964 to work for the PLO, first “in the office,” and later in the PLO’s fighting forces in Syria. His course seemed to be set.

“I was famous for my family, my father,” he explained. “You have one of two choices: go in the same direction or the opposite. I decided to go in the same direction. . . . For a period, my family name helped. Also, it made it difficult. For me. It was maybe a challenge, to prove myself and get out from the umbrella.”

After fighting in the 1967 war, he returned to Jerusalem. Since then his life has been a cycle of arrests, administrative detentions and house arrests that has continued intermittently until this year. One 18-month sporadic period of incarceration, some of it in solitary confinement, was based on unspecified charges related to his being a “threat to the security of the state.”

Most recently he was jailed for four days in January, on charges he paid for uniforms used by Palestinian rebels in the intifada. Prominent family or not, as he left jail, he was spat upon by one angry spectator who called him a “stinking Arab.”

“I am from a Palestinian family under occupation,” he shrugged. “I’m no exception.”

His status hit him clearly for the first time in 1967, he said, when he was arrested. On top of the humiliation of the defeat itself was the realization in prison “that I was only something that any soldier, police or even other prisoners can treat in any way they like. I was under the mercy of the situation.”

That realization was reinforced when he found himself helpless to prevent the arrest of a little boy.

“I couldn’t even defend a child beaten by soldiers. He was a Palestinian child, maybe 8, with the fright in his eyes. There I was kneeling to him, talking to him and protecting him, maybe like his father would. And then I could do nothing. I reasoned with them, but they took him and put him in a car. Really, I just stood there. It insulted me so. I could do nothing.”

Married and a Muslim, he has two children of his own, a teen-age son and daughter attending a French school in the West Bank, he said. In addition to his political activity, he founded the Arab Studies Society in Jerusalem in 1979.

Now a full research center, with a staff of 120, a library and archives, it started out, he said, as a service to the leadership of the Occupied Territories, translating Israeli articles about the Palestinians and their situation. Officially, he still runs it, but does not give it much time, he said.

By all accounts, he is very much a political activist, and there has been some speculation, that he is among those capable of leading a future state.

He is well aware of his quiet, low-key style, and later said privately, “Yes. I am quiet. But when I talk with people, it will be so calm you can hear a paper move. Maybe the people support me because I never try to address their emotions. I appeal to their minds more than emotions. I was ready long ago to say what they must hear, not what they want to hear.”

He is more than a back-room political strategist. Frequently, he has taken his quiet leadership to the streets. Last year, as killings of Palestinians by Palestinians mounted in the Occupied Territories, it was reported he went from village to village personally pleading restraint. During the recent hunger strike, he met with visiting student groups who wanted to step up the violence, debating the value of nonviolence and civil disobedience, tactics he espouses, with them.

Throughout his appearances, he had told his listeners it is time for Israelis and Palestinians “to get rid of our dreams of a greater Israel, a greater Palestine,” because the dream of one people is the nightmare of the other.

What about himself? When did Faisal Husseini give up his dream of a greater Palestine--or did he?

“I started thinking of it in the late ‘70s. . . . I was emotionally more for a greater state, but as a practical thing, I was convinced of a two-state solution.”

He said that dispassionately, during a private interview, and was about to go on to another topic. Instead, he paused and, smiling and gesturing helplessly, said softly of his dream, “Until now. I can’t help it. I would love to have one state for Christians, Jews and Muslims to live together. It’s not that I don’t like it any more. It’s that it can’t happen.”