Palestinians Trying to Find a Way Out

These days, a conversation with almost any Palestinian about the war in the Gulf, the defeat of Iraq’s army and the future of the Palestinian national cause is like holding a talk with two people at the same time.

There is the triumphant Palestinian who is sure that Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, still has tricks up his sleeve, who is convinced that Iraq won and that the Palestinian cause is in good hands with Yasser Arafat, Hussein’s booster and head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Then, from the same person moments later, there emerges the resigned and bitter Palestinian, aware of the battlefield defeat, gloomy about the chances of winning freedom from Israel and railing against the misjudgments and antics of Arafat.

With President Bush’s “new world order” barreling into the Middle East, carrying with it an undefined pledge to resolve Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, the question of which view will hold sway--the fantastic or the realistic--is of more than just passing interest. Will the Palestinians hunker down in rejection as they did after past defeats? Or will they emerge with positive proposals to untangle the long stalemate?

Secretary of State James A. Baker III is expected to visit Israel in the coming days and appeal for progress on peace talks. Palestinian leaders have been working feverishly on fashioning some sort of statement outlining their position.

Beneath the issue of what approach the Palestinians will take is the explosive question of who will speak for them. Divergence of opinion is increasingly evident between the PLO leadership abroad and the battered leadership of the Arab uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Dissent from PLO policies can be heard increasingly amid the din of ritual pledges of loyalty to the group.

First, the PLO is blamed for mismanaging the intifada, as the Arab uprising is known, by failing to grant proper resources or authority to inside leaders to run the rebellion. Now in its 39th month, the intifada is at a low ebb, kept under control by harsh Israeli curfews and weakened by a severe economic slump.

Second, Arafat stands accused of overwhelming the official PLO position, which opposed Kuwait’s annexation by Iraq, with rhetoric that put the Palestinians, in his words, “in the same trench” with Iraq.

Criticism surfaces quickly even if anonymously, for fear of reprisal. “Arafat talks of victory and we know it is otherwise,” said a political scientist at Birzeit University. “He is driving us crazy. It’s time to face reality.”

In their darkest moods, uprising activists speak of the losses of the intifada and the difficulties of recovering its achievements. The sense of failure deepened even before the Aug. 2 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Israel’s squeeze on the intifada, the toll of 700 dead at the hands of soldiers, the violent bickering among factions that killed another 300 or so had worn down the enthusiasm of the uprising’s activists.

By investing in Saddam Hussein’s adventure, some Palestinians think the PLO squandered much of the capital gained during the 40-month struggle.

“We have lost in world public opinion, we have lost the understanding of what we were trying to achieve,” said Walid, an activist in Beit Sahur, a West Bank town near Bethlehem.

He criticized the PLO for hamstringing West Bank and Gaza leaders and moving too slowly to forge its own peace initiatives. “We feel the PLO did not grant us the freedom of thought, the kind of independence we needed to deal with the Israelis,” Walid said.

Is now the time to make bold gestures from within? “No,” answered Walid. “We are too weak.”

Walid and other Palestinians, however critical, are quick to insist that the PLO will continue to play a role in Palestinian politics. Arafat is viewed as a valuable symbol of unity and purpose even if his management of diplomacy is questionable. By taking Iraq’s side, he was also echoing passions from frustrated Palestinians, observers point out.

“It is hard to dispense with a symbol,” said Riyad Malki, a school principal in Ramallah.

In any case, Palestinians seem unclear about who could replace Arafat and how the change might occur. There is general resistance to the imposition of a new leadership by Arab members of the anti-Iraqi coalition--notably Egypt and Syria.

Egyptian diplomats in Israel have taken soundings among Palestinians about setting up an alternative leadership that would travel to Cairo in order to open talks under the wing of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president. Syria has been trying to arrange a counter-PLO among dissident factions in Damascus, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, headed by George Habash. Habash turned down the offer, Palestinians assert.

Some local leaders talk not of jettisoning the PLO but trying to push forward members from within the organization to steer it away from the uneven path designed by Arafat. There is talk of new pan-Palestinian elections to revamp the Palestine National Council, the nominal parliament-in-exile.

As for the leadership in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, there seems to be no one eager to stand up and declare a break from PLO policy. Israel has put many grass-roots leaders in jail, and during the Gulf crisis also took the opportunity of jailing public leaders.

Two pro-PLO leaders, Radwan abu Ayash and Ziad abu Zayyad, were imprisoned without trial last year on charges of incitement. Sari Nusseibeh, who also has links with the PLO, was jailed on charges of spying for Iraq, although his term was cut from six months to three months when authorities admitted that he was not caught in the act, but rather was expected to spy at a later date.

Rather than break from the PLO, local observers speak of trying to tame the organization by designing a clear political platform to galvanize the population and bend the PLO to local will.

At its base, the statement would demand the implementation of U.N. resolutions that call for an eventual Israeli pullout from the West Bank and Gaza.

This is the easy part. The question at issue is what steps to take on the road to full independence. Accepting Israel’s plan for autonomy is viewed as too risky; Palestinians fear that it would be translated into permanent Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO opposes such half-measures.

Baker’s dormant plan to bring Israeli and Palestinian delegations together to discuss elections in the West Bank and Gaza--a plan first put forward in 1989 by Israel itself--might be acceptable, but only with guarantees that it will lead some day to a Palestinian state.

Palestinians deeply distrust Westerners generally and the Americans in particular. “We believe only that the Bush Administration will do everything for the Israelis and nothing for us,” said Bassam, a young activist in Ramallah.

In line with the rejection of U.S. leadership, there are calls for the PLO to drop any effort to work with established powers. Instead, Palestinians should line up with some yet-unformed alliance of poor Third World countries that, in the view of some, share a distaste for the wealthy industrialized nations’ “new world order.”

Over the years, some Palestinian critics say, the PLO has become too enamored of enjoying diplomatic status yet making no real progress.

“The PLO should go back to forging links with trade unions and opposition groups and other people on the outs,” said nationalist journalist Daoud Kutab.