A Bantustan Is No Solution for Palestine

The following is excerpted from an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization President Yasser Arafat, conducted last week in Tunis by Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspectives Quarterly.

Question: Doesn’t (Secretary of State James A.) Baker’s visit in Jerusalem indicate to you that the United States is sincere?

Answer: I am sorry to say, things aren’t progressing as they started in President Bush’s address to the Congress after the war. We appreciated . . . his talk of exchanging territories for peace, withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories.

But during the meeting with (French) President (Francois) Mitterrand last month, he changed what he had said before Congress. No, Bush told Mitterrand, on the self-determination of the Palestinian people; no, on the independent state; no, on the role of the PLO; no for the international conference. . . .

And now what is the U.S. proposing? They propose a two-track solution. Normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab states including, maybe, a new Camp David to find, not the but a solution, some kind of autonomy or self-government, a Middle Eastern Bantustan, a “condominium” between Jordan, Israel and Palestine.

Q: And you reject this approach fully?

A: It’s not that I reject it; it can’t work. . . . No Arab state will be able to talk with Israel as long as the Palestinian issue is not resolved. . . .

Q: During the war, Egypt, the leading Arab coalition state, said many nasty things about Arafat and the PLO. Many high officials said you were finally finished. . . .

A: Even during the war, relations with Egypt and us were never broken. Now, the whole picture is changing. I am proud of this meeting with the Egyptian foreign minister a fortnight ago. I worked hard for it, as I have been working with the Maghreb countries to convince them to come together, and for a meeting of all of us Arabs, for the first time after this tragic war. I have even personally sent an envoy to meet with Saddam (Hussein) to try to get him to attend. We would all be under the same tent in such a meeting. Perhaps not a comfortable tent, but the same tent. In this way we may prove that, by our own efforts, we can heal the wounds. . . .

Q: Paradoxically, maybe the state-to-state security track promoted by Bush could provide Israelis with enough sense of security to enable them to resolve the Palestinian question through a land-for-peace arrangement?

A: This cannot be done. The moment some Arab states far from Palestinian soil will begin to deal with the Israelis, this means they are betraying the Palestinians. Not one of them are in a position (with respect to their own people) to be in that seat. Not one of them.

Q: Are the younger people among the Palestinians starting to think militantly again, that is, in terms of armed struggle?

A: I’m sorry to say, yes. You don’t know what pressure I am facing. I have given instructions to the intifada not to use weapons. I am facing pressure from the people within the occupied territories and from many Palestinian leaders. I still say, no weapons. It is a miracle that, for the fourth year, they are still following my instructions, despite the massacres.