Annual Nakba Commemoration Dinner Speech
For further background you should know that up to this moment I had enjoyed a very special relationship with the “Old Man”. It started early in 1980 when I became the linkman in a secret, exploratory dialogue between him and Shimon Peres, who was then the leader of Israel’s main opposition Labour Party. The hope everywhere at the time, especially in Jimmy Carter’s White House, was that Peres would win Israel’s next election and deny Menachem Begin, the world’s most successful terrorist leader, a second term as prime minister. President Carter was in despair because he had been prevented by Begin and the Zionist Lobby from bringing Arafat and the PLO into the peace process. Working to a Security Council background briefing, my mission was to try to build a bridge of understanding between Arafat and Peres so that in the event of Peres winning the election and becoming prime minister, he could get into public dialogue with Arafat. When Arafat agreed to participate in what I called a conspiracy for peace, he said this to me: “You must understand that I am putting my life into your hands. If word of this leaks before I have something concrete to show for it, I will be assassinated.”
Some years later I discovered who the assassin would have been. Over lunch in his home, I told Abu Iyad the story of my secret shuttle diplomacy between Arafat and Peres, and I ended by quoting what Arafat had said to me at the start of it – that he would be assassinated if word that he was engaged in dialogue with Peres through me leaked. Abu Iyad said: “He was telling you the truth. I would not have ordered anybody else to shoot him, I would have done it myself, with my own gun.”
The following day I told Arafat what Abu Iyad had said. He gave me a long, hard look. Then, in a very matter of fact voice, he said: “I knew that. Abu Iyad would have been the one to do it.” (For those in this audience who may not be familiar with Fatah and PLO politics in 1980 when I started my secret, shuttle diplomacy, Abu Iyad was then the one in Fatah’s top leadership who believed that Arafat’s decision to continue the struggle by politics and diplomacy alone was wrong).
The full, inside story of my shuttle diplomacy is in the forthcoming Volume 3 of the American edition of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. To wet your appetite for it, and before I get to the climax of my favourite Arafat story, I’ll tell you another because it illustrates how pragmatic, how flexible and how serious Arafat was in his effort to do business with Israel, in order to get an acceptable minimum of justice for his people.
At a point in my to’ing and fro-ing between Arafat in Beirut and Peres in Tel Aviv, I decided that we had made enough progress to suggest that they should have a secret, face-to-face meeting. I suggested it first to Arafat. (For background I should tell you that he was not consulting any of his leadership colleagues). When I put the idea to him, Arafat had only one question – What, really, were the prospects of Peres winning the next election and becoming prime minister? I said the expectation in Israel was that he would win. The polls were actually giving his Labour Party a more than 20% lead over Begin’s Likud. Arafat then said, “Yes, I’ll meet with him.” He had only one condition. The meeting could not take place “anywhere on Arab soil”. I said that was no problem. I lived in a rural even remote part of southern England and the meeting could take place in my home. Arafat said, “You have tell me only where and when and I’ll be there“.
Page 3 of 8 | Previous page | Next page