Palestine and Zioinism The Whole Truth
Arafat knew that for most Palestinians everywhere at the time that was an UNTHINKABLE compromise because it required them to make peace with Israel in return for only 22% of their land.
But from then on, 1969, Arafat himself was committed to the two-state solution. It then took him 10 long years to sell his policy of politics and compromise to first the majority of his Fatah leadership colleagues and then, eventually, to the PNC, the Palestine National Council which was more or less a Palestinian parliament-in-exile and the highest decision-making body on the Palestinian side.
It was a selling process that required Arafat to put his reputation with his own people and his life on the line. In one of my conversations with Abu Iyad, Fatah’s intelligence and security chief, he told me that if at an early point he had believed Arafat would succeed in getting PNC support for unthinkable compromise with Israel, he would have assassinated him with his own gun. When subsequently I told Arafat what Abu Iyad had said, his only comment was “Yes, I knew that.”
It was after the 1973 war that Arafat stepped up his efforts to sell his policy of politics and compromise to the PNC. His reasoning in the immediate aftermath of that war was that Egypt would make a separate peace with Israel, that Jordan would no doubt do the same at some point, and that if PLO was not committed to peace with an Israel inside its pre-1967 borders, it would be abandoned by those two frontline Arab states.
When he went for broke in his efforts to sell his policy of politics and compromise to the PNC, Arafat summoned each and every one of the PNC’s 300 delegates from all over the world to Beirut for one-on-one conversations with him. The initial response of very many of them was to accuse him of being traitor. Arafat kept his cool and told the rejectors to return to their places in the diaspora and think over what he had said about the need for compromise with Israel. When they had done that, he told them, he would call them back for another conversation with him. Arafat was not a great public speaker but in one-on-one conversations he had the persuasive power of a magician.
That was proved when towards the end of 1979 the PNC meeting in Algiers voted in favour of Arafat’s policy of politics and compromise by 296 votes to 4.
The day after the vote I met with Arafat. He said
QUOTE
It is a miracle. We are now prepared to live in peace with Israel in a mini-state of our own. No more this silly talk of driving the Jews into the sea!
UNQUOTE
Arafat was then at the height of his powers and if Israel’s leaders had been remotely interested in peace on the basis of a genuine two-state solution the door to it was open.
Israel’s response to Arafat the peacemaker came in 1982 when Defence Minister Sharon ordered an invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut. Its purpose was to eliminate the entire PLO leadership and destroy its infrastructure. But that was intended to be only Phase One of Sharon’s master plan.
His intention if he succeeded in eliminating the PLO leadership and destroying its infrastructure was to overthrow the Hashemite regime in Jordan and then say to the occupied and oppressed Palestinians: “Of course you must have a state of your own. There it is on the other side of the Jordan River. Go take it.”
A year later I asked King Hussein if he had been aware of Sharon’s intention to overthrow him. He said yes, he was fully aware of it.
But King Hussein was not the only Arab leader who was fully aware of Sharon’s game plan. When Sharon was well into planning his invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut the Gulf Arab leaders met in secret. Their purpose was to agree a message to be sent to President Reagan. The message they sent was to the effect that when Sharon went for the PLO in Beirut they would not intervene or make any trouble.
How do we know that? One of the Gulf leaders present was Oman’s Sultan Qaboos. And he warned Arafat. According to what Arafat told me, Sultan Qaboos said to him: “Be very careful. The time is coming when you will call for our help and it will not be provided.”
Did the Gulf Arab leaders want Sharon to destroy the PLO? The answer seems to me to be YES.
Another question. By being prepared to make peace with Israel in return for a Palestinian mini state was Arafat effectively renouncing the Palestinian right of return?
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