The Palestinian people should not be left with only a nightmare to share
AFIF SAFIEH
An Interview published in 'Genesis 2', a progressive Jewish American magazine in the Fall issue of 1986.

What would your preferred resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict be?

Nahum Goldmann gave a most interesting definition of what diplomacy in the Middle East has been about. Diplomacy, he said, ‘is the art of delaying unavoidable decisions as long as possible.’ This definition was his way of commenting on Kissinger’s step-by-step approach, which was aimed at marginalizing the Palestinian dimension n the Arab-Israeli conflict. It also applies to the Reagan Administration.

A just solution for the Palestinians is no longer possible. Nevertheless, an acceptable peace is still feasible. The two-state solution represents partial justice to the Palestinian people. The Palestinians have consented to a future confederation with Jordan; and itis in everyone’s interest, including Israel’s and King Hussein’s, that this confederation be an equal partnership between its two components, a free choice of both parties concerned.

As you can see, this project s far away from the 1960’s Palestinian ‘dream’ of a democratic unitary state. It is also beneath the ‘mini-dream’ of a totally independent sovereign state on parts of Palestine. If the Israeli leadership and public opinion continue to obstruct the realization of what is now a ‘mini-mini dream’, and they can, they will leave the Palestinians with only a nightmare to share. And the wave of unprecedented violence that this intolerable situation will inevitably trigger will be of their making. A Palestinian-Jordanian confederation is really the bottom line of concessions possible.

It is high time the Israelis realize the price paid by the Palestinian people for the birth of the State of Israel. It would do no harm to feel responsible and concerned for the tragedy of the Palestinians. Arguments such as ‘the Palestinians are responsible for their own ordeals’ leave me uncomfortable. To Jews, they should sound familiar. Haven’t we heard ‘arguments’ that ‘the Jews are responsible for the persecution that befell them?’ A grand gesture by Israel, now that there is no significant military or diplomatic pressure on it, could be extremely beneficial for future relations.

Yet, even among the doves, even when only partial withdrawal is contemplated, it is usually explained by the ‘Arab demographic threat’ - the threat the growing Arab population poses to Israeli democracy, etc. By such arguments they only add insult to the many injuries. I personally have difficulties understanding such excessive ethnocentricity. Israeli author Amos Oz has written that Begin’s Israel (why only Begin’s?) was a constant retaliation against the Palestinians for all the injustice committed by humanity against the Jews. I would like someone to tell me when enough is enough.

Could Yasser Arafat survive a process of mutual recognition? If not, what then? If so, how would it affect his leadership role?

Yasser Arafat has survived through long years of political vulnerability because of his unreciprocated availability for the idea of mutual recognition. A serious process of mutual recognition will reinforce Arafat and the mainstream PLO.

Arafat had, because of his diplomatic strategy between 1974-1979, to live with the rejection front’, a coalition of Palestinian movements that withdrew from the executive committee of the PLO and opposed the policies pursued. In 1983, Arafat had to confront a dissident movement within the PLO. If Arafat has been weakened, it is simply because Israel and the US were not receptive to his pragmatic approach. He could produce no tangible results. Yet he remained in control of the PLO through the normal functioning of its constitutional organs, namely the Palestinian National Council (PNC), and the massive popular support he enjoys.

In this respect, Mark Heller, an Israeli strategic thinker and author of A Palestinian State and the Implications for Israel, argues, in detail and in a way that should be persuasive to all Israelis, that 1) it is in Israel’s best national interest to negotiate with the PLO and accept Palestinian nationalism, and 2) Israel should not be tempted to multiply the difficulties during the transition from Israeli occupation to Palestinian sovereignty. Such a genuine peace process is in everyone’s enlightened interest.

What about Israeli fear that a Palestinian state would be a staging ground for efforts to acquire the Galilee or all of Israel?

The real concern, knowing the historical precedents, should be the containment of Israel’ and not the other way around.

No, there will be no ‘Palestinian Ben Gurionism’ after the birth of a Palestinian state. It is now beyond historical doubt that Ben Gurion and ~is colleagues accepted the partition of Palestine in 1947 only as a temporary formula. Ben Gurion is known to have spent much time wondering ‘how he could provoke the Arabs into provoking Israel’ so as to justify an expansion beyond the ‘narrow borders’ of the cease-fire lines of
1949.

Israeli General Mati Peled said once that ‘pretending that Israel was in danger in 1967 is an offense to the Israeli army’. This applies to the Israel of the 80’s, 90’s and beyond. Let us not forget that we are talking of a country that is the fourth military power in the world, just after the US, the USSR and China. Its air force, numerically, is equal to the those of the French and the British combined. On the operational level, they must surely be superior because of their frequent combat experience.

Knesset member Mordechai Vershubski from the Shinui party told me three years ago at a Harvard symposium that if Israel ever considers that a casu belli is committed by a future Palestinian state, it will have no difficulty in re-occupying the West Bank and Gaza. And he added, Jokingly, that the problem in Israel is to have the army withdraw once it has advanced; having it advance when necessary is not a problem.

Since the question of the containment of the future state of Palestine is on the diplomatic agenda, let me tell you why I think there is no such ‘danger’ that a Palestinian state will become a staging ground for future expansion.

First of all, because of the imbalance of forces not only between Israel and Palestine but between Israel and any possible Arab coalition. By the way, in the 1970’s, to give even more assurances to Israel, the idea of a formal military alliance between the US and Israel was floated. That idea was supposed to reassure the Israelis that no change in the post bellum posture will work to their detriment. Paradoxically, it was Israel whose reaction to this idea was most reluctant. It found that it would limit unnecessarily its margin of maneuver. Israel preferred to remain what Shimon Peres has called, in 1984, an ‘undisciplined ally’ and continue to enjoy the ‘advantages’ of such a status.

Second: You have to take into consideration the deep yearning, the ceaseless quest of the Palestinians for a normal or quasi-normal life of which they have been, for so long, deprived.Once an acceptable settlement is achieved, the Palestinian people will be for decades absorbed in a process of state-building, resettling and reintegrating refugees, solving the enormous burdens and complications left over by endless years of an occupation that some intended to be permanent. No reasonable Palestinian will contemplate, or allow, jeopardizing the relative and newly acquired salvation through a reckless unwise individual or collective action that will reinvite hell to reinvade their lives. It will be the Palestinian people, even more than the Israelis, who will have an interest that no military actions or operations take place.

Third: As a result of negotiations, security measures will be devised and UN troops will be stationed most probably on Palestinian territory with a clear peace-keeping mandate that would have taken into consideration the lessons drawn form previous missions in the area. For example, learning from the 1967 precedent when Nasser asked U Thant to withdraw the U N troops from the Sinai, it could be decided that in the future the withdrawal of U N troops would need a unanimous vote of the Security Council and not a unilateral demand by any one individual state. I am sure that lessons can and should be drawn from the repeated Israeli violations of the UNIFIL in South Lebanon.

Given what appears to be hostility on the part of all the Arab countries toward the notion of a genuinely independent Palestinian state, doesn’t it seem dishonest that the conflict is portrayed with the Israelis as the entire obstacle?

 There is a Chinese proverb that says, ‘if someone points with his finger to the moon, don’t look at the finger.’ We should not let the Arab tree hide the Israeli forest.

Who displaced Palestinian demography from Palestinian geography? If that hadn’t happened, the Palestinians would have never had problems with host countries or with some para-military organizations in those countries. Which country occupies the totality of Palestine? I know that General Sharon thinks otherwise, and he is, alas, more influential than Genesis 2 and Afif Safieh, but a Palestinian state should emerge on territories controlled today by Israel and no one else.

I know some Arab leaders choose to deploy strength, power and influence where the risk seems to be less ‘risky’. Some Arab leaders, in the process of the management of their impotence and incapability of coping with the Israeli challenge, prefer a showdown in the inter-Arab arena.

Arab summit meetings represent Arab consensus. All resolutions adopted call for the creation of a Palestinian state. If the PLO has problems with Libya and Syria, it is due, among other reasons, to their criticism that it has abandoned the claim for a totally independent state. As for King Hussein, I am sure that he feels today that his February 1986 speech was unwise and that he was ill-advised. The anti-Saudi mood here in the US, which includes denying the Saudis weapons the feel they need to cope with the Khomeini challenge, is the price Saudi Arabia pays for its support of the PLO and Palestinian statehood in spite of its steady pro-Western and pro-American orientation on all other issues.

What do you think would happen to the PLO after the formation of a state?

Once a genuine peace process starts, at a certain moment the PLO, through the Palestinian National Council, will transfer its legitimacy and prerogatives to a provisional government-in-exile. Further in the peace process there will be the transfer of that government to Palestinian territory. Once total evacuation of the occupied territories is accomplished, elections will taken place for a constituent assembly whose mandate will be to elaborate the constitution of the new state. In the meantime, a redeployment and reclassification will taken place on the political map. There will be fusion between movements and we will probably witness the birth of new parties also.

It will be a fascinating period of constructive creativity. The Palestinians have, for years, daydreamed and nightdreamed about the state and society in which they would like to live.
I am a Third World admirer of De Gaulle, I admire him not only for his constitutional reforms and his foreign policy after he returned to power in 1958, but also for the way he resurrected vanquished France and placed it again in the place he thought it deserved on the political map, struggling against foes and friends alike who would have liked to see it remain disminished.

For the Palestinians Yasser Arafat is De Gaulle. We are still waiting for the American Eisenhower.