Tea Leaves and Arafat

Yasser Arafat was in Stockholm this week, talking with a small delegation of American Jews in a meeting brokered by the Swedish government and aimed at clarifying just what the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Arafat heads, really decided on at its Algiers conference last month. The Americans at the meeting, as well as Sweden’s Foreign Minister Sten Sture Andersson, came away convinced that a historic change has taken place in the PLO’s thinking. The main evidence for that conclusion derives from the joint declaration that Arafat signed, which says among other things that the PLO now accepts “the existence of Israel as a state in the region.” Explicit acceptance of what is usually called Israel’s “right to exist” has been one of the conditions set by the United States before it will agree to deal directly with the PLO.

It would be nice to think that a revolutionary shift in PLO attitudes has in fact occurred. Whether it would be accurate to think so is another matter. Certainly the PLO’s stated policy of armed confrontation has led it to pretty much of a political dead end. Certainly there are abundant reasons for it to adjust at long last to the on-the-ground realities of the Middle East.It’s no secret that Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, who have now gone into their second year of demonstrations against Israeli rule, want the PLO to say bluntly that it recognizes Israel’s legitimacy and that Palestinians are ready to coexist alongside it, seeing that as the only way to end Israeli military occupation. It’s no secret either that significant and even implacable opposition exists within the PLO to saying or doing any such thing.

The PLO, as we are constantly reminded by those who try to explain its apparent inability to say anything clearly and unevasively, is an umbrella organization whose policies derive from a consensus hammered out among its disparate and often discordant elements. That, of course, is the PLO’s great and maybe even fatal political weakness. An organization that claims to be the “sole” voice of the Palestinian people in fact finds itself speaking with many different voices, with the result that no one can be sure at any given moment just what the PLO in fact is saying.

On the final day of last month’s Palestine National Council meeting, PLO spokesmen assured the press that the resolutions passed by the conference had implicitly --not explicitly, as Arafat now suggests--recognized Israel. A few days later George Habash, the leader of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine faction of the PLO, denied that the the resolutions had done any such thing. In Stockholm this week Arafat is said to have assured his interlocutors that the Algiers resolutions had made “null and void” the Palestine National Covenant, which calls for the extermination of Israel. But this was said in the course of private conversations. Even as Arafat was speaking, his deputy Abu Iyad was telling a Lebanese publication that the PLO has no intention of amending the charter, and that the issue didn’t even come up at the Algiers session. In these circumstances it is small wonder that the PLO has a credibility problem.

Where does the PLO stand today? The Algiers meeting was supposed to answer that question, but didn’t. The Stockholm meeting seemed to move matters slightly forward, but it is by no means clear whether Arafat was speaking for himself or with a mandate from his divided organization.

What next? In a few days Arafat is scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly, which is temporarily moving its deliberations to Geneva after Arafat was denied a visa to enter the United States. Maybe then he will have something unambiguous, unevasive, unequivocal to say about the PLO’s position on recognizing Israel, abandoning terrorism and engaging in the peace process. This will be his third chance to do so before the eyes of the world in less than a month. Will he at long last say in plain words and with the authority of his organization behind him what the PLO is up to? Or will he once again simply throw out handfuls of rhetorical tea leaves, leaving it to friend and foe alike to interpret them as they will?