THE PLO DEAD OR ALIVE?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504120003-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: October 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

41110111111
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AR'(I- to
WASHINGTON
17 October
By Don McLeod
and Deborah Papier
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Parading through the United
Nations with his empty gun holster
on display, beaming through his
whiskers in meetings with leaders of
the Western world as well as of the
Arab community, Yasser Arafat dur-
ing the 1970s seemed a genuinely
historic figure.
He had achieved the nearly
impossible goal of converting an out-
law terrorist organization into the
internationally recognized
government-in-exile of a state that
did not even exist.
The movement he headed - the
Palestine Liberation Organization -
had succeeded in gaining recogni-
tion as the sole credible voice of the
stateless Palestinian people.
In the West, only the United States
and Israel refused to deal with the
Soviet-allied organization that had
as its stated purpose not only the
creation of a Palestinian state. but
the destruction of Israel.
The promised land seemed within
Mr. Arafat's reach; the destruction
of Israel would have to wait.
But now the Middle East drama
seems to have taken a new twist, and
given Mr. Arafat a very new role.
Driven from his military stronghold
in Lebanon, standing in the rubble of
the'Ilmisian camp that was his head-
quarters until it was bombed by
Israeli jet fighters, and reeling from
the botched hijacking of the Italian
cruise ship Achille Lauro, Mr. Arafat
has diminished steadily.
His leadership is under attack
from within and without his organ-
ization. Even if he survives, some
say he soon lead a movement without
hope or relevance.
"Arafat is now more depF'ndent
than ever on his friends and more
vulnerable to his enemies;' says a
Middle East analyst. "Arafat's been
on the ropes for three years, and he
looks bad," says another source.
Abraham Foxman, associate
national director of the Anti-
Defamation League of B'nai B'rith,
believes the PLO basically has been
"in decline since 1982." Since the
war in Lebanon, in which Israeli
forces destroyed the PLO's power
position there and forced the organ-
ization to disperse around the Arab
world, he says, "it has lost its operat-
ing base and had to scatter its
sources and resources. Since '82
there is more splintering, there isn't
the central control. Arafat doesn't
have a place where he can feed them
and house them and provide for
them"
Zedhi Terzi, the PLO's delegate at
the United Nations, concedes that
the 1982 defeat "did weaken our mili-
tary wing. We have our forces spread
all over the Arab world, which I
think is a weakening of our armed
apparatus. Deployment becomes
more difficult."
Most everyone warns against
writing Arafat off too soon, however.
"He has had 19 lives," says one
observer. So has the PLO itself, met-
amorphosing from an arm of the
anti-Israeli cause of onetime Egyp-
tian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, to a
civil-war threat in Jordan, to the
political arbiter of a fractured Leba-
non, and now again a scattered ter-
rorist organization. Says Terzi: "I
think we're still doing fine; we sur-
vive."
But there is a telltale character to
recent PLO terrorist acts: a distinct
trace of angst, an uncharacteristic
ineptitude of operation, the absence
of clearly defined goals or intent -
and a high failure rate. Other than a
senseless murder, the hijacking of
the Achille Lauro accomplished
nothing more for the pirates than a
global media blitz that made them
look more incompetent than intimi-
dating - that is, to all but Leon
Klinghoffer, the 69-year-old
wheelchair-bound Manhattanite.
killed at least in part because he was
a Jew. Initially, there were the usual
demands that imprisoned terrorists
TIMES
1985
be freed, but in the end this gang
appeared interested only in getting
away whole - and they failed even
at that.
The real impact of this episode
was that it flashed the image of a
dangerously dormant PLO across
the world. Although it may be some
time before the true details are
known, indications were that public-
ity may have been the hijacking's
only result.
Tb reach that conclusion, analysts
look at the position of Arafat,
perched in a blasted camp in Tunis
with a handful of bodyguards and an
administrative cadre, commanding
a distant and scattered army devoid
of effective armament, and removed
by more than 1,400 miles from his
nemesis Israel. He was swept from
Lebanon three years ago, his shame
compounded by his getaway on
ships loaned by the hated Ameri-
cans. His Arab brothers scarcely
lifted a hand to help when Israeli
forces prepared to annihilate his bat-
tered army. The Lebanon debacle
robbed Arafat of his last facility for
direct military action against Israel.
It reduced his options, and it made
pursuing new ones dangerous. In
old-fashioned Western slang, Yasser
Arafat is between a rock and a hard
spot. He is a man of impressive
assets but shrinking prospects.
"What Arafat has is the support of
the great majority of [the 4.5 mil-
lion] Palestinians," says one congres-
sional source. Other observers point
to the strength Arafat derives from
being the one recognized and stable
leader in the whole movement.
The PLO is actually an umbrella
organization composed of at least
eight main groups - chief among
them Arafat's al-Fatah, with 10,000
to 15,000 fedayeen (fighters) - and
numerous factions. The splintering
has become especially frequent
since the defeat in Lebanon. Syrian
President Hafez al-Assad, Arafat's
onetime ally, has waged a war for
control of the PLO, hoping to fold in
PLO strength with his rapidly mod-
ernizing and powerful armed forces.
Says Terzi, considered Arafat's
man: "[The defeat in Lebanon] was
followed by that the Syrian govern-
rrent was directly involved, of try-
ing to destroy us from within." Terzi
mentions Syrian-backed attacks on
pro-Arafat refugee camps in Beirut
this year: "They [pro-Syrian Pales-
tinians] resorted to the use of their
artillery against their own people."
Other groups report to the Iraqis
and the Libyans. Two Marxist units
- the Popular Front for the Liber-
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ation of Palestine, run by Arafat's
longtime rival George Habash; and
the Democratic Front for the Liber-
ation of Palestine, run by Nayif
Hawatmeh - together claim more
than 7,000 members and answer
directly to Moscow.
Says Yoram Ettinger, Israeli con-
sul general in Houston and a recog-
nized authority on the PLO: "Arab
leaders, like Syria, have seized the
opportunity of the decline of the
PLO in Lebanon to further their hold
over some elements within the
organization."
Still, the rest of the Arab world
channels its financial assistance
through Arafat. Saudi Arabia alone
provides more than $85 million a
year. And in addition to this institu-
tional support, there is the contribu-
tion of the Palestinian diaspora.
Scattered about the world, including
several sizable communities in
major U.S. cities, these Palestinian
emigres are generally industrious
people who earn good wages. The
Palestinian "guest workers" who
power the industrial machine of the
oil-rich states around the Persian
Gulf donate 5 percent of their
incomes to the PLO. U.S. officials
estimate the PLO has at least $5 bil-
lion in assets.
"Now as long as that money's all
running through Arafat's hands,
Arafat's a powerful guy," the con-
gressional source says. But there
may be some strain in PLO finances,
and the strain may be getting worse.
This is probably unrelated to Ara-
fat's political-military problems. But
Arab oil states, who have been pay-
ing baksheesh to Arafat, are feeling
the oil glut, and the Saudi "develop-
ment assistance" to the PLO has
declined dramatically - from per-
haps as much as $1 billion in the late
1970s. With the oil glut, the Saudis
and others are laying off some of
their work force. This means that
the flow of donations from guest
workers is diminishing.
Arafat's primary strength, how-
ever, is that he has better interna-
tional connections than any other
comparable figure in the PLO. More
than 100 governments recognize
him as the head of the PLO, which
they consider the sole legitimate
representative body of the Palestin-
ians. It also is recognized by the
Soviet Union as the only governing
authority over Palestine. (The Sovi-
ets do not have diplomatic relations
with Israel.) The PLO was the first
so-called liberation movement to be
granted observer-state status at the
United Nations.
Writes Aaron David Miller, a State
Department official and leading
scholar on the Middle East: "The
PLO has some form of diplomatic
representation in more countries
than actually recognize Israel and
has a budget and infrastructure
larger than those of many Third
World states." This is near-
miraculous for a state without a
country, a government without terri-
tory. Arafat's army all but disap-
peared in the Lebanon showdown of
1982, when it was caught between
Israeli and Syrian forces, but por-
tions escaped to fight another day.
Best estimates are that as many
as 8,000 armed Palestinians have re-
established themselves in Lebanon,
although under the eye if not the
thumb of Syria's Assad. There are
another 2,500 in North and South
Yemen, including a marshaling and
training base on Kamaran Island in
the Red Sea. Other surviving
Palestinian fighters are believed to
be in Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Sudan,
Jordan, Libya, Cyprus, Iran and
Pakistan. There also are an esti-
mated 5,000 part-time Palestinian
guerrillas at Eastern European uni-
versities, their studies financed by
the PLO.
"The organization is probably at
one of its lowest points, and it has
been since '82," says another govern-
ment expert. "But there's still a lot
of armed people out there, and
there's still a lot of loyalty to certain
members of the PLO senior com-
mand. The anti-Arafat groups are
stronger, as strong as Arafat right
now, but they're all loyal to what they
think of as the Palestinian cause."
After the Achille Lauro fiasco,
Arafat may be forced to take drastic
face-saving action, and given the
U.S. capture of the PLO hijackers,
the next target may well be
American. The United States is
patently vulnerable to such attacks,
and there are many methods the
PLO could use: car-bombings and
airport and bus station raids, among
others. The PLO already has a large
network of sympathizers and sup-
porters in place in the United States,
ranging from the Marxist left to
anti-Semitic black racists and white
supremacists.
Arab politicians dance carefully
around the reasons for the recent
frenzy of terrorist acts. Terzi
explains in diplomat's language: "We
have always envisaged the course of
our struggle as a diplomatic
strategy and a military strategy. We
have been trying our utmost to pur-
sue a diplomatic thrust, but we never
gave up on armed struggle." Adds
the Arab League's United Nations
Observer Clovis Maksoud: "The
more the futility of the diplomatic
option becomes obvious, the more
radicalized is the constituency. Yet it
has not reached the stage of giving
upon the diplomatic, political option
- not as an alternative to resistance,
but as a complementarity to it."
Thus, the result: terrorism.
Since the Israelis drove the PLO
from Lebanon, Arafat has had to
redirect his thinking from com-
manding what once was a regular
army in south Lebanon back to
bombing school buses and murder-
ing innocents. Since he no longer
could shell Israel he had to resort to
other means.
Sys Ray S. Cline former deputy
director of the CIA: ,It
is a myth that
Arafat never had any responsibility
for the more militant terrorist activ-
ityof the various wings of the PLO;
he_s mply_had_posAioned himself in
apc front position where e
could disclaim responsibility, and I
believe there were many operations
that he probably didn't control.
".lust as theS viet leaders in Mos_
cow truly can say they don't control
all the operations Arafat doesn't
consrol all theoperations. BothMo-
cow and Arafat have a good-bit I
influence over what happen They
have encouraged the climate of vio-
lence and they__do know about and
probably authorize certain selected
terrorist a- ctivities^- ----
TWo years of licking his wounds
and fighting internecine battles in
his organization brought Arafat to
an odd juncture. He began talking
peace with Jordan's King Hussein,
and terrorist activity against Israel
began to pickup at the same time. In
the first six months of this year, Ara-
fat's commanders claimed responsi-
bility for anti-Israeli terrorist acts
that included hijackings, bombings
and a train derailment. From Febru-
ary through May, the claims - not
always confirmed by Israel - aver-
aged 10 a month.
The Israelis made their first seri-
ous concession in history to the PLO
when on May 20 they gave in to
demands for a prisoner exchange,
swapping 1,150 captured Palestin-
ians for three Israeli soldiers. The
move was controversial within
Israel, which has always advocated
no discussion or concessions what-
ever. The following month, the PLO
claimed responsibility for 32 terror-
ist acts - nearly twice its total for
the previous five months. They
claimed only nine attacks in July;
but if spring violence consisted of
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many scattered sparks, mid- and
late-summer incidents were fires
that threatened to set fall ablaze. The
Israelis claim to have intercepted
numerous seaborne PLO teams
attempting to enter their country in
recent months.
Israel went back to work hunting
terrorists. On July 21, Israeli troops
stormed two south Lebanon villages.
At least three villagers were
reported killed in the raid. Twelve
days later, Israeli officials reported
finding leaflets encouraging terror-
ist activity against Israel, distrib-
uted on the campus of Al-Najah
University in Nablus on the West
Bank. The university was ordered
closed for two months.
Two months after releasing the
1,150 prisoners, the Israeli Cabinet
took strong action Aug. 4 to crack
down on terrorism. Measures
included deportations of persons
constituting a security risk, indefi-
nite "administrative detention"
without charges for Arabs su$-
pected of security offenses, increase
of prison capacity in the West Bank,
and the closure of Arab newspapers
violating censorship by publishing
inflammatory material.
The battle continued. On Sept. 3,
two Israeli soldiers were knifed by
Arabs; one of the soldiers later died
of his wounds. Shortly after the stab-
bings, several Soviet-made Kat-
yusha rockets reportedly struck
northwestern Israel, near the Leba-
nese border.
The next day, Israel announced it
would attack guerrilla centers in
Jordan if Hussein did not expel Pal-
estinians from the Jordanian capi-
tal. Israeli warplanes attacked what
they said was a Palestinian guerrilla
base in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa
Valley. Israel claimed it destroyed
four buildings housing the
Palestinian Arab Revolutionary
Committee.
The battle erupted into a small
war Sept. 25, when three Palestin-
ians boarded an Israeli yacht har-
bored in Larnaca, Cyprus. Three
Israeli civilians - two men and onp
woman - were killed. The attackers
had hoped to trade their victims for
a group of Palestinians intercepted
by Israel the previous month en
route to Lebanon. Israel had said the
captured Palestinians were planning
raids against the Jewish state. The
next day Arab gunmen opened fire
on a public bus in the West Bank.
Seven people were injured. Hur--
'dreds of Jews retaliated by
smashing windows in West Bank
Arab homes. The demonstrators
also stoned a village mosque, caus,
ing heavy damage.
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a
Finally, on Oct. 1, Israeli jets flew
nearly 1,500 miles from home to
strike PLO headquarters near Timis
as retaliation for the Larnaca mur-
ders. Israeli intelligence pinpointed
the Larnaca terrorists as members
of Force 17, Arafat's armed body-
guard. The strike also served as a
deadly reminder to Arafat that he
could not escape retaliation, and that
his ability to mount attacks against
Israel was dwindling.
In the same period, Arafat was
working the other side of the street,
in the typical war-diplomacy style of
the PLO. On Feb. 11 of this year, Ara-
fat and Jordan's Hussein signed a
dramatic agreement, which was the
first acceptance by the PLO leader
of the idea that the conflict with
Israel might be settled peaceably. It
did not repeat the long-standing
Palestinian demand for an indepen-
dent state, but hinted rather at a
Palestinian state federated with Jor-
dan - a highly qualified revision of
Ronald Reagan's September 1982
peace plan.
Just as significantly, it suggested
that Palestinians be part of a joint
delegation with the Jordanians at a
new round of Middle East peace
talks. Then in May, Hussein
remarked to reporters on the White
House lawn that Arafat was ready to
accept U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338,
which essentially recognize Israel's
national legitimacy, something the
PLO and most Arab nations
steadfastly have refused to do. Both
Hussein and Arafat later hedged on
these trial balloons but did not quite
burst them.
The peace process Hussein put
forth calls for meetings between a
U.S. delegation and a Palestinian-
Jordanian delegation. At the first
meeting the Palestinian group would
include no PLO representatives, but
in the scenario outlined by U.S.
experts with an eye on the process,
the United States would be called on
for a statement that it recognizes the
right of the Palestinian people to
self-determination - within the con-
text of a confederation with Jordan.
This would be a monumental, and
risky, first step for the United States,
which has not supported Palestinian
self-determination before. In
response to this opening concession
by the United States, Arafat would
then formally state his acceptance of
U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338 and the
right of Israel to exist as a nation.
"If the PLO now recognizes
Israel, there's no reason for us not to
meet with the PLO," a U.S. insider
says. "Those meetings are supposed
to help plan an international confer-
ence - probably under the auspices
of the [UN.] Security Council, which
means inviting the Soviets - in
which all parties to the conflict
would meet, including the Israelis,
including the PLO"
The snag from the U.S. and Israeli
perspectives is the prospect of invit-
ing the Soviet Union back into the
picture, "causing all sorts of mis-
chief," as one doubter puts it. "As far
as I can see, that problem remains
the nut that they haven't cracked,
and therefore we haven't moved very
far since May." The Israelis have let
it be known they would like to talk
directly with Hussein - but not with
Arafat attached, and certainly not in
any circumstance that would rein-
troduce Soviet interference.
The plan had considerable sup-
port within the Reagan
administration, particularly from
Richard Murphy, assistant secre-
tary of state for Near Eastern
affairs. Debate raged within the
State Department, but reportedly
Secretary of State George P Shultz
has thrown cold water on the plan for
now
Several experts express strong
doubts that any of this could work
anyway, beginning with doubt about
Arafat's good intentions. Addition-
ally, there is the problem of Syria's
Assad, who appears more interested
in co-opting the PLO than helping it
reconcile differences with Israel. At
the very least, they say, Syria would
want to achieve military- parity with
Israel before agreeing to any gen-
eral settlement of the Middle East
problem - or before trying in ear-
nest to get rid of Assad's enemy. On
the other hand, the same observers
feel that every nation involved in the
decades-long struggle is weary of
the cost in money, lives and national
morale, and that the Arab states,
despite expected public denials,
finally recognize that Israel will not
be driven into the sea as they prom-
ised in 1948.
"Palestinians are at a crossroad
between becoming the Kurds of the
Arab world, an eternal diaspora,
never gaining any of their rights, or
moving forward to peace with Israel
and regaining at least some of their
legitimate rights and recognition of
their Palestinian nationalism. In the
absence of making peace with Israel
they're never going to get what they
want, and Israel is a fact that is not
going to be overcome. I don't think
even Arafat dreams of recovering
Tel Aviv," says a U.S. observer.
A US. analyst poses the following
dilemma: "[Arafat's] problem is, if
he is interested in making peace
with Israel, how does he do that
while maintaining any kind of cohe-
sion within his organization? And
then you have to ask yourself what's
more important to him: maintaining
the, organization, or moving toward
peace?
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"Now, that may seem like a funny
kind of question, but the history of it
is that maintaining internal cohesion
within that organization has been
more important than looking toward
peace. You take a look at Arab lead-
ers who have thought about making
peace with Israel, and I wouldn't
want to sell them life insurance:'
Working both sides of the street is
nothing new to Arafat, but it is
becoming increasingly dangerous
as his options narrow. With his mili-
tary capability stunted, diplomacy
becomes more important - and this
is more obvious to everyone
watching him, friend or foe.
"His opponents say he is selling
out;" says an expert. "We say he is not
moving quickly enough:'
But the collapse of Lebanon has
'Changed the circumstances in which
Arafat must figure these things. "We
now have a situation within the
Palestinian community of differ-
ences of approach of how to regain
the lost territory;" a U.S. expert says.
"Arafat argues he's willing to take a
diplomatic approach. Others say the
only way we're going to do it is via
armed struggle:'
Says a Middle East analyst: "The
PLO is trapped between its past and
its future" -a past of hard-line poli-
tics, terrorist military action, and
Syrian and Soviet patronage; and a
possible future tied to a peace initia-
tive, closer ties with Jordan's Hus-
sein and eventually with the United
States and Israel. "Arafat probably
realizes the course he would like to
follow," the analyst speculates, "but
he is shackled by the organization
that he heads and the revolutionary
principles of a movement he helped
create:"
Arafat's position as chairman of
the PLO is the work of the Palestine
National Council, a quasi-legislative
forum in which the PLO's disparate
elements meet and fight. It gathers
irregularly (17 times in the past 21
years) to determine matters of
policy, elect the equivalent of a Cabi-
net and choose the chairman.
By charter, Arafat's al-Fatah has
33 seats on the approximately 400-
member council, and other factions
of the armed forces also have a fixed
number of representatives. Accord-
ing to Thrzi, those commando groups
make up about a third of the mem-
bership; another third comes from
refugee camps. The last large group
is from organizations such as trade
unions, chambers of commerce, stu-
dent groups and professional associ-
ations; these groups have
representation based on their size.
Finally, there is the 10 percent of the
council that is unaffiliated. "They
are the independents:' says Terzi,
"individuals selected by the council
for the expertise they can contri-
bute" This group includes some U.S.
citizens.
When the council does convene,
one of the main orders of business is
to hear reports from the executive
committee, whose 15 members
function like a Cabinet, with each
person in charge of a department -
education, foreign affairs, etc. After
submitting their reports, the com-
mittee members hand in their resig-
nations, and a new committee is
elected by the council as a whole.
The members of the executive
committee are charged with thetask
of selecting a PLO chairman. How-
ever, last year Arafat stage-managed
a vote of support from the floor by
threatening to lay down his mantle.
Despite the challenges to him -
from Syria, Libya and others - Ara-
fat is not likely to lose his job. Says
Palestinian journalist Ghassan Bi-
shara, Washington correspondent
for the Jerusalem-based newspaper
Al-Fajr: "For better or for worse, he
has become a symbol. But I would
not say he is a figurehead. If you
would attend meetings of the Pal-
estine National Council and see Ara-
fat in action, he's very effective." The
Arab League's Maksoud believes
that despite opposition Arafat
"remains a credible representative
of the mainstream."
According to Bradley Gordon, the
Middle East expert on the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee staff:
"If Arafat isn't there, there's nobody
left from within the Palestinian com-
munity who has the authority to sign
on the bottom line."
Nonetheless, Arafat is under
attack from within his movement,
and the only possible way through
the maze, the experts say, is to con-
tinue pressing diplomacy and war at
the same time. Since his direct mili-
tary capability is gone, war for the
time being translates into terrorism
- such as the hijacking of the
Achille Lauro.
Compounding Arafat's problem is
the rising popularity of terrorism in
the Middle East. Other dissident
groups have taken up the same tactic
and diluted or even defeated the
impact of Palestinian terrorism. The
average Westerner no longer can tell
one group of hijackers from another.
No single group's message is getting
through.
Arafat's political situation has
made it difficult for him to abandon
terrorism altogether: A certain
amount of fury has been necessary
to prove he hasn't gone soft. But
Western analysts have begun to
observe a trend of what some clas-
sify as a kind of "controlled terror"
- not against Israelis, toward whom
the PLO is as bloody as ever, but in
relation to the West.
"I think what that means is
they're so conscious of the political
effect:' a government analyst says.
"they want to scare them and get the
political capital. They don't really
want to blow up the plane, but they
want you to know they can blow up
the plane; so every once in a while
they have to do it.
"It's like the killings. What you do
is you kill one or two, and that proves
to everyone else that you can do
more, and it really strengthens your
negotiating position. If you kill a
whole mess of them, you're going to
get stormed. So what you want to do
is kill one to show you're serious and
then not kill the others and keep the
Delta Force types at bay while you
try to get your political concessions."
The problem may be that the com-
bination of diplomatic showmanship
and guerrilla warfare has become
too ingrained in the Palestinian psy-
che to shake off. It is a method
wrought from bitter experience. At
first the Palestinians were given lit-
tle part in determining their own
fate. When the United Nations voted
in 1947 to partition Palestine, giving
Jews a portion for their homeland
and Palestinians a portion for theirs,
the Arab world said "no" with virtu-
ally a single voice. About two-thirds
of the Palestinian community left
the country when the Arab-Israeli
War of 1948 broke out, some from a
natural fear of war, some driven out,
and many at the urging of the Arab
states of the region, who assured
them that the Jews would be driven
from the land. This did not happen.
The early Palestinian leadership
that had followed this bad advice was
discredited when promises to pre-
vent the establishment of an Israeli
state failed. It took a generation for
the Palestinian community, which
had been whipsawed by the war, to
recover its own direction.
"That was why between 1948 and
1968 you never heard anybody talk-
ing about a Palestinian state," a con-
gressional expert explains. "The
talk was about border rectification
between Jordan, which controlled
the West Bank, and Israel and solv-
ing the refugee problem, as opposed
to solving the national problem of
the Palestinians. For 20 years you
didn't hear anything about
Palestinian nationalism,"
It was the Six-Day War of 1967, in
which the Israeli army decisively
crushed the Arab opposition, that
finally convinced Palestinians they
could not count on other countries to
give them their land back. The PLO
was created in 1964, originally as a
planned appendage to the Pan-Arab
movement of Egypt's Nasser, but by
1967 it was an independent force.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504120003-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504120003-0
"For the first time in 20 years they
were actually trying to do something
about their own fate," one scholar
says. "There was an aura of roman-
ticism about it. Young Palestinians
were willing to go out and die for the
cause"
The PLO grew so rapidly that, in
addition to harrassing Israel from
its base on the West Bank of the Jor-
dan River, it became a threat to the
Jordanian government of Hussein.
In a 1970 war, Hussein's army drove
the PLO from the country. But after
relocating in Lebanon, the PLO
found itself in perhaps an even bet-
ter position to attack Israeli settle-
ments directly with Soviet-supplied
artillery and rockets. In June 1982,
however, Israel had had enough and
invaded Lebanon to clear out the Pal-
estinians. In August the PLO fled
aboard a U.S.-provided armada. The
next year, PLO forces had to abandon
the Lebanese city of Tripoli as well.
And, although the Israelis have
won every war so far, they know this
alone will not solve their problems.
"From the Israeli point of view, not
making peace means retaining the
West Bank and Gaza," a U.S. analyst
says, "which means they have
another million, million and a half
Arabs to rule over, who have a very
high birthrate, who they either keep
in second- or third-class citizenship
or not citizens at all, under an occu-
pying authority that could become
uglier and uglier, that erodes the
moral base of the state. Create
another South Africa? That's not the
Zionist vision."
Although there still is and will be
hard-line resistance among some
Israelis to any concessions to the
Palestinians, policy has softened in
recent years. "The ruling position in
Israel is: How do we get to peace?" a
U.S. Middle East specialist says.
"The question is, how do we get from
here to there, and at this point
everybody's looking at the United
States and the United States doesn't
have any answers. They're working
on it; they just haven't figured out a
way to handle it."
This swings the spotlight back to
Tunis and Yasser Arafat, who seems
to be clinging still to a worn-out
policy of simultaneous war and
peace. "He has only one card to play,"
the U.S. official says. "And that is
recognition of Israel."
Why, then, does he hesitate? "Well,
if he doesn't play it fairly soon,
there's going to be no card left to
play," the official says. "There will be
nothing left to negotiate over. The
West Bank would ... would be
absorbed"
Virtually everyone agrees this
would not mean the end of Arafat or
the PLO. "There will be a Palestinian,
movement:' one official says, "but
how relevant will it be?"
"Arafat and the PLO will always
be there," says another, "but pretty
soon it won't matter, because there
won't be anything left to negotiate
over. And that's not a happy outcome,
because it creates a ground for insta-
bility in the Arab world."
In his book "The PLO and the Poli-
tics of Survival," Aaron David Miller
predicts that if current efforts fail
the PLO "will become increasingly
irrelevant to any negotiated settle-
ment;" that it "could ... ultimately
emerge as a more radicalized and
far less independent and cohesive
element in the course of any res-
olution of the Arab-Israeli conflict"
and that fragmented and prolonged
terrorist warfare "would be sus-
tained by the bitter realities of a per-
manent Palestinian diaspora."
If Palestinians cannot find a
compromise homeland in today's
offering of opportunities, they may
never go home again.
Staff members Susan Katz, John
Rees and Derk Kinnane Roelofsma
contributed to this article
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504120003-0