Debate at the U.N.: The P.L.O. Problem

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat has proclaimed 1976 as "The Year of Palestine," and this week it begins in earnest. On Monday the United Nations Security Council is scheduled to begin debate on the Middle East situation. It is virtually certain that a large amount of the rhetoric will be devoted to the Palestinian problem--the plight of those Arabs who fled from the former British mandate of Palestine rather than live under Israeli rule. Although many have prospered, an estimated 644,093 still live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the Occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Israel's Arab enemies insist that a just solution of the issue include recognition of the Palestinians' national rights as a people, and is essential to any peace settlement. At the Security Council debate, the pro-Palestinian arguments will for the first time be put forward not just by surrogates but by a representative of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, probably its shadow "foreign minister," Farouk Kaddoumi.

The U.S. and other Western nations are participating somewhat reluctantly in the debate. It was literally forced on them by the Syrians. Last November President Hafez Assad refused to extend the mandate of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force on the Golan Heights unless the Council scheduled a review of the Middle East situation and allowed the P.L.O. to take part. The presence of the P.L.O. prompted an Israeli boycott of the Council session; Premier Yitzhak Rabin's Cabinet unanimously resolved "not to conduct negotiations with terrorist organizations in any forum." A high Israeli official agreed that even "mentioning Palestinians makes them a political reality."

Secure Boundaries. During the debate, the P.L.O. will push for revisions of Security Council Resolution 242, adopted after the Six-Day War of 1967 and Resolution 338, passed in the final days of the 1973 October War. These call for the "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces" from occupied territories and a recognition of the right of "every state in the area" to "live in peace with secure boundaries." But they refer to the Palestinians only indirectly, as "the refugee problem." The P.L.O., backed by Syria and most Arab states, will try to amend the resolutions so they explicitly recognize the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination, independence and national sovereignty.

Too drastic a revision of Resolutions 242 and 338, however, will almost certainly trigger a U.S. veto. "We would strongly oppose any attempt to change them," Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned last week. The principal U.S. objective at the debate is to prevent the Security Council from becoming the main forum for future Middle East peace efforts. Washington is determined either to maintain the step-by-step diplomatic approach that so far has achieved two Israeli-Egyptian Sinai accords and one Israeli-Syrian agreement or to return to the Geneva Conference, jointly sponsored by the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which met briefly at the end of 1973.

Washington insists that it can best achieve a Middle East peace by being a "mediator" and not--as one senior U.S. official puts it--"a lawyer for the Israelis." But with Israel absent from the debate, the U.S. may find itself obliged to become the primary spokesman for Israeli interests. "Our role is made more difficult by the Israeli boycott," admitted a State Department official.

To lobby for the fullest possible U S. support at the debate, Israeli Foreign Minister Yigal Allon (see following story) flew to Washington last week for two days of talks with Kissinger and other U.S. officials. Jerusalem is distinctly nervous about the American position, even though it will be put forward by Ambassador to the U.N. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who pleased the Israelis with his stinging attack on the General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism. Despite Israeli protestations, the U.S. may, in the end, accept some modification of Resolutions 242 and 338, such as inserting a reference to "the legitimate interests of the Palestinian people," the language first used by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev in their joint communique of June 1973. At the debate, the Egyptians will back the P.L.O. but also urge the Palestinians not to push too hard. Reason: Cairo does not want to provoke a U.S. veto, which would too clearly label Washington as an intransigent opponent of the Palestinians. Egyptian President Sadat may then find it increasingly difficult to continue supporting the U.S. initiatives for peace.

Whatever the outcome of the debate, the P.L.O. is bound to gain from it. The very fact that a representative of the group will take part in the talks enhances the P.L.O.'s drive for international respectability. Ever since the P.L.O. was recognized as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people by the Rabat Summit in October 1974--followed a month later by the triumphal appearance at the General Assembly of Yasser Arafat--the P.L.O. has scored impressive diplomatic successes. Its representatives are accepted as de facto "ambassadors" by some 100 countries and international organizations. At his Beirut headquarters Arafat receives a steady stream of visiting VIPs from the West.

Icy Relations. In the past year, the P.L.O. also obtained observer status at the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization session in Rome and was admitted as a full member to the meeting of nonaligned nations in Lima, although it failed to persuade that group to call for Israel's expulsion from the U.N. At the General Assembly session just ended, the P.L.O. was authorized to take part "in all efforts and international conferences to discuss the Middle East within the framework of the U.N."

Impressive as these advances were, the P.L.O. nonetheless fell short of its goal of making 1975 the "Year of Escalation and Unity." To Arafat's dismay, Egypt's Sadat signed the second Sinai accord with Israel, even though it made no reference to the Palestinian problem.

Relations with Jordan's King Hussein remain icy. Expelled from that country after the "Black September" of 1970, the P.L.O. has insisted that ties with Amman can improve only if the fedayeen once again are allowed to use Jordanian territory as bases from which to strike at Israel. Hussein, who vividly remembers that the guerrillas tried to overthrow his regime, has answered with a flat no.

Blockaded Camps. Arafat's most serious problem in the Arab world these days is an unexpected one: Lebanon. For years the fedayeen have enjoyed extraordinary freedom of action there, controlling the refugee camps and operating bases for strikes into Israel. Ending the Palestinians' status as a nation within a nation in Lebanon is a major goal of the right-wing Christian Phalange and its allies--and a constant issue in the nine-month-old civil war. Arafat is anxious to preserve the status quo, and helped arrange several of Lebanon's short-lived ceasefires. Until recently, the well-armed P.L.O. guerrillas stayed out of the fighting and even served as a truce-keeping force. Last week, however, rightist militants blockaded Palestinian refugee camps at Tal al Zaatar and Jisr al Basha, preventing food from reaching their 27,000 residents. To break the blockade, the P.L.O. mobilized and attacked rightist strongholds.

At week's end, both the bitter fighting and the blockade continued; 75 people were reported killed. Elsewhere in the battle-scarred Beirut area, fighting between the Phalange and the mostly-Moslem leftists again spread into the eastern suburbs and to the luxury hotel district on the Mediterranean. Not only has this war diverted the P.L.O.'s energies, but the spectacle of Christians and Moslems battling each other has also challenged the Palestinian contention that a secular, democratic and non-sectarian state can replace Israel. In such a new nation, so the argument goes, Moslems, Jews and Christians would live with each other in peace. "Lebanon symbolized that kind of coexistence," remarked a Palestinian intellectual in Beirut. "It hurts us badly to have such trouble in this society."

P.L.O. strength has been further sapped by disunity within its own ranks. Formed in 1964 as an umbrella organization of six fedayeen groups, the P.L.O. has always been loose-knit and ideologically divided. In the past year internal squabbles have intensified. On the one side are the relative moderates: Arafat's Fatah (6,700 members of whom some 2,000 are active fighters) and Syrian-backed Saiqa (about 2,000 members, including 1,000 fighters). Opposing them are such "rejection front" groups as George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (estimated membership: 3,500), the P.F.L.P.-General Command, led by former Syrian Army Captain Ahmed Jebreel (150 hard-core guerrillas) and the Iraqi-backed Arab Liberation Front (about 100 members).

Nayef Hawatmeh's Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (500 members), which has usually sided with Arafat's moderates, has recently been flirting with the rejectionists. Says a senior official in Amman, Jordan: "The P.L.O. is incapable of making a decision and is unable to effectively use the support it has."

At the root of the P.L.O.'s disunity is a profound disagreement over strategy. Both sides are dedicated to the eventual creation of a "secular, democratic" state for Moslems, Christians and Jews in what is now Israel and in some Israeli-occupied territories. Moderates within the P.L.O., including Arafat, appear willing to accept as the first step toward that goal the establishment of a Palestinian "national authority" on the West Bank of the Jordan River and in the Gaza Strip, if and when they are given up by the Israelis. The rejectionist Palestinians, backed by Iraq and Libya, refuse to accept any interim solution and will not settle for anything less than the immediate creation of a new Palestine that includes pre-1967 Israel. Habash thus opposes P.L.O. participation in the Security Council debate on the ground that it is tantamount to negotiating with the Jewish state.

Although the rejection front guerrillas are outnumbered within the P.L.O., they wield considerable power. They are now supplied with money by Libya and Iraq and have pocketed at least $10 million ransom paid after the December kidnaping of the OPEC ministers in Vienna. Moreover, their arguments strike responsive chords with many Palestinians, particularly those hundreds of thou sands who come from villages and towns within Israel's pre-1967 borders. After all, the creation of a "mini-Palestine" will not enable them to return to their homes.

Jordan also opposed the idea of a mini-Palestine. At the Rabat Summit, Hussein reluctantly accepted the P.L.O.'s claim to speak on behalf of the Palestinians, including those living in the West Bank, which was administered by Jordan until 1967. But the King still hopes eventually to bring that area into some sort of political federation with Jordan. For obvious reasons Israel also prefers that the West Bank be linked with Jordan. "A larger country controlled by a stable leader like Hussein makes sense," explained an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman. "It would be economically more viable and politically more able to withstand the extremists than would a small state located between Israel and Jordan." Premier Rabin fears that a mini-Palestine would become a haven for terrorists and susceptible to Soviet influence.

Assertive Spirit. Although the Israeli government refuses to have any thing to do with the P.L.O., Rabin and his colleagues have moved Israeli policy far from the uncompromising attitude of former Premier Golda Meir, who once said that "there was no such thing as Palestinians." Earlier this month, Rabin told a Labor Party meeting: "We recog nize the existence of the Palestinian problem. Without its solution, the Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be resolved."

Meanwhile, Israeli officials have a nagging Palestinian problem within the country's own borders as well as in the occupied territories. Both West Bank Palestinians and Israeli Arabs seem to have been inspired by P.L.O. success and growing respect. The recent election of a Communist mayor in Nazareth (TIME, Dec. 22) is widely regarded as a symptom of the new assertive spirit. Another test of P.L.O. strength will be the West Bank municipal elections scheduled for March and April. There is now talk that the Israeli Arabs, who are citizens of Israel, may band together politically to win greater representation in the Knesset, where they currently have five seats. By pooling their forces and uniting they may be able to gain as many as twelve seats and thus become a key voting bloc in the 120-member Israeli Parliament.

Whatever resolutions are adopted as a result of this week's Security Council debate will probably be unenforceable --like most other U.N. actions. Nonetheless, the debate may still have some value; it could provide clues as to how willing the P.L.O. leaders are to pursue a moderate, compromise course. Egyptian Columnist Ahmed Bahaeddin, writing in Cairo's al Ahram recently, urged the Palestinians to "have a realistic concept" of their rights. "The call for the elimination of Israel," he agreed, "will be to no avail." If the P.L.O. heeds this advice at the debate, it will have contributed to the momentum toward a Middle East peace. Then it will be up to the Israelis to respond.

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