Defeats and fiascos:
MIDDLE EAST
MONG
THE
A many para-state institutions of the PLO, the last five years of the
PNC plays the role of parliament. But in con-
Arafat's leadership trast to parliaments, its makeup — which varies from one session to another - is not deter-
"very successful, very constructive and very positive," and that they "dealt largely with a possible Jordanian-Palestinian confederation, and will continue in the future."
To understand the extent of this "fraternal"
mined by electoral
THE EIGHTEENTH session of the Palestinian means. It is set by the
Executive Committee
National Council (PNC) was held on April 20-25 in
(EC) of the organiza-
Algiers. The media hailed the event as a dazzling tion, which since 1969 has been dominated by victory for the leader of the Palestinian Liberation
Fatah, the main Pales-
Organisation (PLO), Yasser Arafat. But, in fact, this tinian organization, led meeting set the seal on the complete failure of by Yasser Arafat [see box]. It is then ratified
Arafat's policies over the past five years.
at the start of every session by the members of the preceding session.
Thus, in reality, the
PNC is an emanation of the PLO executive. It is, to be sure, a forum for debate. But its function is to
"legitimize" the decisions and compromises adopted by the majority of the
EC, that is, in the last instance, by the leadership of Fatah. The latter so predominates in the PLO that by itself it has a majority and can provide a quorum within the PNC.
For example, when Fatah's political choices came under strong challenge in,
1983 from the traditional left of the
Palestinian movement - the PFLP and
DFLP
- as well as by the Saika and the PFLP-GC, the Arafat leadership did not hesitate to hold the seventeenth session of the PNC the next year in the
Jordanian capital Amman without these dissenting groups. That session mustered the necessary quorum and was able to present itself as "legitimate," a label that has become in a way the property of the Arafat leadership within the
Palestinian movement.
The recent session in Algiers, which the PFLP and DFLP were again represented, has been called a congress of reconciliation, while its numbering expresses its continuity with the Amman meeting. The great majority of the media believed it to be a dazzling victory for Arafat. Indeed, he has become a grand master in the art of disguising defeats as victories. But in this case, one would have to be very much out of touch with the recent history of the
Palestinian movement to be taken in.
The eighteenth session of the PNC in fact set the seal on the total failure of the policy Arafat has pursued since
2
1982.
On September 1, 1982, the last contingent of PLO fighters left Beirut by sea under the protection of "multinational" forces made up of US, French and Italian soldiers, and under the eye of the Israeli army, which had been be-
International Viewpoint @ June 1, 1987
### SALAH JABER sieging the Lebanese capital since midJune. That was the result of long negotiations undertaken from the start of the siege between the Arafat leadership and Ronald Reagan's special envoy, Philip Habib.
On the same day, by virtue of the same deal apparently, the US president made public his famous "peace plan." It made no explicit mention of the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967 and officially annexed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1981. (The Sinai was restored to Egypt by the Camp David accords, and the Israelis completed their evacuation in April 1982). In contrast, Reagan's speech was focused on the problem of the West Bank and Gaza, the last territories of Palestine — as it had been under the 1918-1948 British mandate - to be occupied by the Zionist army, in June 1967:
Jordanian-Palestinian contederation
"The United States is firmly vinced that the best chance for achieving a stable, lasting and just peace is to establish self-government of the Palestinians in the West Bank of the Jordan river and in the Gaza sector, in association with Jordan."
On September 20, 1982, while the entire world was still stunned by the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres, King Hussein of Jordan echoed the US president: "The time has come to begin discussions with the PLO to define the form of relations between Jordanians and Palestinians in a future confederation."
Arafat arrived in Amman on October 9, 1982, where he met King Hussein and declared that their talks had been attitude, you have to remember that Hussein directed one of the biggest slaughters ever suffered by the Palestinian meeting in Damascus still expressing an national movement," for the antimonarchical, anti-imperialist Jordanian underground opposition.
In the resolution of the following session, held in February 1983 in Algiers, the Arafat leadership imposed a very different formula for relations with
Support for disappeared, to make way for the statement — quite new for the PLO — that "future relations with Jordan will be established on a confederal basis between two independent states."
Once again, the Arafat leadership, had the PNC "legitimize" its new course by the use of ambiguous terms. While maintaining "independent" state adopted in 1977 -all you have to do is look at a map to judge what kind of "independence" a Palestinian mini-state on the West Bank would enjoy! - it introduced the principle of "confederation" with the Jordanian kingdom, in line with the "association with Jordan" and conforming to the proposal of the Jordanian
In fact, the whole of the policy of the Arafat leadership after its departure from Beirut was to fit into this dual "Jordanian option" which, inasmuch as it converged with the US policy of separate settlements between Israel and each of the Arab states surrounding it, total contradiction to the preceeding policy of the PLO. This had been to defend, in alliance with Syria and the USSR, the principle of an all-round settlement — security of frontiers in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied "independent" Palestinian state.
The objective of the US policy is, in fact, to achieve peace accords between Israel and the Arab states that Wash-
[For an analysis of the historical evolution of the PLO, see the report adopted by the
United Secretariat of the Fourth International in June 1986, and published in the journal Intermational Marxist Review, Spring 19871 * ington considers to be in its sphere of influence — Egypt, Jordan and the Lebanon - without any involvement of the USSR and excluding the latter's principal ally in the region, the Syrian state.
Arafat's Jordanian option involved, therefore, a break with Syria, the USSR and their Palestinian allies, and an alliance with Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, with the blessing of his Saudi paymasters and a perspective of convincing the US administration to establish official relations with the PLO. The Arafat leadership's deeds were to remove any ambiguity about its political intentions.
Negotiations with Israel
As early as April 1983, it reached a preliminary agreement with the Jordanian monarchy providing for a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation for negotiations with Israel. This scheme touched off an explosion — the rebellion of the nationalist left of Fatah against the Arafat leadership in May 1983, followed by battles between the rival forces; a break with Syria, Libya and their Palestinian allies (Saika, the PFLP-GC); and fighting in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. This led to the evacuation of Tripoli in December 1983 by Arafat's troops, once again by sea. But this time it was after being bethe PNC (the Aden Accord).
However, disregarding these accords, which were an impediment to its policy, the Arafat leadership was to convoke a PNC without the presence of these organizations. The seventeenth PNC met in November 1984 in Amman itself and was inaugurated by King Hussein in person!
To put the crowning touch on all this, on February 11, 1985, Arafat concluded the famous Amman Accord with Hussein. It referred to UN relations, "including the Security Council resolutions" — a clear allusion to Res-
242 (1967) and 338 (1973), for trading peace," and whose acceptance has been
Washington "moderate" faction of the Zionist establishment as a condition for negotia-
Arafat's organization. It also provided for an "Arab confederation betwen the two Jordanian and Palestinian states" and a Jordanian-
"common delegation" to "peace negotiations" in the framework of an "international conference."
Moscow since then has not hidden its indignation. Arafat was not invited there anymore, unlike Habash and other Palestinian leaders. For example, Pravda of August 22, 1985, noted that the Amman Accord "does not provide for the creation of an independent
MIDDLE EAST Palestinian state, no more than for PLO participation on the basis of equality [in a possible international conference]," and characterized it as "a new separate deal comparable to Camp David, but this time with a Palestinian cover." For once, Pravda, which means "truth," actually lived up to its name.
At the culmination of his rush to the right, Arafat totally turned upside down the alliances that he made in the period 1978-1982, when the PLO was in the front line of Arab opposition to Washington's policy and to the Camp David accords. Even during that period, however, through its unfailing allegiance to the Saudi monarchy - its major source of funds — the Arafat leadership maintained more or less open relations with all of the reactionary Arab regimes, including the Jordanian and Egyptian ones. In that respect, it was consistent with its interests as a bourgeois leadership, doubly dependent on the Arab oil dynasties both because of its own bureaucratic interests and those of the Palestinian bourgeois diaspora that it represents. Moreover, it was banking on getting the West Bank and Gaza through a settlement negotiated with the Zionist state which was inconceivable without the US putting pressure on Israel.
The Arafat leadership could, therefore, not break its ties with the gov-
Palestinian Organizations sieged by the Syrian forces and their
Palestinian allies — forces that in
FATAH (Palestinian National Liberation Movement), the largest of the Palestinian
1982 had been besieged in Beirut and organizations, Led by Yasser Arafat Financed mainly by Saudi Arabla, then evacuated along with Arafat's own
FATAH-RC (Revolutionary Council), Split from Fatah In 1974, An ultra-nationalist
From Tripoli, the PLO leader was to terrorist organization led by Abu Nidal. Financed today by Libya, go directly to Cairo to meet Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak, thereby
FATAH dissidents A spilt from Fatah in 1983, A radical nationalist organization led by breaking the boycott of Egypt that was decreed by the Arab League following
Sadat's signing of the Camp David
PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). A nationalist organization led by
George Habash. Maintaine relations with Syria, Libya and the USSR.
agreement, which established a Pax
Americana over Egypt and Israel. And
PEP-Go General Command A split from the ProP in 1986. A nationalist group lec this was despite the fact that Mubarak has never reopened the question of this agreement, even at the height of the
DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine). A split from the PFLP in 1969.
invasion of Lebanon by the Zionist
A Stalinist organization led by Nayef Hawatmeh. Linked to the USSR.
army. Arafat thus followed on the heels
Hussein, who had of King
PLF (Palestinian Liberation Front) A split from the PFLP-CC In 1976, It split in 1984
•теinto two grouplets; one, led by Talaat Yacub, is aligned with the PFLP, the other led established relations between his kingby Abul Abbas (Involved in the Achille Lauro Incident), is linked to Iraq.
dom and Egypt in September 1983.
Swept along by the logic of its op-
PPSF (Palestinian People s Struggle Front), A nationalist grouplet linked to Syria and tion, the. Arafat leadership was to break with the PFLP, DFLP and PLF (Yacub), which had adopted an attitude of neu-
SAIKA The Palestinian branch of the ruling Ba ath party in syria, trality toward the fighting in Tripoli and more generally a conciliatory atti-
ALF (Arab Liberation Front), The tiny Palestinian branch of the ruling Baath party In tude toward Arafat until his trip to Cairo and even after. As a matter of fact,
PCP(Palestinian Communist Party). The former West Bank section of the Jordanian these three formations, which were
CP, a classical Stalinist organization linked to Moscow.
grouped in the Democratic Alliance, along with the Palestinian Communist
Party, reached an accord with a Fatah delegation in March 1984 on a basis for dialogue for the coming session of
Abu Muse, Linked to Syria.
by Ahmed Jibril, Linked to Libya and Syna.
Libya.
frag.
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2 1 June 1, 1987 • International Viewpoint
MIDDLE EAST ernments that made up framework of its strategy for the sake of a perspective based exclusively on an alliance with the USSR, Syria and the Lebanese left, along with the Arab regimes and forces that found themselves in the same general lineup. In addition, the Arafat leadership justified its links with Arab reaction by the need for counter-balancing Syria's ambitions for hegemony.
In contrast, when this leadership opted for its rightist course in 1982, it did not hesitate to burn all its bridges with its former allies. Moderate and conciliatory when it was in the camp opposed to US imperialism, it proved quite the opposite once it had gone over to the other side. It is clear that the Syrian rethe Arafat leadership's Palestinian movement in These designs could be combated effectively, and without betraying the national cause of the Palestinian people, only by reinforcing the movement itself as a mass movement and thening the left forces that are its most reliable strategic allies in the struggle against Zionism, imperialism and the Arab regimes, beginning with the Lebanese left which has always fought at the side of the Palestinians since 1982.
But it is just as clear, and for still stronger reasons, that the Jordanian regime also has designs toward the West Bank in particular, a territory and population that were under the Jordanicrown since it annexed them in 1949 until the Israeli invasion in June 1967. Even from the standpoint of the bourgeois interests represented by Arafat, prudence was absolutely necessary in pursuing his new course. Even from that point of view, the prestige the Arafat leadership has enjoyed up until today is one of the most undeserved that may be imagined. The balance sheet of this leadership is a long series of defeats and fiascos that tar outweigh the tew partial successes of which it can boast, and which are due in fact to the tenacity of the Palestinian masses rather than to its own
Road opened up for Hussein
The inevitable happened. Hussein took advantage of his "Palestinian cover," in Pravda's apt phrase, to undertake a series of measures aimed at put-
2 ting him in a position to claim the oc-
cupied West Bank. If they had not benefited the "Palestinian cover," these measures would have aroused a vast Pa-
2 lestinian and Arab outcry, orchestrated
by none other than the PLO. In other words, they were measures that Hussein would never have dared adopt if he had International Viewpoint @ June 1, 1987
TURKEY SYRIA LEBAI • Damascus IRAQ • Amman
ISRAEL
JORDAN BAUDI ARABIA not felt that his hands were freed by the PLO's policy.
In April 1983, relations between Hussein and Arafat had come to an impasse because of Palestinian and Syrian-Libyan opposition to Arafat. eight months, he had entirely burned his bridges to this opposition. Meeting with Mubarak after evacuating Tripoli in December 1983, Arafat chose to commit himself fully to his reactionary political option. The road was thus opened up for Hussein. In January 1984, the king called into session the Jordanian parliament, which had been suspended since 1974, following a decision of the Arab summit in Rabat that recognized the PLO as
"sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."
Half of the deputies in the Jordanian parliament are indeed West Bank representatives elected in April 1967, shortly before the Israeli invasion, and the decision of the Arab summit thus deprived them of any status.
Then, in April 1985, following the conclusion of his accord with Arafat, Hussein set up a new ministerial team in Amman, including for the first time since 1974 eleven Palestinian ministers, mostly from the West Bank.
The return of the Israeli Labor Party to government in September 1984 after the July parliamentary elections was to open the way for the second stage of the policy of preparing for Jordan regain control of the West Bank. In fact, the Reagan Plan, while it could only satisfy Hussein, was also in tune with one of the main options of the Zionist Labor Bloc [Ma'arakh] - the celebrated "Allon Plan" (named after its author, Ygal Allon, a former minister and star of the Labor Bloc). This plan provides for a partial (two thirds) restoration of the West Bank to Jordanian sovereignty, with the maintenance of a network of Zionist settlements, along the Jordan mainly, to "guarantee Israel's security."
It was in line with this that Hussein kept up constant relations — known to everyone, although officially "secret" - with the Israeli Laborites. Once they returned to power, they were to collaborate closely with their old crony. Since the indispensable concomitant of the measures taken in Amman was to beef up the leadership of the proJordanians on the West Bank itself, in November 1985 Peres appointed Zafer Al-Masri, nephew of the vice president of the Jordanian Senate and uncle of the kingdom's minister of foreign affairs, to head the most important municipal government on the West Bank — Nablus. Al-Masri was already the head of the Nablus Chamber of Com-
Economic integration into
In March 1986, Zafer Al-Masri was assassinated by the PFLP. But this did not keep Peres from snapping back to appoint three new mayors on the West Bank in November. At the same time, Amman, in collusion with its Labor Bloc cronies, undertook to reactivate the West Bank's economic integration into the Jordanian kingdom. With Israeli authorization, it reopened an Arab (Jordanian-Egyptian) banking establishment on the West Bank. Amman resumed payment of the salaries of functionaries employed on the West Bank under Israeli tutelage. And above all, it launched a Jordanian five-year plan for developing the West Bank and Gaza (this was the first time that Amman directly and unilaterally assumed responsibility for the Gaza Strip, which was under Egyptian tutelage until 1967).
In order to finance this five-year plan, Amman issued urgent pressing appeals to the imperialist powers, first of all the United States, and to the Arab oil monarchies. It did not, it is true, get an enthusiastic reception.
In the meantime, Hussein, judging that the PLO's "cover" was no longer indispensable — or was even becoming an impediment to expanding his relations with the Zionist leaders, who place an absolute veto on any contacts with that organization - disdainfully dumped it. The pretext was appropriate.
From the time that he concluded his accord with Arafat, Hussein pressed the PLO leader to meet the final condition needed to make possible official contact between the PLO and the US administration, as well as the participa-
tion of representatives designated by the PLO in negotiations with Israel in the framework of an international con-
In other words, Hussein pressed Arafat to play his last and only card - official and unqualified acceptance by the PLO of Resolution 242 (1967) of the UN Security Council. This recognized the state of Israel's right to "live in
, while making no mention of the Palestinians' right to even partial self-determination. Likewise, he pressed Arafat to accept the corollary of this: official renunciation by the PLO of the anti-Zionist armed struggle.
However, even if he wanted to, Arafat would find it immensely difficult to jusconcession by his own movement in the absence of a formal guarantee of quid pro quos from the United States or Israel. Neither Hussein, nor his Saudi and Egyptian allies, have so far been able to provide this.
Thus, accusing the reluctant PLO leadership of "evasiveness," Hussein decided unilaterally on February 19, 1986, to "suspend" the accord that he had concluded with Arafat a year before. This was to be the prelude to a series of measures hostile to the Palestinian organization. This included the "split" in April of a faction of Fatah led by one of its most corrupt chiefs, Abul Zaim (Atallah Atallah), who had gone over to Amman's payroll.
Then, in July, the loyalist Fatah's offices in Jordan were closed. Parallel to this, the negotiations between Hussein, Peres and the US administration ad. vanced toward a definition of the framework of a separate Jordanian-Israeli settlement, without the PLO, that would complement the Egyptian-Israeli settle-
Return to more balanced policy advocated
In view of this resounding fiasco of Arafat's Jordanian option, the rists" in the PLO leadership who maintained contacts with Moscow, notably Abu Lotf (Faruk Kaddumi) and Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf), advocated a clear and frank break from this disastrous line and a return to a more balanced policy that would restore the PLO's traditional margin for maneuver.
The "Saudis" in the Palestinian lead-
Arafat himself and his alter ego, Abu Jihad (Khalil AlWazir) - nonetheless tried to cling to the Jordanian option, hoping that the combined pressures of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt (all three allies both of the PLO and Jordan), would finally convince Hussein to revert to a more friendly attitude.
Just as the battle of Tripoli in 1983 had furnished Arafat with the political and psychological conditions that enabled him to cross the barrier to a meeting with Mubarak, the PLO leader was to see an opportunity in the dramatic turn taken by the war of the camps in Lebanon at the end of 1986 and the beginning of 1987 to gain a moral compensation for his political dis-
The mobilization of the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza in solidarity with the camps in Lebanon was seen by Arafat as a demonstration of strength that he hoped would convince Hussein of the necessity of making a
In other words, rather than seeing the solidarity in the fight of all the Palestinian factions in the camps against the Amal movement as an opportunity for political reconciliation among Palestinians, Arafat saw it as an opportunity for reconciliation with Hussein! He met the Jordanian monarch at the Islamic summit in Kuwait at the end of January and announced to all and sundry that he and the king had agreed "to turn over a new leaf and open up a new dialogue on all levels." Yasser Arafat (DR)
In fact, the only concession Hussein made, on the insistence of the Saudi leaders, was to allow Abu Jihad to go in mid-February to Amman (from which he had been expelled a few months before) for a meeting of the Jordanian-Palestinian committee administering the Arab countries'
This meeting gave Arafat's companion a chance to see that the Jordanian attitude remained basically unchanged. Both men had to face the facts. They had no choice other than to go back
MIDDLE EAST on the policy that they had followed
The balance sheet of this policy was drawn by George Habash in an answer to a question from a Kuwaiti journalist. I can leave the floor to him:
"Yes, after Beirut, this grave turning point in the experience of the Palestinian revolution led to the 'moderates' stepping up their 'moderation.' Certain people felt that there was no other road before them but the American road, and they displayed a notorious lack of hope about the possibility of continuing to pursue the objective of national independence. But what has been the result? Has this option proved to be correct? What has been gained by those banked on it? Have they really managed to save anything after four years of trial and testing? Have they been able to avoid new and still greater mas-
"The answers to these questions are no longer a matter for supposition and conjecture, as was the case just after the departure from Beirut, because we now have the results of an experience that has gone on for several years, and we can draw the necessary balance sheet. The actual result of this policy has only been more divisions among Palestinians and greater tension in the patriotic Arabs and in the international relations of Palestinians, more unnecessary concessions that have not, despite their enormity, satisfied the imperialist and Zionist circles. The result has been the expulsion of the PLO leadership from Jordan, the Abul Zaim affair, the development plan, and a Jordanian-Israeli division of labor. What has this policy been able to save, and who has profited from it, ourselves or the enemies of our cause? "We are facing a war of extermination"
"And what massacres has it been possible to avert thanks to this policy? Has the physical liquidation of the people and the revolution ceased, or have our problems in fact grown worse in Lebanon, where we are facing a war of extermination, while the PLO's relations with most of the Lebanese parties are fraught with tensions? Has it been possible to avert physical liquidation, or has this spread even to the Palestinian offices in Tunisia?" (Al-Qabas,
April 17, 1987.) 2
The unconditional supporters of the PLO leadership should think about this balance sheet. *
• A second article dealing with the 3
role of the USSR, and the PNC's compromises and perspectives, will appear in the next issue of IV June 1, 1987 • International Viewpoint