Palestine:
the state
and the
resolution
RARELY has a political event provoked such a paradoxical convergence of positive reactions! The nineteenth session of the PLO's Palestinian National Council (PNC), held in Algiers from November 12 to 15, raised hopes and provoked a renewal of combativity among the majority of the masses in the West Bank and Gaza struggling against the Zionist occupation. The same PNC session was unanimously awarded top marks by the imperialist powers, from George Bush's "it's very, very good" to the official greeting from the EEC. SALAH JABER A MONUMENTAL misunderstanding or crossed reactions to different decisions, themselves contradictory? In reality, the bourgeois leadership of the PLO has sent out, in the name of the PNC, two divergent messages to two antagonistic audiences. The first message was aimed at the masses engaged in the intifada [uprising] when Yasser Arafat proclaimed "in the name of God and the Palestinian Arab people, the institution of the State of Palestine". Thus he replied to the expectation of the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza, whose uprising against the occupation entered its second year on December 9.
The central and almost immediate objective of the intifada is to force the Zionists to evacuate the territories that they have occupied since June 1967, while avoiding these territories falling under the repressive tutelage of any of the Arab regimes. Its goal is the setting up of a free Palestinian government in those parts of Palestine where Palestinian Arabs remain the overwhelming majority, after more than 20 years of occupation and colonization. The intifada is equipped with the structures of a veritable clandestine government. Popular committees organize the masses' struggle at a grass-roots level, as well as diverse aspects of their daily collective lifes. These are headed up by a Unified Patriotic Leadership, a grouping of tendencies active on the ground and represented in the PLO outside the territories.
Condemnation of "terrorism"
The PLO's proclamation of the Palestinian state, conforming to some extent to the aspirations of the masses involved in the intifada, became both indispensable and easier after the decision made by King Hussein of Jordan last July to give up the West Bank, which had been annexed by his kingdom following the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. This decision, motivated by the dissuasive effect of the intifada, created a juridical vacuum that the PLO could not avoid filling. Furthermore, it removed from the proclamation of a Palestinian state the character of a challenge to the monarchy of Amman and its reactionary allies that it would have had if it had been made earlier.
The November 15 declaration was nevertheless accompanied by a message with a totally different significance that was
MIDDLE EAST "When, in the course of human events it becomes necessary tor one people... "1 WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE?! PALESTE aimed at Washington, imperialist Europe and "moderate" Zionists. Even the text of, the proclamation read by Arafat contained a refutation of all "use of violence or terrorism" - against the Palestinian state, of course, but also against "any other state"! The condemnation of "terrorism" is repeated in the PNC's political resolution, whereas the previous session in April 1987 had reaffirmed: "the legitimate right of our people to carry out armed struggle against the Zionist racist occupation"
The new resolution reaffirmed the principle of the Jordan-Palestinian "confederation", first adopted by the PNC in 1983, echoing the Reagan plan advocating a "Palestinian entity linked to Jordan". It repeats the appeal for an "international conference" under the auspices of the big powers to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict. However. while in 1987 a "just and lasting peace" was to have been founded on the "right to return" of the Palestinians expelled in 1948 and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, the new resolution stipulates that in addition to this latter right, "the international conference will meet on the basis of resolutions 242 and 338 of the [United Nations] Security Council".
Declaration nullifies the
PLO's charter
To evaluate the importance of this innovation, it should be remembered that the Palestinian organizations were built after 1967 in opposition to resolution 242 (Noember 1967), denouncim as capitulators 3 and traitors any Arab regime that supported
The "dirty war" gets
International Viewpoint #153 • December 12, 1988
MIDDLE EAST• COLOMBIA it. The PLO's representative in Paris, Ibrahim Souss, was perfectly correct when he candidly asserted that "the PNC's political declaration nullifies the PLO's charter". (Le Monde, November 22.) Indeed, resolution 242 foresaw that, in exchange for an Israeli retreat "from territories occupied" in 1967 (and not all the territories), there would be a "termination of all claims or state of belligerency", as well as a recogni- "DIRTY WAR," that is terror by the repressive forces, has tion of each state in the region and of its been sharply on the rise in Colombia. After the fall of the "right to live in peace within secure and military dictatorship in Argentina, the civilian government in recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force". In this goal, resolution 242 Bogotá seems to have taken the lead in official gangsterism in foresaw some "measures including the es- Latin America. But are these methods paying off? tablishment of demilitarized zones". . Without even mentioning the Palestinian people, it was content to advocate "a just settlement of the refugee problem". This last formulation was used for the first time in the PNC's new resolution, which no longer explicitly mentions the right of return.
A new dead-end for the PLO
Is it necessary to recall that the PLO and El Fatah were founded well before 1967 in order to, as their names imply, fight for "the liberation of Palestine", of which the West Bank and Gaza Strip only constitute 20%. The bourgeois leadership of the PLO has performed a real political strip-tease over the years, leaving itself today with only an olive branch to cover its nakedness. Unfortunately for the PLO, the Israeli and American leaders remain motionless because they know that the Arafat leadership cannot guarantee the docility of the Palestinians. The real relationship of forces allows them to be intransigent.
This is why it is possible to state that the PLO leadership's new capitulation has once again led it into a dead-end. The Palestinian masses will understand the lesson themselves. Only their struggle, and not the compromises of the Arafat leadership, can bring results.
Unfortunately, the political force that is today most capable of attracting all those who are losing any illusions in the PLO leadership — increasingly numerous, particularly among the 1948 refugees who are the vast majority of Palestinians other than the Islamic fundamentalist
Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement, active in Gaza and the West Bank) has called for three days of mourning in reaction to the PLO's recognition of the Zi-
Here, as elsewhere, the fundamentalists are expressing a certain radicalization in a skewed way. Hamas rejects "all proposals for peace and international conferences" and calls for "a holy war" to set up an "Islamic state in the whole of Palestine". True Palestinian, Israeli and Arab revolutionaries are now confronting a considerable challenge. *
RODRIGO O'FARREL
T HE GENERAL commanded, and