A Durable Peace (37 page)

A few months after the Arab failure in the Yom Kippur War, the PNC met in Cairo to consider the situation. It concluded that
Israel
in its post-1967 boundaries could not be destroyed by a frontal military assault. What was required was an interim phase in
which Israel would be reduced to dimensions that made it more convenient for the coup de grace. Thus was born the Phased Plan,
adopted by the PNC in that meeting on June 8, 1974. The Phased Plan had two important stipulations: First, create a Palestinian
state on any territory vacated by Israel (Article 2); second, mobilize from that state a general Arab military assault to
destroy a shrunken and indefensible Israel (Article 9). The precise language of this resolution, in cumbersome but nonetheless
clear PLO jargon, can be found in Appendix I.

Although the Phased Plan was formally adopted by the PNC, it was often disputed within PLO ranks. There were those, like the
PFLP’s George Habash, who thought that fussing with an interim phase was an unnecessary bother, since the force of an escalating
campaign of terrorism in and around Israel, and especially spectacular terrorist action worldwide, would ultimately be sufficient
to achieve the PLO’s aims. But Arafat and Abu Iyad clung tenaciously to the view that bombs and diplomacy were infinitely
more potent than bombs alone—a view reinforced by the growing Western resolve, led by the U.S. secretary of state, George
Shultz, to take concrete action against terror. After the American air strike on Libya in 1986, the powerful American message
that governments and organizations would henceforth be held responsible for the terror they spawned was registered in Damascus,
Teheran, and other terror capitals of the Middle East, but most especially in PLO headquarters in Tunis. The PLO quickly circumscribed
its field of terror operations. By 1987, the organization was fading fast.

Then came the intifada. Though it was not started by the PLO, it gave the organization new life and purpose. Equally important,
the nightly bashing of Israel on the world’s television screens created enormous pressure on Israel to vacate the West Bank
and Gaza, and it gave the champions of the Phased Plan within the PLO a supreme advantage over the doubters. The dispute finally
ended in the PNC conference in Algiers in 1988, when Arafat and
Abu Iyad lined up all the main PLO factions behind the concept of the gradual destruction of Israel.

Abu Iyad in particular was celebrating a personal victory. More than anyone, even more than Arafat, he had tirelessly advocated
this strategy. A year earlier, for example, he had explained:

According to the Phased Plan, we will establish a Palestinian state on any part of Palestine that the enemy will retreat from.
The Palestinian state will be a stage in our prolonged struggle for the liberation of Palestine on all of its territory. We
cannot achieve the strategic goal of a Palestinian state in all of Palestine without first establishing a Palestinian state
[on part of it].
⁸⁸

Days after the PLO’s supposed recognition of Israel at Geneva, Abu Iyad spelled out PLO strategy: “At first a small state,
and with the help of Allah it will be made large, and expand to the east, west, north, and south.… I am interested in the
liberation of Palestine step by step.”
⁸⁹
On other occasions he was even more concise: “The Palestinian state will be the springboard from which to liberate Jaffa,
Acre, and all of Palestine.”
⁹⁰

As the leading ideologue of the PLO, Abu Iyad painstakingly explained that the Phased Plan in no way contradicted the PLO
Charter seeking Israel’s elimination. On the contrary, it was merely a tactical response to changing geopolitical circumstances
and would provide the means to implement the charter. As he put it, “the Phased Plan reflects the current situation… and does
not require the casting aside of the charter.”
⁹¹
On December 6, 1988, he said:

We swore that we would liberate even pre-’67 Palestine. We will liberate Palestine stage by stage…. The borders of our state
as we declared it represent only part of our national aspirations. We will work to expand them in order to realize our aspirations
for all the land of Palestine.”
⁹²

Noting that a gradual approach was indispensable for worldwide acceptance of PLO moves, he basked in his victory after Arafat’s
statement in Geneva: “The armed struggle must be accompanied by a strong political basis which will help the world accept
the results of the armed struggle. The PLO acts through the rifle and diplomacy.”
⁹³

Terror and duplicity had won out over terror alone. This view was not limited to Abu Iyad. In the heady days after the PLO’s
supposed recognition of Israel, its leaders lined up to spell out exactly what it was that they were now committed to. Thus,
in 1990 Yasser Arafat again gave voice to the same sentiment that all PLO leaders have continuously stressed:

The Palestinian people’s struggle will continue until the complete liberation of the Palestinian land…. The Palestinian people’s
struggle ought to be assisted
until the complete liberation of Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the Sea.
⁹⁴
[emphasis added]

Once more—in Arabic, of course—we see that Arafat did not limit the Palestinian Arabs’ goal to recovering the West Bank, the
territory from the Jordan River to the old Israeli border, but the territory right on through to the Mediterranean. Farouq
Kaddoumi, head of the PLO’s political department and in charge of its foreign affairs, had this to say: “The recovery of
but a part of our soil will not cause us to forsake our land…. We shall pitch our tent in those places where our bullets shall
reach…. This tent shall then serve as the base from which we shall pursue the next phase.”
⁹⁵
This was echoed by Sheikh Abdel adb-Hamid al-Sayah, speaker of the PNC:

Even if the PLO succeeds in establishing a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, this would not prevent a continuation
of the struggle until the liberation of all of Palestine.… If we succeed in gaining a part of Palestine upon which we will
establish a
state, we can later ask the world at large, while standing on Palestinian soil, to act so we may obtain our right as a nation
and as a people.… We are working to achieve what is possible in the present phase, and later we will demand more.
⁹⁶

And Sayah again: “The PNC has accepted an interim solution, implying that we will accept whatever territories we can get.
Then we will demand the rest of Palestine.”
⁹⁷

Every one of the PLO’s recalcitrant factions lined up behind this “moderate” policy of liquidating Israel by stages. Here
is the statement of the PFLP, the PLO’s second largest faction, formerly a stubborn opponent of the Phased Plan:

The establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza will be the beginning of the downfall of the Zionist enterprise.
We will be able to rely on this defeat in order to complete the struggle to realize our entire goal, which is the complete
liberation of the national Palestinian soil.
⁹⁸

The PFLP’s
Al-Hadaf
publication put it squarely on April 9, 1989: “We seek to establish a state that we can use in order to liberate the other
part of Palestine.”
⁹⁹
So did Nayef Hawatmeh, head of the DFLP, another “extreme” constituent PLO organization: “The Palestinian struggle should
now be aimed at creating a state in the West Bank and Gaza. This will not prevent us from achieving our final aim of liberating
all of Palestine.”
¹⁰⁰

Thus with the adoption of the Phased Plan, the divisions between the “extremists” and the “moderates” in the PLO vanished.
Now, with such unprecedented harmony among the PLO’s constituent parts, the ideological rift between the “one-steppers” and
the “two-steppers” shifted elsewhere: It shifted in fact to the split between the PLO, led by Arafat’s Fatah, and the Hamas,
the Islamic fundamentalist movement that was quickly gaining ground among Palestinian Arabs. Noticing this trend, many in
the West urged Israel to hurry and cut its deal with the PLO “moderates,” lest the
Jewish state find itself having to deal with the religious extremists instead. The well-wishers could have been usefully tutored
by Rafiq Natshe, a member of the Fatah central committee and PLO representative to Saudi Arabia, who succinctly summarized
the difference between the rival movements:

[Hamas says] all of Palestine is ours, and we want to liberate it from the river to the sea in one blow. But Fatah, which
leads the PLO, feels that a Phased Plan must be pursued. Both sides agree on the final objective. The difference between them
is on the way to get there.
¹⁰¹

There are those who claimed that an exception to this bleak landscape of extremism could be found among those West Bank Palestinian
Arabs whom the PLO first designated as its spokesmen in the Madrid Peace Conference. While it was certainly hoped that moderates
will eventually assume positions of leadership among the Palestinian Arabs, these PLO media-workers regrettably do not deviate
one iota from the PLO line. Among the most prominent is Feisal al-Husseini, the son of Abed al-Khader al-Husseini. Just weeks
before being received by President Bush at the White House in December 1992, Husseini explicated the Phased Plan for destroying
Israel at some length in a Jordanian newspaper:

A “grand strategy” is the product of dominant interests and principles, which are unrelated to the political slogans of the
movement or to any particular period. Thus Russia, for example, has had a permanent interest—which still holds true today—in
attaining “warm water [ports].” In the same manner Germany has had a permanent interest in dominating Europe, for which reason
it embarked on the two world wars in which it was defeated; but it has not given up on this strategic aim, and still holds
fast to it.

The stage in which we are living—as Palestinians, as Jordanians,
and as Arabs—is an historic opportunity which will not repeat itself for a long time. It is similar to what occurred after
World War I and World War II, periods when nations and countries were wiped off the map of the world. It is incumbent upon
us… to work with all possible diligence in the face of these new historic circumstances to position ourselves… to form new
alliances which will bring us closer to [realizing] our grand strategy….

We must bear in mind that the slogan of the present phase is not “from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River.”… [Yet]
we have not and will not give up on any of our commitments that have existed for more than seventy years.

Therefore, we must bear in mind that we have within the united Palestinian and Arab society the abilities to contend with
this uncompleted Israeli society…. Sooner or later, we must force Israeli society to collaborate with a greater society, our
own Arab society, and later we will bring about the gradual dissolution of the Zionist entity.
¹⁰²

Thus, according to Husseini, the Arabs must not lose sight of what is really meant by the slogan demanding “only” a West Bank
state. For just as the Russian Czars and Soviet leaders never gave up on extending their empire to the Mediterranean, and
just as the Kaisers and the Nazis never gave up on ruling Europe, so too the Palestinian-Jordanian-Arab people can never give
up its seventy-year-old “commitment”—“the dissolution of the Zionist entity.”

What emerges from all this is that the PLO produced not one but
two
basic documents that guide its long-term activity. Both were adopted in pivotal PNC meetings in Cairo—one at the PLO’s founding
in 1964, the second ten years later. The first is the PLO Charter, which set
the political goal
of destroying Israel. The second is the Phased Plan, which spelled out the
political method
of achieving that goal. Though many people in the West are familiar with the charter, it is only in conjunction with the
less familiar
Phased Plan that the overall PLO strategy can be understood. Thus, explains Ahmed Sidki al-Dejani, a member of the fifteen-man
PLO executive: “We in the PLO make a clear distinction between the charter and the political programs. The first includes
the permanent political objective, and the second includes the step-by-step approach.”
¹⁰³
And Rafiq Natshe sums it up: “The PLO Charter is the basis of the political and military activity of the PLO. Our present
political approach is rooted in the Phased Plan.… We must aim at harmonizing the various political decisions with the Charter
and the Phased Plan.”
¹⁰⁴

Thus, far from breaking with the virulent hatred of the Mufti, ending decades of terrorism, and giving up on its dream of
an eventual war of annihilation, the PLO did precisely the opposite. Its commitment to the Phased Plan merely united the PLO’s
warring camps as never before, permitting even the most fanatical among them to justify partial gains from Israel as a step
toward the land war they hoped to ignite in the not-too-distant future from their sovereign, if initially truncated, State
of Palestine. It remains to be seen whether the leadership of the Palestinian Authority is genuinely and fully prepared to
break with the past.

But the land war launched from a future West Bank state was not the only poisoned arrow being prepared for the PLO’s quiver.
The PLO has also maintained at the top of its list of demands what it refers to as the “right of return” of all Arabs who
lived in Palestine before 1948 to the cities that they abandoned. Teaching this futile dream to the generations of children
who are trapped in the refugee camps has been one of the cruelest and most cynical of schemes in the entire PLO palette. In
the camps, the wretchedness inflicted by the Arab states that refuse to absorb the refugees is blamed on Israel, ensuring
that the pain of 1948 is not allowed to heal. While many refugees have left the camps and been assimilated into the surrounding
Arab populations, others have been forced to remain in the camps by Arab pressure. There the PLO teaches them that the only
way out is to return to Haifa and Jaffa—
thereby guaranteeing itself another generation of recruits for acts of terrorism.