The Palestinian Israeli Dialogue: From Intifada to Negotiations.

(Majallat al-Dirassat al-Filastiniya, n.12, autumn 1992) (Arabic)

"Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the cat.
"I don't much care where..." said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"...so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "If you only talk long enough".
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Introduction:
This is not a history of the Israeli Palestinian Dialogue, nor is it an attempt to analyse the transformations that have overtaken both Palestinians and Israelis in the last decade. Much less is it a s tudy of the role played by various social groups among the Palestinians in the ongoing struggle to achieve self-determination and statehood - or a balance sheet of the successes and failures of what is termed "the Palestinian Revolution".
The following text is an attempt to reflect on the frenzied efforts of the Palestinian intelligentsia to subordinate the struggle of the Palestinian people for liberation and emancipation, to the requirements of the public relations "battle", primarily with the aim of winning over the American administration, and to a lesser degree, to win the hearts and minds of the Israeli public. In pursuit of this charade, they have exhibited a readiness to placate and compromise even before the two sides have taken their respective p laces at the negotiating table, in the erroneous belief that discourse, in and of itself, can redress and perhaps even overcome an unfavourable balance of forces.
In Context:
In January 1991, a meeting was held at the Notre Dame Hotel in Jerusalem-a venue that has come to be seen as neutral territory between Jewish and Arab Jerusalem- addressed by Shulamit Aloni, the leader of Ratz, a supporter of the establishment of a Palestinian State, and participant in the dialogue with the PLO. Among the small audi ence, predominantly Palestinian, were several people who for a number of years have engaged in dialogue with Israelis. There was an unspoken consensus encapsulated in the slogan "Two peoples, Two states",which seemed to hold a golden promise for the futur e. The fragility of this hope was underlined by the discordant note introduced into the meeting as a result of the Gulf crisis and the wounded tone of Israeli members of the audience, including the speaker herself, who recriminated their Palestinian counter parts for "the Palestinian" support for Iraq.
This event brought to mind a meeting I had twenty-three years ago with a young Israeli academic at his home in Chernychovsky Street, West Jerusalem, one of a small number of Israelis, who courageously, and in the face of an overwhelming Zionist consensus, called for an end to the occupation and support for the Palestinian's right to engage in armed struggle. We spent a couple of hours discussing current affairs and what seemed then an Arab World pregnant with the promise of social and political upheavals; Che guevara had recently been murdered by American forces in Bolivia, yet his call to create more Vietnams was still resounding round the globe, having caught the imagination of people in both East and West.
T hroughout our discussion, not once did we broach the possibility of a resolution of the conflict within the narrow confines of geographic Palestine. It seemed self evident that the ongoing struggle between Arabs and Israelis was part of the Arab masses' attempt to dislodge the hegemony of Western imperialism and the petty bourgeois ruling cliques which were appropriating the wealth of the Arab world as junior partners in a decaying and doomed world capitalist order.
The solution of the problems of backwardness, poverty, dependence, etc. would only come about as a result of the social transformation of the whole region and would by necessity encompass Israel, making it and its people part of a socialist Middle East, rather than a foreign outpost and an al ien implant in the region. The Palestinian Revolution, full of promise, and rising out of the defeat of the army-controlled regimes of 1967, was the catalyst which would ignite a flammable Arab world.
Instead, we have arrived at a Palestinian-Israeli dialog ue aimed at normalising Israel's existence in the region on its own terms, while the Arab masses remain prisoners within an Arab political system whose continued existence,now more than ever,is predicated on American armed intervention.Partly,this process was perhaps the inevitable outcome of Camp David and the withdrawal of Egypt from the confrontation, and the inability of the catalyst to ignite the embers that are still to be seen everywhere in the Arab world,in Algiers, Cairo, Khartoum, Tunis, and Rabat.
The establishment of an independent Palestinian state (the likelihood of which is rather minimal) is not a large price to pay, either for Israel or for the neighboring Arab regimes, while for the Palestinians themselves it is undoubtedly a vindication of their forty-odd years' struggle to rebuild and claim their rightful place in a region and a world community of states where the nineteenth century ideal of the nation state remains a divine commandment. But statehood will not usher in the promised golde n age, and the problems that have been plaguing the region since the formal end of colonialism, the least of which is an Israel which is in but not of the region, will remain unresolved.
Pre-history
A few days before the outbreak of war in June 1967, two small groups, the Palestinian Democratic Front, and the Israeli Socialist Organisation, published a joint statement on what was then termed "the Middle East Crisis"(1). Addressing itself to the roots of the conflict, the statement affirmed that "the Israeli Arab conflict is the continuation, in a new form, of the Palestine Problem", adding that "in the historical context of the Middle East, it is Israel that must take the initiative in making concessions to the Palestinians,a nd not the other way round". It distanced itself from both the official Arab and Israel camps and put forward what it termed a "non-nationalist" solution which took the following form :
The Palestine problem has two main political aspects:
That of re-establishing the rights of the Palestinians, and that of integrating the Israelis into the Arab East. The Arab nationalist leaders pretend to have a solution to the first ("liberation of Palestine"), they do not even claim a solution to the second. The Zionist leaders of Israel pretend to have a solution to the second ("preserve the status quo") they do not even claim one for the first. However, only a solution which simultaneously resolves both aspects of the problem can provide a viable,stable solution. We herewith state our solution,which satisfies this fundamental requirement:
1. Israel must undergo a deep, revolutionary transformation and become a normal state of its own inhabitants. The Zionist power structure and all elements of Jewish supremacy must be abolished totally. This must be achieved only through internal joint struggle of all non- Zionists inside Israel who wish to integrate this state in the Middle East.
2. This non-Zionist Israel will repatriate the Palestinian refugees who wish to return,and fully compensate those who prefer not to return, for their property,land and suffering.It will declare its readiness to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians, and help them to establish an independent Palestinian state should they wish to do so.
3. Whether the Palestinians establish their state, or for the sake of unity, do not, the new transformed, non Zionist Israel will pursue a policy of merging the Israelis and Palestinians in a federal , non-nationalist , socialist state,wherein Jews and Arabs will enjoy full civil rights and cultural freedom.
4. This federal state will participate in the process of political and economic unification of the entire Middle East...."
This was probably the first ever coming together of similarly minded Palestinians and Israelis, and the first attempt to forge a revolutionary alliance with the aim of transforming the nature of the conflict that by then had assumed the character of an inter-state confrontation, simultaneously reflecting the bi-polar politics of the cold war era.
The later Sixties and early Seventies saw the coming together of individual Israelis, Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese and a number of small political groups that shared a common political orientation, in an attempt to arrive at a joint strategy, at the center of which lay a rejection of both the petty bourgeois nationalist Arab regimes and the Zionist structures of the Israeli state. The dialogue which ensued was not perceived as a step towards negotiations between states, nor as an attempt to convey positions to "the other side". Indeed this was not a dialogue between enemies, but rather a discussion among comrades with the aim of embarking on political activity at the grassroots level. At the heart of this projected joint activity the struggle for Palestinian self determination was to be the focal point for an all-encompassing anti imperialist and emancipatory struggle leading to the social and political transformation of the whole Arab East, which of necessity would encompass Israel.
Due to both subjective and objective factors, this pioneering attempt did not bear fruit. With the adoption of the Transitional Program by the PLO in 1974,the left within the Palestinian movement was firmly headed in an altogether different direction. After this unsuccessful joint venture, dialogue when it was resumed, was indeed between enemies. Entrenched within their nationalist fortifications, Palestinians, and to a much lesser degree Israelis, began warily edging towards recognition of the other's exclusiveness and essential separateness.
Dialogue......Reasons and Origins
It is difficult to establish a time reference for the beginning of the dialogue. What started as a marginal phenomenon - the pre-occupation of emissaries in the employ of powerful patrons within the PLO's highest circles (ever ready to repudiate them publi cly while continuing to support their activities), became, after the Israeli-Palestinian war of the summer of 1982 in Lebanon, a central preoccupation and a highly regarded weapon in the near empty Palestinian arsenal. The transformations which took place as a result of the Intifada paradoxically strengthened this impetus, giving legitimacy to the other not so legitimate dialogue that had been taking place within the Occupied Territories since the early days of the occupation, and serving, from the Israeli point of view, to maintain control through co-operation with (and if possible co-optation of) traditional elite figures. Increasingly, and as a result of international pressu re s to arrive at an accommodation with "legitimate Palestinian national aspirations", participants in the dialogue (no longer necessarily traditional elite figures) were portrayed as possible "authentic Palestinians" who might at some future date be acceptable as negotiating partners in a settlement agreeable to Israel.
Two developments gave birth to the dialogue. On the ideological level, despite the continuing popularity of such all-time favourites as "klashnikov splutters blood", there was a conversion to the belief in the efficacy of Israeli and international public opinion. Initially, "democratic forces" within Israel were targeted as potential counterparts, but influencing the widest possible sections of the Israeli public required arriving at a common platform with mainstream public figures.
On the practical level, the psychological impact of the 1973 war and the relative measure of success achieved by Arab armies, gave rise to a sense of euphoria and a heightened expectation that a settlement was in th e offing. The PLO was not immune to such a heady atmosphere. The majority of the PLO leadership was determined that the Palestinians should have a voice at the forthcoming Geneva Conference. The adoption of the Transitional Program by the PNC in 1974 signalled a shy acceptance of partition and the two-state solution. This was regarded as a necessary gesture, qualifying the PLO as an acceptable negotiating partner. It was clear to at least some within the PLO at the time that the issue was no longer one of withholding recognition from Israel, but on the contrary, of gaining legitimacy by winning its recognition. It is in this sense that Said Hammami, the PLO representative in London murdered by Palestinian surrogates of the Iraqi regime, used to tirelessly insist that " dialogue is between enemies". The PLO craved the recognition that it was the enemy. An enemy you make war with-and eventually also make peace.
The 1977 PNC meeting gave the green light to the dialogue. Initially, this was essentially a search for allies among anti-Zionist forces, or in the words of Mahmoud Abbas (one of the architects of the dialogue and its most active proponent), "ideological common ground". Dialogue with anti Zionists was speedily widened to encompass "democratic forces" and all those who recognised Palestinian rights and the PLO. Abbas writes of the irrelevance of right and left in the Israeli context(2). The peace camp is what matters. In his view, this is made up of people who are essentially non-Zionists (irrespective of the fact that member of the Israeli peace camp insist on defining themselves as Zionists)(3).
The exit from Beirut in the summer of 1982 gave fresh impetus to this activity. The Arab regimes had stood by and watched the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon and the siege of Beirut. When at long last an Arab summit was held in Fez in September 1982, its res olutions were a shy attempt to find common ground with the terms of the Reagan Plan. The Algiers meeting of the PNC in 1983 endorsed the Fez Summit proposals on the understanding that these represented the maximalist Arab position in the collective Arab approach to the United States. As one acute observer put it;, " the PLO could not demand more than an Arab consensus was prepared to support"(4). Thus the Fez summit decisions were incorporated into the PLO's own political platform. The implication of what had been hesitantly suggested in the 1974 Transitional Program was now spelled out : acceptance of the existence of Israel. In other words a two state solution, or as Salah Khalaf was to make clear in his speech to the Amman meeting of the PNC in November 1984, the PLO was now prepared and ready to accept the formula of land for peace(5). (A gesture in the direction of Resolution 242 which would become full endorsement in the 1988 meeting of the PNC and Arafat's statement in Geneva). The loss of Lebanon as a relatively safe and independent sanctuary, it has been argued, called for "new thinking". Curiously enough, prominent practitioners of Palestinian diplomacy, havin g travelled the long road from Fath's inception in the early 1960's, to defeat and expulsion in 1982, arrived at the rather hackneyed formulation: "politics is the art of the possible"(6). Pursuit of the dialogue was additionally based on a rather individual reading of the Israeli political scene, one which depicted Israeli society as " heterogenous, crumbling, divided and on the verge of collapse"(7).
The Dialogue Within
Meetings and discussions between Israeli officials and a number of inhabitants of the Occupied Territories were initiated from the very start of the occupation The list is indeed very long and is not confined to traditional and pro-Jordanian figures. In the early 1980's, however, new faces entered the scene and presented their activities within the framework of the PLO's political strategy. This is best exemplified by an article which appeared in Al Fajr newspaper in 1984.The writer castigated the PLO for the contradiction between its theory and practice, and attempted to draw a logical practical conclusion from the increasing emphasis on the aim of statehood:
"The other side of the sovereign and independent Palestinian state is not only recognising in theory Israel and Zionism in the final stage but to accept them immediately and in practical form....in the 16th session of the PNC the council adopted the Fez summit resolutions concerning the partitioning of Palestine as well as welcoming Brezhnev's peace proposals which frankly call for coexistence between Israel and an independent Palestinian state....and this is a courageous and progressive development of ideas which started to assume form in the transitional political Program in 1974, but the Council withheld giv ing its support to official meetings with Zionists and dialogues remained a forbidden thing"(8).
Despite the self-evident truths contained in this statement, it is to be noted that they could only be clearly enunciated and publicly proclaimed as a result of the defeat suffered by the PLO at the hands of the Israeli Army in the summer of 1982, and the resulting disarray in the ranks of the PLO. Dispersed by defeat and rent by internal divisions, the PLO now looked to the Occupied Territories as the main arena of struggle, thus enhancing the role of those elements within it that were ready to shoulder the tasks of formulating strategies to cope with, or co-exist with, the Occupation and the Occupier. So long as the PLO held - at least verbally - to the option of the armed struggle, there was only a very small margin of activity open to those social forces living under occupation who were neither ready nor willing to immerse themselves in anti-occupation activity with all the risks and penalties this entailed (a rather similar situation pertained during the conflagration in the Gulf, and the increased spate of knife attacks, relegated the practitioners of the dialogue to the background). Thousands did opt for militant struggle against the occupation and paid for their actions with their lives, the loss of their homes, long term imprisonment, expulsions etc.
Thus despite a few false starts (the attack on a group of Birzeit University academics who engaged in a variant termed "the academic dialogue") the dialogue really only took off after the demise of the fortunes of the PLO and what it symbolised : the armed struggle. Early on in the occupation a Palestinian notable from Nablus had opined that if the issue was one of a peaceful settlement, then this could be more rightfully and legitimately accomplished by a local leadership(9). The Israelis for their part, especially those searching for "authentic Palestinians" were standing at the ready at the other end. The dialogue now arrived at the "take off stage". By the summer of 1987 its self selected practitioners had arrived at legitimacy. A participant in the dialogue from the Palestinian side, in a rather poorly sketched summary of the dialogue as it had evolved over time,ends with what amounts to a deceleration of faith that this was now the only way to realise Palestinian aims. He enumerates the possible alternatives:
"The meetings began as a small unknown vehicle standing before a long dark tunnel. Some 20 years later, however, they have become a recognised bus running regularly along a fixed route and in all directions. The options before everyone are the follow ing:
- to be on the bus to drive it or help drive it.
- to follow it until it achieves our natural principles and objectives.
- or to remain behind, and so let it go without us and possibly reach stands far away from us."(10)
Dialogue Post-Intifada
Although the meetings between Moshe Amirav and a group of Palestinians identified with the PLO took place a few months before the advent of the Intifada(11), they constitute a landmark because they broke a taboo and ushered in a new era in which Palestinian participants in the dialogue were accorded full legitimacy after the declaration of statehood in Algiers. In practice,dialogue was no longer opposed by a single faction within the PLO, and in the forthcoming "golden age" of Israeli Palestinian meetings both here and abroad, representatives of all major political groups identified with the PLO took part. The dialogue in the Occupied Territories went hand-in-hand with that carried out by the PLO outside with Israeli and Jewish-American groups. Arafat's meeting with five Jewish American figures in Stockholm in 1988 was symbolic in that it illuminated the choice the PLO had made and the strategy adopt ed in order to win American recognition.The underlying premise of the PLO's new strategy, based on utilising the newsworthiness of the Intifada, was the battle to win international public opinion. Parallel to this was the substitution of public relations for a principled political position. The media became both the arena of battle and the arbiter of success,and it was deemed imperative to play to the Western and particularly American gallery. In order to overturn the image long cultivated and propagated by the Western media of the Palestinians as terrorists and rejectionists intent on the annihilation of Israel, it was now necessary to advertise the " new moderation" (a term coined by the Western media to describe persons or policies deemed acceptable to the Americans) and emphasis that the conditions laid down by the US for admission into the club of respectability , acceptance of Resolution 242, etc, have now been met. But there was another underlying assumption which seemed to lie behind the PLO's whole he arted battle for the media : the belief that support for Israel is the result of a skilful manipulation and control of the media by Israel and its supporters. In addition to being mechanistic and not mindful of the moral legacy of the holocaust which make s Western public opinion vulnerable to Israeli claims, this also totally ignores the community of interests, and the strategic role Israel performed in US strategy both regionally and globally in the context of the Cold War; a role that was enhanced unde r the Reagan administration as a result of the demise of the Shah's regime in Iran.
The belief in an all powerful and rather Manichean powers of the Jewish lobby in the US has reinforced the position taken towards even the most insignificant Jewish groups and public figures, in the belief that through their mediation it would be possibl e to influence American policy makers and perhaps the Israeli leadership as well. Thus great store has been placed on Palestinian appearances before Jewish American audiences (a great deal of Palestinian activity in the US is aimed at courting Jewish Americans and convincing them of the PLO's moderation).
Within the Occupied Territories the dialogue has the official task of winning Israeli recognition by proxy, as it were. Thus an Israeli official's meeting with any Palestinian identified with the PLO in whatever setting, whether in jail (Husseini and Goren ), as a result of a royal summons (Shamir and Tarifi), or by mutual consent (Husseini and Kollek), is construed as an Israeli capitulation, and recognition of the all-representative nature of the PLO and its legitimacy.
Two Opposing Perceptions
While the aims and motivations of Palestinian and Israeli participants in the dialogue sometimes converge, the areas of divergence are much more significant than would appear at first glance. From the Palestinian side, the dialogue is many things : simult aneously it is an act of diplomacy and a vehicle for transmitting information; its aim is at one and the same time to get acquainted with the enemy and to split its ranks(12). While a prominent participant in the dialogue explains the meetings in terms of "explaining PLO positions and answering the questions and fears they raise"(13), another prominent PLO member lists as factors impelling a Palestinian "peace offensive", the following:
1. The Israeli economic and political collapse.
2. Exploitation of the penetration that took place in the minds of the individuals which make up the Zionist entity as a result of the democracy they saw during the sessions of the Palestine National council.
3. Exploitation of the Zionist siltation which is politically collapsed to the degree of being unable to take political decisions.
4. Exploitation of the ideas of groups which have begun to appear in the Zionist entity concerning the necessity of withdrawal, dealing with the PLO, and the Palestinian peoples right to self determination.(14)
From the Israeli side, the underlying motivations are wide ranging, extending from the practical to the inane(15). What is important to note in this context is that those Israelis engaged in the dialogue do so from within an Israeli consensus which upholds the primacy of Israel's security needs,and subscribe to the belief in the Jewish peoples righ t to the whole of Palestine. Disregarding episodes such as the Amirav-Husseini meetings which were more a function of inter-Israeli politics (16), and the contacts with serving Israeli officials such as the one between Y.Beilin and eight prominent PLO supp or ters (17), Israeli participants in the dialogue see it as their task to influence Palestinian positions and to push for greater "moderation". This seems to be based on the belief that " the only road to the fulfillment of the aspirations of both nations run s through the hearts and minds of each one's opponents"(18). M. Bar On, a dialoguer immersed in psychologism, attributes Israeli intransigence to feelings of fear and insecurity. The onus is on the Palestinians to remove this fear. They have to win the Is raelis confidence because " if the peace overtures on the part of Arafat appear to a majority of Israelis as dishonest and too risky,Israelis may still prefer to look ugly, but remain alive"(19). It is in the light of such reasoning that one can understand the chagrin of the Israeli peace camp at Mahmoud Darwish's poem "Those who pass between fleeting words", and " the immense damage it made to the cause of peace".
A Promethean task awaits the Palestinians. They are called upon, man, woman and child, in the Occupied Territories and in exile, whether languishing in administrative detention,or having been duly tried and sentenced serving their time in Israeli jails, whether huddling in the urban slums of Gaza, the remains of the devastated camps in Lebanon, or the luxury villas of Amman and the Gulf, to stretch their hands out and open their hearts in order to convince their oppressors and dispossesors of their peaceful intentions. In this unique colonial situation, a nation, part of which has been driven into exile, while the remainder have been transformed into hewers of wood and drawers of water at the service of their colonisers, is called upon, while suffering the daily brutalities of the Israeli army, to convince their enemy that they do not pose any threa t to them and that they harbour no rancor(20).
Perhaps the inappropriateness of the Israelis as partners in dialogue lies in their inability to recognise the ideological underpinnings of Israeli political culture, a culture they are not prepared to question and thus help transform, making it possible for Israel to recognise the legitimacy of Palestinian national aspirations, rather than predicate their stand on arguments revolving round the importance of preserving the exclusively Jewish nature of the state, its democratic character, and the demographic danger. Y.Tsaban, a leader of Mapam and an earnest dialoguer (to the extent of seeking Faisal Husseini in detention) opined in an interview in 1985 that if Arafat were to make " a clear cut deceleration that th ey are ready in principle to recognise Israel's right to exist...there would be a radical change in Israel over night" (21). More than two years after the event, Shamir will consider nothing more than a watered down version of the autonomy scheme suggested at Camp David. Yet persistent demands from the Israeli peace camp for further concessions in order to exhibit Palestinian goodwill and to serve as confidence building measures continue to be made and to be accommodated. Nothing is too bizarre. To allay Israeli fears about the military potential of the state to be, a prominent PLO supporter from the Gaza Strip assured the audience in a joint Israeli-Palestinian meeting in Brussels that the Palestinians would consent to the de-militirisation of their state to be and would even be prepared to accept " a police force whose members would go barefoot and carry sticks"(22) (a more popular version had it that the offer was for the Palestinian police force to go round in bathing trunks.).
As opposed to mainstream Isr aeli society, left Zionists who make up the majority of the peace camp, seem to crave Palestinian recognition. Only by achieving legitimacy for Israel from the Palestinians, its main victims, do they feel confident in reciprocating and recognising Palesti nian legitimacy. But this does not move the Israeli political establishment, nor does it sway the Israeli public, both of whom have a totally different political agenda. Thus it is doubtful that the effort and energy the Palestinians have invested in the dialogue have resulted in any meaningful political dividend.
A False Equation: The Intifada + Dialogue = Negotiations -> Statehood.
In order to determine the means to resolve the Arab-Zionist/Palestinian-Israeli conflict,it is first and foremost necessary to be clear regarding its nature. If it is the outcome of mutual misconceptions and misunderstandings, dialogue and the gradual bui lding up of trust are necessary means to overcome this situation. If, on the other hand, we are dealing with a colonial situ ation, then no amount of preaching and protestations of love will serve to dislodge an entrenched power from its position of control and domination. Occupations persist so long as they are profitable ventures (admittedly when dealing with "crazy states" this maxim does not necessarily apply). There have been very few examples, if any, of a colonised and oppressed people being able to militarily defeat a colonial power. What is possible is the ability to continuously raise the price of the occupation unti l it becomes no longer profitable to maintain it. The Intifada is the Palestinians attempt to make Israel pay an unacceptable price for its continued occupation. In other words, the waging of a war of attrition in which the cost of suppressing the Intifada will be the determining factor in Israel's willingness to maintain its control indefinitely. From this perspective, it is the Intifada itself which is the catalyst for change within Israel, and not the eloquent ,and not so eloquent speeches of those engaged in dialogue. The information battle has a role in complimenting the daily confrontation with the occupation, and Israelis who recognise Palestinian rights have a role to play, predominantly within their own society, to effect transformations within it . The Palestinians have clearly enunciated their choice : self-determination and statehood side-by-side with Israel. This is not going to be handed to them on a platter and no amount of declarations of goodwill or protestations of everlasting love can sub st itute for the need to drive the point home to the Israelis that they are engaged in a losing venture and that the longer they persist in it the more it is going to cost them. When both Palestinians and Israelis are firmly convinced of this, a meaningful d ialogue can begin.
Footnotes:
1. Joint statement dated 3/6/67 published in The Times (London) 8/6/67 by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
2. M.Abbas (Abu Mazen) Hadihi al Ittisallat -Limadha? Dar Falastin. Jerusalem,May 1990. p.13.
3. Interview with M Abbas. Shououn Falastiniya. Nov/Dec 1987, pp 167-170.
4. M.Ibrahim. Afak al Amal al Watani. Dar Beirut al Masa, 1984. p.140.
5. K.Al Hassan. Al Ittifak al Urduni al Falastini li al taharuk al mushtarak. Abu Arafe publishers. Jerusalem.1985.p.104.
6.M.Abbas. op.cit. p.11. K.Al Hassan. op. cit. p147.
7. K.Al Hassan. op.cot.p.150.
8. S.Nussibeh."Fi Zikra Issam al Saratawi". Al Fajr.12/4/1984.
9. Qadri Toukan, quoted in M. Abdul Hadi. Notes on Palestinian-Israeli meetings in the Occupied Territories. Jerusalem. June 1987.p.9.
10. ibid.p.12.
11. Strictly speaking the secret meetings with Amirav were more in the nature of negotiations with the Palestinian participants acting as go betweens with the PLO leadership. Amirav himself seems to have been manipulated by more senior Likud figures whose main aim was tactical. To undermine Shimon Peres's lobbying for an international conference, and to convince the US administration that they were not averse to talking with "authentic Palestinians" and that the Likud itself was the one capable of delivering the Palestinians. For a Palestinian viewpoint see, "Al Tahawor al Israeli ma al Falastiniyin". Shououn Falastiniya, N.193, April 1989, pp154-155.
12. M.Abbas. op.cit.pp.4 & 8.
13Interview with Faisal Husseini, Al Shark Al Awsat (london)18/2/89.
14.K.Al Hassan op.cit. p.150.
15.E.Kaufman."Israeli Palestinian Dialogue: prospects for grass roots contacts". Journal of Palestine Studies, Issue 66. Winter 1988.
16. Le Monde (Paris) 25/9/1987, reproduced in Journal of Palestine studies, Issue 66. Winter 1988. pp.197/198.
17.Faisal Husseini one of eight PLO supporters who participated in the meeting made this rather bizarre assessment of the event,"what was interesting in the meeting was that it was as if these people were hearing our position for the first time..they were surprised at what we said which was the opposite of what they had been told by their leaders". Interview with F. Husseini, Journal of Palestine Studies, Issue 72 Summer 1989. p.13. If Husseini believes himself this is a tragedy, if on the other hand the Israelis surprise was genuine, then one wonders what the Palestinian position explained at this meeting consisted of.
18. M.Bar On. "Israeli Reactions to the Palestinian Uprising". Journal of Palestine Studies. Issue 68. Summer 1988.p.62.
19. ibid. p.63.
20. This brings to mind another memorable phrase of Golda Meir who opined that her dislike of Arabs was based on the fact that they force young Israelis to kill them. A recent academic paper by an American professor, describes the Intifada as a "post modernist form of terrorism, where Palestinians terrorise the Israelis by getting themselves shot to death.
21.Interview with Y.Tsaban. Journal of Palestine Studies. Issue 56. Summer 1985.pp100-101.
22. Haaretz (Israeli Daily )20 March 1988. This saying is attributed to Faiz Abu Rahame, a leading PLO supporter in the Gaza Strip.
23.See Y.Dror Crazy States, A Counter-conventional Strategic Problem (Heath Lexington Books,1971). The author an Israeli academic, does not see fit to offer Israel an an example of a potentially crazy state despite the fact that it fits his model more readily than either the US or the USSR, both of which he uses as examples which potentially could behave in a "crazy" manner.