www.jewishpublicaffairs.org  Vol. 8, No.4 October 20, 2004 • 5 Cheshvan, 5765

The following article, published on October 12th by Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and co-author of Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography and Hating America: A History, can be found on the web at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/2004/10_12.html.

An event of earthshaking dimensions happened on October 4, which should go down in the Middle East history books. On that day, an op-ed piece appeared in the New York Times by Michael Tarazi, the PLO's legal advisor. Such an article would never appear without approval by that group's leadership and broad support from its cadre. This is part of a broader campaign, as shown by parallel articles such as one by Ahmad Khalidi in the Guardian, September 29.

Tarazi's article is a policy statement of prime importance. The title, "Two Peoples, One State," tells the story. The PLO's position is now publicly and officially back to where it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Its open goal is Israel's elimination. To say this is nothing new because such has been the implicit aim all along would be a rave mistake. The fact that the PLO has now come out into the open with such a position is a very important change indeed.

This decision is one more sign that any chance for progress in the peace process is an illusion. All road maps, declarations, delegations, and other efforts may contribute to achieving peace in the long-term but in the immediate context are merely useless exercises in wishful thinking.

The key to understanding the history of the last half-century's Arab-Israeli conflict is that the PLO was never a true nationalist movement. If it had been, the problem would have been solved long ago. For the PLO, destroying Israel is more important than building an independent Palestinian state or relieving the Palestinian people's suffering.
 
That is why Yasir Arafat turned down Israel's offer at Camp David as well as the Clinton plan, both of which offered a viable independent viable state with its capital in Jerusalem.  But what was never fully appreciated about this approach is how irrational it is from the standpoint of a genuine Palestinian nationalism. A nationalist wants his people to live in a country of their own in order to build their identity and well-being.
 
Demanding a "right of return" to Israel sabotages any real Palestinian nationalism.
If the goal was to build a strong, stable Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel, everything would be done to discourage refugees from going to Israel. Why should a Palestinian state make a gift of these people, their money and talents to someone else? Knowing that Israel would reject such a "right of return," demanding it ensures postponing the end of the occupation, violence, casualties, and obtaining compensation billions of dollars in compensation.

The reality is that the demand for a "return"--and PLO documents explicitly make this clear--is intended to subvert Israel and put it under Palestinian rule. In that case, returnees would not be lost to Palestine but would soon be making a real "return" to that state while bringing all of Israel with them.
 
But even this slightly subtle two-stage plan proved too much for the PLO. Now it has gone back to an explicit demand for a unitary state at the beginning of the process rather than as the outcome of years of subversion. One need not be a genius to understand the consequences of such a "solution." The daily power struggle, bloodshed and civil war would make what is happening now look like a picnic. To take seriously the scheme Tarazi proposes would be to assume the Palestinian leadership is so humanitarian, liberal, and democratic-minded that it will sacrifice its own ambitions and totally change its historic behavior. The movement's promotion of terrorism and vicious anti-Israel incitement belies any such intention.
 
Finally, and regrettably, this new campaign shows that even if Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip--or even accepts a Palestinian state in all the West Bank, too--this would only initiate a new phase in which the Palestinian leadership would demand Israel's elimination as the next step. Of course, Tarazi tries to make this Palestinian demand seem something forced on it by Israeli policies. In fact, Palestinian leaders have repeatedly made such points in private conversation for years, even at the height of the peace process.
 
But the growing explicit demand for dismantling Israel rather than seeking a Palestinian state alongside it is growing as a result of the current Palestinian assessment, too. It is a "right of return" to the 1960s and 1970s arising from a combination of a lost intifada, a victory in the international propaganda war, and refusal to make a real compromise peace.
 
Nevertheless, it is also one more in a long series of Palestinian mistakes. For every person in the West ready to agree with a Palestinian demand to destroy Israel, there are five or ten willing to accept the movement's supposed nationalist narrative. They will buy the argument that Palestinians just want their own homeland of their own but not the idea that this should include Israel as well. This point is even truer for Western states and politicians. The PLO's new line is likely to be a public relations' disaster, undoing many of the movement's apparent gains in the battle for public opinion.
 
Even Tarazi reveals the hypocrisy of a pretense that the new Palestinian policy is a reluctant choice still being debated. He concludes, "The only question is how long it will take, and how much all sides will have to suffer" before Israeli Jews accept this outcome. As real Palestinian moderates realize, defining the conflict in these terms ensures that, no matter who leads Israel, the struggle will go on a very long time with far more suffering, and a certainty that Palestinians will not get a state for many years.

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