Arabs (79 page)

 

The PLO clearly needed to present a new face to the international community if the organization were to gain recognition as a government in exile. In 1973 Arafat named Said Hammami as the PLO’s representative to London. A native of the coastal city of Jaffa, Hammami had been driven out of Palestine with his family in 1948 and grew up in Syria, earning a degree in English literature at Damascus University. Hammami was both a committed Palestinian nationalist and a political moderate who quickly established good relations with journalists and policymakers in London.

In November 1973, Hammami published an article in the
Times
of London calling for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. “Many Palestinians,” he wrote, “believe that a Palestinian state on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank . . . is a necessary part of any peace package.” He was the first PLO representative ever to make such a proposal. “It is no small thing for a people who have been wronged as we have to take the first step towards reconciliation for the sake of a just peace that should satisfy all parties”—which, by implication, included Israel. The editor of the paper added a note to the article stressing that Hammami was “known to be very close to the PLO chairman, Mr. Yasser Arafat,” and that Hammami’s decision to state such views publicly was thus “of considerable significance.”
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Through his London representative, Arafat had succeeded in opening a channel not only to the West but also to Israel itself.

An Israeli journalist and peace activist named Uri Avnery was electrified by what he had read in Hammami’s article. Avnery had immigrated to Palestine during the mandate and joined the Irgun in the late 1930s, when still just a teenager. He would later silence those who criticized him for speaking with Palestinian “terrorists,” saying, “You can’t talk to me about terrorism, I was a terrorist.” Avnery was wounded in the 1948 war and went on to serve three terms in the Knesset as an independent. Though a committed Zionist, Avnery had always advocated a two-state solution, long before anyone in the Arab world would support the idea. Menachem Begin used to deride him in Knesset debates, asking, “Where are the Arab Avnerys?”
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In reading Hammami’s articles, Uri Avnery immediately recognized he had found his Palestinian counterpart.

In December 1973, Hammami penned a second column for the
Times
, this time calling for mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestinians. “The Israeli Jews and the Palestinian Arabs should recognize one another as peoples, with all the rights to which a people is entitled. This recognition should be followed by the realization of . . . a Palestinian state, an independent, fully-fledged member state of the United Nations.”
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With this second article, Avnery recognized that Hammami’s views must
have reflected a conscious change of policy within the PLO. A diplomat might make one indiscretion and keep his job, but a repeat offender would certainly get the sack. Hammami could only suggest such things as mutual recognition between Israelis and Palestinians with the support of Yasser Arafat.

Avnery was determined to make contact with Said Hammami. While attending the Geneva peace conference in December 1973, Avnery met a journalist with the
Times
and asked him to arrange a meeting with the PLO representative. The meeting carried great risks for both men. In the climate of terrorist violence of the early 1970s, both the hard-line Palestinian factions and the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, were actively assassinating their enemies. Hammami and Avnery were willing to take the risk of meeting, for both men were convinced that a two-state solution held the only prospect for a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

They had their first meeting in Avnery’s London hotel room on January 27, 1974, during which Hammami set out his views. Avnery summarized them as follows:

Avnery stressed to Hammami that Israel was a democracy of its Jewish citizens, and that in order to change Israeli government policy, they would have to change Israeli public opinion. “One does not change public opinion by words, statements, diplomatic formulas,” he later recalled telling Hammami. “One changes public opinion with the impact of dramatic events, which speak directly to the heart of everyone, events which a person can see with his own eyes on television, hear on the radio, read in the headlines of his paper.”
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For the moment, neither Arafat nor Hammami could go further to win over Israeli public opinion than to argue for the two-state solution in the Western press. In the climate of the times, this represented a more radical shift in policy than the PLO leadership dared to express more openly. While the meetings between Avnery and the PLO’s London representative continued to be kept in strictest secrecy, Hammami’s moderate message no doubt played a part in Arafat’s invitation to address the United Nations. Through his articles in the
Times
, Hammami showed the Western world
that the PLO was ready to engage in a negotiated settlement with the Israelis. Arafat’s speech would provide the opportunity for the sort of “dramatic event” Avnery believed necessary to force a shift in Israeli policy.

 

The next major breakthrough for Arafat in 1974 came in the inter-Arab arena. At the Rabat Summit of Arab leaders, Arafat defeated his old rival King Hussein of Jordan in securing Arab recognition for the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. On October 29, 1974, the meeting of Arab heads of state gave its unanimous support to the PLO and affirmed the right of the Palestinian people to establish a “national authority” on “any liberated Palestinian land” under PLO leadership. The resolution dealt a terrible blow to King Hussein’s claims to represent the Palestinians and to Jordan’s sovereignty over the West Bank. Arafat left Rabat with the PLO’s claims as a government-in-exile greatly strengthened.

Fifteen days after his triumph in Rabat, Arafat landed at the United Nations to secure international support for Palestinian self-determination. Lina Tabbara, a Lebanese diplomat who was half Palestinian, was in his entourage to assist with the translation of his speech into English and French. Tabbara was overwhelmed by the drama of the moment. “I entered through the main door of the glass building right behind Yasser Arafat, who received the reception accorded to a head of state except for a few details of protocol,” Tabbara recalled. “It was the climax of the [Palestinian] resistance movement, a moment of triumph for the disinherited, and one of the most beautiful days of my life.” Seeing Arafat take to the rostrum and receive a standing ovation from the General Assembly awakened her “feelings of pride at having Palestinian blood.”
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Arafat gave a long speech—101 minutes in all. “It was a real committee job,” Khalid al-Hasan later recalled. “Drafts, drafts and more drafts. When we thought we’d got it about right, we asked one of our most celebrated poets to put the finishing touch to it.”
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It was a rousing speech, a call for justice, but ultimately a speech targeting a Palestinian audience, and those who supported the Palestinian revolutionary struggle. It was not a speech intended to sway the Israeli public and force a change in Israeli government policy. Arafat did not enjoy enough support within his own movement to suggest any accommodation with Israel. And the Israelis weren’t listening: the Israeli delegation boycotted Arafat’s speech in protest against the PLO chairman’s appearance.

Instead of reinforcing Hammami’s appeal for a two-state solution, Arafat reverted to his long-standing “revolutionary dream” of “one democratic State where Christian, Jew and Moslem live in justice, equality, fraternity and progress” in the whole of Palestine. To the Israelis, and their American supporters, this still sounded like the familiar old call for the destruction of the Jewish state. Even worse, instead of using the UN podium to extend his hand to the Israelis, Arafat famously ended with
a rhetorical threat. “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
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Arafat departed the hall to another standing ovation. The PLO chairman’s call for justice and statehood for the Palestinian people enjoyed widespread support in the international community. Arafat had more need for supporters than for bold gestures. When Lina Tabbara next saw Arafat, the PLO chairman would be fighting for his political survival in Civil War Lebanon, just two years later.

So much had been achieved by the Palestinian movement in 1974. Khalid al-Hasan, chairman of the PNC Foreign Relations Committee, declared 1974 “such an important year,” when the PLO leadership was “committed to an accommodation with Israel.” But no further progress was made on Palestinian-Israeli negotiations after Arafat’s UN speech. Hammami and Avnery continued to meet in secret in London, with Hammami briefing Arafat and Avnery periodically meeting with Itzhak Rabin to update their respective leaders on their conversations. “It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Said Hammami’s work,” Khalid al-Hasan insisted. “If the Israeli Government of Yitzhak Rabin had responded to the signals we were sending through Hammami, we could have had a just peace in a very few years.”
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But Arafat did not dare make any concessions to Israel, and Rabin did not want to do anything that might encourage the creation of a Palestinian state, to which he was adamantly opposed.

With both the Palestinians and the Israelis hardening their positions after 1974, both Hammami and Avnery faced growing danger from extremists within their own societies. In December 1975, a mad Israeli attacked Avnery with a knife and severely wounded him near his Tel Aviv home. And in January 1978 Hammami was gunned down in his London office, executed by the Palestinian rejectionist Abu Nidal Group for his meetings with Israelis. The gunman fired a single shot to Hammami’s head, spat on him, and called him a traitor before slipping away through the streets of London with impunity.
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The window of opportunity for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians was now closed. On April 13, 1975, Christian militiamen ambushed a busload of Palestinians in the Beirut suburb of Ain Rummaneh, killing all twenty-eight on board. It was the start of a civil war that over the next fifteen years would lay waste to Lebanon and drive the Palestinian movement to the brink of extermination.

Political stability in Lebanon was placed under growing pressure as the demographic balance of the country changed. The French had carved the biggest possible country out of the Syrian mandate so as to create a state in which their Christian
protégés would represent a majority. However, the Muslim communities of Lebanon (which included the Druzes along with the Sunnis and Shiites) experienced a higher rate of population growth and by the 1950s began to overtake the Christians (which included the dominant Maronites, along with Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Protestants, and a number of smaller sects) in sheer numbers. The 1932 census, which showed the Christians with a small majority over the Muslims, was to prove the last formal head count: to this day, there still are no accurate figures for the population breakdown of Lebanon.

By the time Lebanon achieved independence in 1943 the Muslims population was willing to concede political predominance to the Christians in exchange for a Christian commitment to integrate Lebanon in the Arab world and to distance themselves from their former colonial power and protector, France. The power-sharing formula they struck in the 1943 National Pact was a “confessional” or sectarian system, in which the top government posts were apportioned to Lebanon’s communities—e.g., a Maronite president, a Sunni prime minister, a Shiite speaker of parliament. Seats in the parliament were distributed among Christians and Muslims by a ratio that marginally favored the Christians 6:5.

This power-sharing agreement was first challenged in the 1958 civil war. U.S. military intervention and the election of a reformist president, Fuad Chehab, in September 1958 restored the status quo in Lebanon and preserved the confessional system for another decade. The advent of the Palestinian revolution on Lebanese soil in the late 1960s catalyzed the next assault on the confessional system.