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PARTISAN REVIEW
McCloskey's seduction and abandonment by Arafat was preceded
by an Israeli version of the same event.
Even Anthony Lewis laments the PLO's "past failure to act
with political vision.
If
the PL.O. had been willing to come out
openly for the idea of living in peace with Israel, it would be in a far
stronger morai and political position now." Lewis underestimates
the extent to which the PLO's failure to recognize Israel's right to
exist is not a tactical ploy but rather reflects deep-seated ideological
assumptions about the world, and especially about Palestine. Arafat
has succeeded in convincing elements of Western public opinion that
the question is only tactical, one of timing, and of being the one to
start. There are exceptions, to be sure, like the oft-quoted Dr.
Sartawi, living under heavy guard in Paris-in fear of assassination
by more radical elements of the PLO. His colleague Said Hamami
was gunned down in London by Iraqi agents. But Sartawi began
negotiating with the most dovish Israelis, like Matti Peled and
Lyova Eliav, over six years ago. All he got was a peace prize from
Bruno Kreisky; he could not deliver the goods. And the PLO
remains committed to the establishment of a unitary Arab Palestine
in which the Jews-if the PLO can be believed-will be equal citi–
zens, Palestinian Arabs of the Mosaic Persuasion.
So the war was popular in Israel; that is to say, in American
public opinion terms, a vast majority favored it. Thus the Western
reaction to the Peace Now demonstration held in Tel Aviv, at which
some fifty to one hundred thousand Israelis protested (particularly
the military option in Beirut), was overblown, a case of political
wishful thinking. There is no doubt that the Peace Now position,
however sympathetic, represents a minority point of view-as the
progovernment rally held two weeks later proved. Nevertheless, as
Dr. A. Netzer points out in a
Ha'aretz
piece on June 24, while
"most" respondents in public opinion polls favored Israeli military
action to crush the PLO in Beirut, "most" people also opposed this
action if Israeli casualties were to exceed one hundred.
But in Israeli terms, the dissent from the ever-widening war is
unique and disturbing. Though it is a minority viewpoint, never
before did such an appreciable minority dissent in wartime. Begin
thought that this was so because in previous wars he headed the
opposition, which, despite its criticisms, was loyal during wartime–
unlike the present OppositIOn. But Begin's criticisms then were
always guided by Impatience with restraint rather than by its
opposite.
I
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