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had trouble directly answering Lewis's questions:
If
you get a state,
will you agree to live in peace with Israel? He replied , "We need
peace more than they do." Well, that could be a yes-I even suppose
that it might be - but given the centrality of the issue, one might
have hoped for a more forthcoming pronouncement. And it does lit–
tle to reduce our suspicions about the constraints on Arafat's ability
to maneuver on the subject.
In a subsequent
New York Times
Op- Ed piece arguing that a Pal–
estinian state on the West Bank and Gaza would be "democratic,
secular , and at peace ," Professor Abu Lughod, one of the two Pales–
tinian American members of the Palestine National Council with
whom George Shultz recently met, went on to say that Palestinian
institutions "offer a vision of a Palestine shared with Israel's Jewish
community,
the precise mode oj sharing to beJreely decided by both peoples."
In other words , even in an article meant to reassure Ameri cans of
the peaceful intent of the P.L.O. call for a West Bank/Gaza state,
Palestinians cannot say that they will accept a separate post–
settlement Jewish state in Israel. "They have a gift for obfuscation ,"
a veteran Israeli diplomat told me the day the Abu- Lughod piece ap–
peared. But one wonders whether such obfuscation is meant to fool
Arab hardliners or Western public opinion as to the intent and limits
of Palestinian moderation.
At a conference in Boulder , Colorado at the beginning of April,
I shared a platform with Hatem Hussaini - once deputy head of the
P.L.O. mission to the United Nations . Husseini call ed for an Israeli
withdrawal from the territories immediately in exchange for the re-
laxation of international pressure against it. (Along the way he asked
(
the audience to join him, Woody Allen, and Allen Ginsberg in op-
posing Israel.) H usseini most decidedly could not bring himself to
say that he would accept a post-settlement, Jewish-dominated State
of Israel, of whatever size. He masked his uncompromising anti–
Zionism by calling for an end to all nation states, not only the Jewish
one.
Arafat's reendorsement of "land-for-peace" was meant to ad–
vance the idea of an independent Palestinian state solution. "Peace"
advocates of this solution refer to it as the "two state" solution - one
for the Jews and other Israelis, and one for the Palestinians. Others
call it a "third state" solution, since it would establish a third state in
addition to Israel and Jordan in historic Palestine. For this solution
to work, Israel must agree to talk to the P.L.O. So in addition to
Israeli "brutality" the problem becomes Israel's refusal to negotiate
with the P.L.O. (witness many of the advertisements which ap-
