The PLO’s ‘No’ Must Turn Into a ‘Yes’

JERUSALEM — The assassination of Nablus Mayor Zafer Masri by rival Palestinian gunmen and the frenzied demonstration in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization at his funeral are the latest events in a dramatic fortnight of Palestinian political activity.

Two weeks ago, Jordan’s King Hussein reshuffled the deck with a televised address in which he blamed the PLO for the breakdown of the peace process in the Middle East. The king implied that the PLO should be replaced, and obliquely volunteered for the job. The anti-Hussein slogans at the Masri funeral provided the Palestinian answer.

But two key questions are left unresolved: Why did the PLO torpedo the peace process, and, with the process dead, what can the Palestinians expect now?

According to Hussein, the PLO had received an indirect American promise to include it in an international peace conference. In Hussein’s words, it was an Arab achievement that had previously seemed impossible; it would have given the PLO instant recognition, respectability and a chance to raise its demands in a presumably friendly forum.

The price of the invitation? A public declaration that the PLO “has accepted U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, is prepared to negotiate peace with Israel and has renounced terrorism.” (The resolutions implicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist within secure boundaries.)

Hussein believed that the PLO would pay the price. Yasser Arafat assured him of it in private talks. And it seemed reasonable. For a decade the PLO leader has hinted that he might make such a deal. But when Hussein came up with what Arafat claims to have wanted--inclusion in a peace negotiation that could well yield a large part of the West Bank and Gaza--the PLO boss unexpectedly said, “No.”

“How stupid of Arafat,” thundered dozens of editorials in the Western press. “Doesn’t he realize that he is missing the chance of a lifetime?” But Arafat is hardly stupid. He turned down the deal because he isn’t free to accept it.

When the PLO was formed, two years before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank began, its stated purpose was to destroy Israel and replace it with a Palestinian state. More than two decades later, that is still its strategic aim. Only this week Arafat told a Kuwaiti newspaper that his irreducible goal is “a Palestinian flag flying over a liberated Jerusalem, capital of a united Arab Palestine.”

For years Arafat’s Western sympathizers have dismissed this kind of talk as mere rhetoric. But the PLO’s rejection of the Jordanian-American offer makes it clear that the rhetoric is the reality.

Why? Politics. The PLO’s strength is that it expresses the wiLl of its constituents, the Palestinian people. And grassroots Palestinian opinion, especially outside the West Bank and Gaza, has yet to reconcile itself to Israel’s permanent existence.

The majority of Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza, but they come originally from areas within pre-1967 Israel. For them the West Bank and Gaza may be a part of the homeland, but these areas are not the “home” that they dream of reclaiming. Their goal is Galilee, Jaffa, Ashkelon and Jerusalem. It may be an impractical dream, but no Palestinian leader can sign it away in return for a West Bank state next to Israel and expect to retain the support of the refugees.

Seen in this light, Arafat’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist is not fanaticism but political self-preservation. It may be good for the PLO leader, but it has disastrous consequences for the Palestinian cause. This same all-or-nothing approach led the Palestinian leadership to reject the 1947 U.N. partition resolution, which would have created a Palestinian state.

In the 1970s, when Arab oil muscle created an international consensus for a Palestinian entity in the West Bank and Gaza, the PLO squandered it by refusing to utter the magic numbers: 242 and 338. Today, given the pace of Israeli consolidation in the West Bank, King Hussein is almost certainly right when he says that Arafat’s rejectionism has caused him to miss another historic opportunity.

The Palestinians with a real interest in dealing with Israel are in the West Bank and Gaza. Among them are thousands of moderate, able people who clearly understand the implication of Arafat’s “no.” But they lack the will to act. Partly it is fear: Zafer Masri’s was the 24th political murder in the occupied territories in the past eight years. Partly it is the result of Israel’s refusal to allow moderates to organize politically. But mostly it is the moderates’ own fault.

After all, the PLO has established a network of supporters and institutions in the West Bank and Gaza without Israeli permission; the moderates have not, for the most part, even tried.

Ever since the Rabat summit in 1974, Arab diplomacy has maintained that the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This week’s West Bank demonstration indicates that this is true.

But the PLO can only say no, and the Palestinians will achieve nothing until they have produced leaders who can challenge Israel with a Palestinian “yes.”