A Conversation With the HQ

 

Nabil Sbaatb is chairman of the Political Committee of
the Palestine National Council and a close adviser to
Yasir Arafat. This conversation too/e place in the spring
of 1989 while Sbaatb was visiting tbe United States.

Michael Lerner: The US. is now proposing a series of
con?dence-building measures for both the Israelis and
the Palestinians. What is your reaction to this pr0posal?

Nabil Shaath: There is a methodological problem. You
don?t talk about con?dence building between an occu-
pied people and its occupier without simultaneously
being willing to talk about what the future of the
relationship is going to be between the two sides. There
is no parity between the two sides: for twenty-one years
there was no relief to the occupation by Israel. Now,
?nally, the Palestinian people have taken to the streets
in their (which is really the process of reconsti-
tuting the nation, one aspect of which has been the
street demonstrations). So now the US. comes along
and says that, in order to build con?dence, the occupier
will release some of the people imprisoned for their
opposition to the occupation, in return for an end to
the resistance itself. And all this is being asked without
any reference to what would come next. Will the US. or
Israel be willing to support the creation of a Palestinian
state?or is the end of the resistance being asked so
that we can then proceed to an ?autonomy? plan? We
want the'U.S. to discuss a substantive vision of what
overall solution it would support, and con?dence build-
ing toward some speci?c goal then might be discussed.

Lerner: When you use the terms ?occupied? and ?occu-
pier? they evoke imagery that in other contexts would
make your position obviously reasonable. However, what
is unique about this circumstance is that the occupier
is afraid of the occupied and feels that the occupied is
associated with a dozen other countries surrounding
the occupier, and those other countries are much larger
in their populations and have been dedicated to wiping
out the occupiers [the State of Israel] long before they
became occupiers! The occupied in this case [the Pales-
tinian people] have as their representatives an organiza-
tion, the PLO, that has a charter which says that they,
the occupied, want to join with all other countries in
the region to wipe out the State of Israel. So in this case
?the occupier? is motivated not by a desire for economic

exploitation or territorial expansion, but by fear for its
own survival.

Shaath: There is a lot of economic exploitation in this
situation. The occupier has taken 55 percent of the land
and 94 percent of the water of the West Bank. What
Israel takes in taxes alone from the West Bank is ten
times what it returns in the way of services to the
people. This is the only occupation in the world that is
so lucrative for the occupier?whatever the security
issues that are also involved. This economic exploitation
is a very serious matter.

Lerner: But certainly you must share with me the belief
that Israel would be willing to give up the territories if
certain security concerns could be fully met.

Shaath: So far we have no indication of that. Mr. Shamir
repeatedly vows that not one inch of territory will be
given back, that he will never sit down to discuss the
creation of a Palestinian state. On the other hand, the
Palestinians have moved far ahead of Israel and have
announced our willingness to accept a two-state solution
in which we would share the land. We have unilaterally
agreed to stop all attacks on civilians both inside and
outside the State of Israel. We have unilaterally accepted
242 and 338?without anything in return.

Lerner: Still, from the standpoint of your own interests,
why not give Israel an unequivocal olive branch? It
would certainly help the forces within Israel seeking
peace if the PLO were to be more unequivocal!

Shaath: When we came up with our peace plan at the
Palesrine National Council on November 15, 1988, we
thought we were doing just that. Despite all the talk of
not amending the charter, we thought we were being
unequivocal by announcing that we were willing to
accept a state in the West Bank and Gaza, and in our
willingness to suspend attacks that might generate more
fears in the Israeli public. We thought that this move
should at least be reciprocated by Israel?s recognizing
our right to the smaller part of our land, which was
occupied in 1967?a part that is 22 percent of the land
that was Palestine before 1948. Having done that, we
have gone to great to indicate our desire to
meet in direct dialogue with the Israelis, even to the

15

 

extent that we are meeting with nongovernmental Israelis
to show that we want to talk.

Lerner: Tikkun has called for the creation of a de-
militarizea' Palestinian state. Would the PLO accept a
demilitarized state?

Shaath: We will accept a state that assures Israel of its
security?so we will discuss all of the rami?cations of
this at an international conference. We want the assurance
of security to be mutual?so that the independent Pales-
tinian state is assured of its security needs, whatever the
modality for doing that. In no way do we want a state
that would perpetuate war in that part of the world. We
have to create a new mode of life that will create a
comprehensive and lasting peace.?

Lerner: Tik/eun has suggested that the borders of this
state should be supervised by an international force
that would protect the borders.

Shaath: We accept that principle, but we?d have to
discuss its modalities in the international conference.

Lerner: One of the major fears of Israelis is that the
intention of at least some segments of the PLO is to
achieve a state in the West Bank and then use that as the
?rst stage of a two-stage struggle, the second stage of
which is to liquidate Israel and ?liberate? all of Palestine.

Shaath: If we are discussing this from a rational point
of view, then you must realize that only very small
fringe groups within the PLO are saying anything like
this after our decision of November 1988, when we took
the ?nal and irrevocable step of accepting a two-state
solution. We are talking of a lasting peace, not a piece-
meal, stage-by-stage approach. Now, if we are talking at
the emotional level, there is no way we can reassure
people just by swearing it.

Lerner: Well, there are important things you could do.
You committed yourself to reducing the level of violence,
yet we are seeing almost daily attempts by terrorists to
come over the Lebanon border. 80 how are we to
understand the continuation of terrorism?

Sheath: We never committed ourselves to stopping the
irmfada or to stopping the legitimate resistance to Israel?s
military presence in southern Lebanon, nor have we ever
committed ourselves to stopping military acrions against
the Israeli military. The word ?terrorism? cannot possibly
be used to apply to military attacks against military
forces. ?Terrorism? can only be understood as attacks
against enemy civilians or against uninvolved third

16 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3

 

parties. You can never say that commandoes ?ghting
against Israeli military units occupying Lebanon are
totally illegal, and in the same breath totally ignore the
daily air raids conducted by the Israeli army against
Palestinian refugee camps in the south of Lebanon, and
also totally ignore Israeli military incursions in southern
Lebanon?including the hijacking of civilian boats on
the high seas that are headed toward south Lebanese
ports. All these actions taken by Israel against civilians
are totally ignored, and the center of attention is instead
ambushes conducted by Israeli units deep inside Leb-
anese territory against armed commandoes?with the
Israeli?s claiming that by having killed these people,
attacks have been avoided on what targets, we don?t
know. This isn?t like somebody hijacking a bus or killing
school children?which are clear signs of terrorism (and
which is what the Israeli army is in fact doing in the
south of Lebanon). Once again the occupied is asked to
promise nonresistance to an occupier who continues to
do the same thing.

At the same time, even having made this point, we
have made clear our willingness to have a negotiated
cease-?re on the northern border of Israel and south of
Lebanon. If Israel would agree to cease and desist from
its attacks on our civilian population, we would be
willing to cease even military operations. We did some-
thing similar in1981 when Mr. Shamir mediated a cease-
?re which we respected to the letter and the Israelis
smashed it during the 1982 Sharon-led Israeli invasion
of Lebanon. So, again, the issue of mutuality arises.

Lerner: Given the actual situation in Israel, this may be
a distinction without a difference. Given that most of the
Israeli population serves in the army, they feel personally
attacked when you attack the army.

Shaath: But then if you eliminate this distinction many
would draw the conclusion that it is legitimate for us to
attack any Israeli civilian, since they will soon be in the
army. But this is not my position?I think there is a
distinction. You can?t expect us to let Israel occupy
southern Lebanon, make attacks on Palestinians inside
Lebanon, and then say that once they return to Israeli
territory they have a privileged sanctuary from which
they are safe from all attack. Palestinians engaged in
the military struggle have every right to continue to
strike at military targets within the pre-l967 borders of 
Israel. Otherwise, you are giving one party a totally
one-sided right to ?ght its battles, and the other side is
given no right to ?ght back. Do you remember the recent
hang-glider raid in northern Israel?

Lerner: I remember it very well, because my son was in
a kibbutz only a mile away from where the hang glider

 

 

 A. 

rm?- 

landed. I was very worried that if they hadn?t gotten that
glider terrorist, maybe my son would have been killed.

Sheath: Well, if your son had been in uniform serving
in the army, he would have had to take responsibility
for that and be prepared for this kind of attack. But if
he was tilling the soil as a civilian, he should not have
been attacked. But you must understand that most of
the war being waged in southern Lebanon is being
waged against civilians in the cities and refugee camps.

Lerner: You base much of what you say on the notion
that we should accept that there has been a real change
in the PLO policy since November 1988.. Assuming
there has really been such a change, why did it happen?

Shaath: That change has been the result of twenty years
of rethinking our situation in which we?ve come to the
conclusion that it may be worth giving up part of our
country for our future and in order to preserve our
children. We are a people who have struggled for so
long, and have been betrayed for so long, by friend and
foe alike?eventually we had to make a calculation,
even about giving up some of our rights, if that is going
to save the future. But the ?nal thing that pushed us
into this total change was the intifaa'a itself. As the
z'ntz'fada took place, as we regained a sense of history, a
'sense of dignity, a sense of self-respect, as it helped our
people unite together, we lost our fear of losing our
sense of unity. We then began to practice making deci-
sions democratically about the future, and that pushed
us forward to adopting the intzfada, which itself was
very clear about a two-state solution. The intzfaa?a gave
the ?nal push to making the idea of partition ?nally
ingrained, and the idea of a Palestinian state took its
?nal shape.

Lerner: Just as Tile/tun supports the Palestinians? right to
a demilitarized state, so We have also supported Zionism,
the national liberation struggle of the Jewish people. I
wonder if there has been any change in the attitude of
Palestinians toward the fundamental legitimacy of Zion-
ism, or whether it?s still seen as an illegitimate movement
of European colonialists grabbing land for sel?sh pur-
poses. Are you compromising with a legitimate force or
are you compromising with the devil?

Sheath: One would not compromise with the devil. There
is no reason to have any con?dence in any agreement
made with the devil. I think the way we must look at this
is to think of two peoples. We have come around to
realizing that there is an Israeli people. And this has
changed our perspective fundamentally, without our
having to adopt either Zionism or Arab nationalism.

The key question here is how you politically view your
opponent, rather than whether you have adopted his
ideology or not.

Lerner: You say the Israeli people rather than the
Jewish people.

Sheath: We don?t have to make a political compromise
with the entire Jewish people.

Lerner: But there have been attacks by Palestinian guer-
rilla groups against Jews around the world, not simply
against Israelis. The mastermind of the Acbz'lle Laura
hijacking who was implicated in the killing of Leon
Klinghoffer recently was a respected delegate of the
November 1988 PNC conference to which you point
with pride as a major turning point.

 

The word ?terrorism? cannot
possibe be used to apply to military
attacks against military forces.
?Terrorism? can only be understood
as attacks against enemy civilians
or against uninvolved third parties.

 

Sheath: The guy who was implicated in Sabra and
Shatilla, Ariel Sharon, is now a respected member of
the Israeli cabinet. The guy who perpetrated the murders
at Deir Yassin is now the respected prime minister of
the State of Israel. No ?holier than thou? attitude can
help you.

Lerner: The question remains about the acceptance of
the legitimacy of Zionism.

Sheath: No, the question is whether we can have two
people who are willing to respect each other and share
a mutual quest for a better future?not whether we are
going to accept each other?s political ideologies of the
past or present. Zionism has always appeared to us as
the face of exclusion, the ideological face of the force
that pushed us out of our country. Today we are meeting
a different kind of Zionist, people like Nahum Goldman
and Pierre Mend?s-France and the people we met with
at the New Outlook conference in New York, and these
people don?t want to exclude us. This is what changes
minds, not ideological discussions.

Lerner: Fifty years ago it was our pe0ple, the Jewish

people, who were living in camps, who were refugees,
who were being mass-murdered in Europe, who were

A CONVERSATION WITH THE PLO 17

the people who had no land. At that moment, when it
was your people who had the power, you did what you
could to keep us out.

Shaath: We had no power. We were not the perpetrators
in Europe, nor were we in charge of our own land in
Palestine.

Lerner: At that time, in the late 1930s and early 19405,
the Palestinian leaders were threatening the British with
a massive uprising against their rule should the British
allow Jews to escape from the mass murder of Europe
and come to Palestine.

Shaath: That?s what the Israelis are doing now?
threatening every possible reprisal if the Palestinians
would return. I mean, is it now justi?ed for Israelis to
talk about people holding their land and not wanting
to be thrown out of it, but not justi?ed for Palestinians,
who were not responsible for what happened to the
Jews in Europe in the ?rst place?

Lerner: I don?t accept Israel?s current policywrong. But I don?t accept the previous policy of
the Palestinians toward Jews when it was Jews who
were the minority, and it was Jews without a land and
without anywhere to go, and the Jews were being mur-
dered in the rest of the world. There was enough land
here to share?because if there is enough land to share
here in 1989 there had to be enough land to share in 1936.

Shaath: There was not enough land to share. The proof
of the matter is that the land that the Israelis took, they
threw the Palestinians out, they didn?t share. That atti-
tude persists till this moment: the Israelis refuse to
share. Even the best thing being discussed is that Pales-
tinians might get the 22 percent of the land, which was
conquered in 1967. There is no willingness by Israelis to
talk about sharing the whole land, in the form of a
democratic Palestinian state that we offered twenty
years ago. This idea was an idea for sharing Palestine.
And it was never accepted by the Jews inside or outside
Palestine, so we had to abandon that idea.

Lerner: In a Palestinian state, what will happen to the
existing settlements? Can Jews live in the state you
propose? Or is this suddenly to be Judenrein, a state in
which Jews are not allowed to live?

Shaath: If Palestinians are allowed to return to Israel
and live there, certainly Jews should be allowed to live
in the Palestinian state. But the matter of the settlements
is something entirely different. That land was expropri-
ated illegally, in violation of international law. They

18 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3

have taken 94 percent of the water and 55 percent of the
land; and they have done it illegitimately and illegally.
So those settlements have no legitimate claim. But that
does not prevent Israelis from moving into a Palestinian
state in a legal way.

Lerner: Do you insist on the right of Palestinians to
return both to the new Palestinian state and to Israel
as well?

Shaath: In our negotiations we will have to work out a
method which will involve repatriation for some and
monetary compensation for others.

Lerner: But at least as many Jews ?ed from Arab states
in the early years of the State of Israel as Arabs ?ed
Palestine.

Shaath: We in the PLO absolutely support the right of
Jews to return to the countries from which they fled,
and we also believe that Jews do deserve monetary
compensation for any property that was con?scated.
This is something that has not been publicized in the
West, but the PLO has been raising this issue with
other Arab states for the past ?fteen years.

Lerner: Well, talk about returning to Arab lands is fool-
ish. Whereas Palestinians living inside pre-l967 borders
of Israel have political rights and full ability to participate
in Israeli elections?in the 1989 local elections over 80
percent of the Palestinians did in fact participate?Jews
in Arab lands are persecuted, imprisoned, killed.

Shaath: I have no desire to defend those Arab states.
They have not always been good to Palestinians either.
I personally have protested against anti-Jewish policies.
But I think it a mistake to exaggerate Palestinian rights
inside the State of Israel. There are many areas in
which inequalities exist, and the past expropriation of
homes and land is certainly one important element in
that picture.

Lerner: Some Israelis say, ?Sure, you can ?nd a few
reasonable PLO people like Shaath to talk to now. But
once a PLO state is set up, the extremists in the PLO
will kill the moderates, and the extremist PLO types
will then themselves be under attack from Hamas?the
Arab fundamentalists who are receiving growing support
(as manifested in their recent electoral victory in Uhm
a1 Fahm, the large Palestinian city in the Galilee).?

Shaath: Israel has its fundamentalists and extremists
too?in Kach, Tehiyah, and Moledet.

 

 

Lerner: Well, they don?t kill other Israelis with whom
they disagree. But in the PLO, people who have been
seen as ?moderate? have been killed by others.

Shaath: Well, I don?t say that I have no worries about
risking my life. I do. But I also believe that we in the
PLO can handle this problem. This is, after all, a Pales-

tinian problem and we will take care of it.

Lerner: But if there is a Palestinian state, it will be
an Israeli problem. If a state emerges like the one in
Lebanon, this will be bad for Israel.

 

The Israelis have heen much
tougher than the British were toward
the Indians daring Gandhi?s
demonstrations. The Israeli troops
throw tear gas into people?s homes.

 

Shaath: Well, ?rst, if Israel doesn?t intervene and take
sides, we will be able to handle it ourselves. In fact, the
Israelis played a major role in arming the Phalangists in
Lebanon, and this was a major reason that we could not
settle the problems there by ourselves. So if Israel doesn?t
intervene, things will be worked out. But as to danger
to Israel?this is not true. Read Abba Eban?s recent
articles about the military balance (Tz'k/eun, March/
April 1989) and you will see that the Palestinian state
could not be a serious threat to Israeli military security.

Lerner: Wouldn?t the Palestinians be more successful
in gaining mass support from the Israeli public, so that
we could actually end this con?ict instead of each side
continuing to ?prove? that it has exclusive right on its
side, if you were to adopt a policy of nonviolence? You
would win the con?dence of a large section of the Israeli
public which would move toward acceptance of a Pales-
tinian state if you were to project a credible nonviolent
policy and practice.

Shaath: This is the fundamental thrust of most of the
demonstrations taking place during the intzfada. When

a group of young people gather to march with Palestinian
?ags, this is fundamentally nonviolent civil disobedience.
But then the Israeli troops respond with violence: they
throw tear gas, they shoot with rubber or plastic bullets,
they beat up people. And then the teenagers respond
by throwing rocks. But the people have tried to keep
this intz'faa'a nonviolent?they have not used armed
weapons, which would have been possible.

In addition, you must understand that the Israelis
have been much tougher than the British were toward
the Indians during Gandhi?s demonstrations. The Israeli
troops throw tear gas into people?s homes?and this
has caused the loss of over ?fteen hundred pregnancies,
and much pain. The British troops were more restrained.

Lerner: Well, I don?t accept your characterization of
the Israeli army, which I believe has acted in a more
restrained way than many Other armies might have acted,
certainly more restrained than Syria or Iraq act toward
their own populations, and almost certainly more re-
strained than the American police and national guards
have acted when called in to put down domestic uprisings
in the ghettos and barrios of America. I do not fault
the I fault the political leadership of Israel that
has chosen to perpetuate the occupation and ignore
your pleas to begin negotiations toward a ?nal peace
settlement. And I still do believe that the Palestinian
cause would be best served by a policy of nonviolence
that is more fully developed and more categorical?
including the cessation, at least for a speci?ed period
of time, of raids into Israel and attacks on the IDE But
I thank you for taking the time to explore these issues
so fully with the American Jewish community. And
though I regret that Israel will not allow you or other
PLO leaders to enter Israel and present your ideas, and
that it has made it illegal for Israeli citizens to have any
direct contact with you, I hope that these policies will
soon be reversed and a signi?cant dialogue can begin.
In that dialogue many of us may press you and the
Palestinians to change your mind about some of the
points you raised here, but I think that the dialogue
must begin soon. And since we cannot be the rep-
resentatives of the people of Israel, we can only hope
that they will soon be allowed to speak to you directly

and for themselves. Cl

Abbie Hoffman: In Memoriam

Tireless fighter for justice and peace, Abbie is
remembered for his insistence that humor and joy
are essential in the struggle to heal and transform

the world. Never abandoning his ?19605? politics,
Abbie became a powerful voice for ecological sanity
in the 19805. A proud and loyal Jew, a writer for
Ti/ekun, and a signer of our recent ?No, Mr. Shamir?

ad in the NY Times, Abbie frequently called us
with his latest strategies to expose the injustice and
immorality that undermine what he loved most in
American and Jewish traditions. As irreverent toward
the enforcers of ?left-wing and Marxist orthodoxies?
as toward the establishment, Abbie was a shining
light who will be sorely missed.

 

A CONVERSATION WITH THE PLO 19