From Israel's War of Independence until 1967, the Arab-Israel conflict focused on one issue: Will the Arabs succeed in destroying the Jewish state? The answer came, loud and clear, in June 1967; Israel's military triumph - trouncing three enemies in just six days - established its strength and permanence. There was no way the Arabs would destroy Israel.
But would they accept its existence? This became, after 1967, the burning question. Answering it has proven difficult. Before 1967, you could get the Arab-Israeli score by counting votes at the United Nations and troops on the ground; now you have to assess intentions, a much trickier matter.
The September 13th Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) makes this issue all the more pressing. What do the Palestinians intend - a temporary ceasefire or a true peace? Do they really accept the Jewish state or do they expect to undermine it from within? Have they had a change of heart or are they biding their time?
Barry Rubin's timely Revolution Until Victory?, a history of the PLO, provides an excellent guide to PLO intentions. In compact and readable form, he reliably reviews three decades' worth of PLO complexities. More than that, he breaks new ground by getting behind the PLO's external face - the personality of Yasir Arafat or the record of terror - and concentrating instead on its internal dynamics.
Calling the PLO's structure "a central factor in shaping its destiny," Rubin explains its systemic qualities. This approach allows him to make sense of much that had hitherto been mysterious, including the PLO's pattern of inconsistency, extremism, and self-defeat. It also permits him to hint at implications about its future course. In short, if you want to read one study about the elusive organization called the Palestine Liberation Organization, Revolution Until Victory? is the place to go.
Rubin argues that the PLO's central dilemma lies in its having so many constituencies. In the first place, it tries to be all things to all Palestinians. PLO leaders like to claim that one becomes a member in their organization by being born Palestinian, happily glossing over the deep divisions among Palestinians. PLO activists include proponents of Islam, Marxism-Leninism, and radical nationalism. The "Palestinian people" are further divided by geography (those who live in the West Bank see things from those living in Lebanon) and history (refugees of 1948 see things differently from those who trace their roots to Gaza). Seeking to be everyone's movement compelled the PLO to hew to the safest possible course. Eventually it became nearly immobile. In Rubin's words, "Maintaining unity took precedence over risky innovations."
In the second place, the PLO must cope with a plethora of external actors. The Arab states from Iraq to Morocco, with all of their contrary demands, count the most, and especially those countries bordering on Israel. The PLO needs to keep on good terms with as many of them as possible without becoming agent to any one. Then too, it had intimate links to the Soviet bloc but tried to keep lines open to the West as well, juggling more contrary goals. In all, it's hard to think of any organization in history buffeted by so many interested parties as the PLO; or of a leadership so intent to please them all. This lead to some distinct patterns of behavior. Rubin points out several:
- Contradictory statements. For a while, Bassam Abu Sharif delivered the soft line in English while Ahmad Abd ar-Rahman spoke the tough one in Arabic. On the same day, the PLO's United Nations observer and its "foreign minister" made flatly contradictory remarks about the PLO recognizing Israel. It reached the point that Arafat contradicted himself in the course of a single speech, at one time talking about sitting down with the Israelis on a state-to-state basis and then adding that he rejects the "Zionist state." In the end, no one could be sure - perhaps not even Arafat himself - when he was sincere and who he was fooling.
- Reliance on terrorism. Rubin notes the irony that political murders of civilians affected Israel less than the PLO. Because terror is best undertaken by small groups, it led to a fracturing of the PLO; because attacks on Israelis won immense popularity, the PLO became wedded to violence.
- Overemphasis on public relations. The need to keep all factions on board impelled the PLO to claim victory even when it met defeat. This pattern began with the PLO's very first operation in 1965 (a failed attack on Israel's water carrier); continued through the 1982 expulsion from Beirut; and held true through the Declaration of Principles last September (which required it formally to recognize Israel). With time, its leaders came to believe too much of their own propaganda.
These unhappy patterns left the PLO with little to show for its many public relations achievements. By the late 1980s, as Rubin puts it, the organization was "largely a political and military failure." The PLO was caught in a bind: hold on to its traditional goals and methods, but not get anywhere; or make basic changes and be accused of treason to the "revolution." Finally, Arafat took the fateful step to reach out to Israel last September; this resulted not from to a change of heart or a reassessment of strategy, but from a change in constituencies. The Soviet collapse, the Kuwait War, and the surge of fundamentalist Islam among Palestinians compelled Arafat to try something new.
Here's where this reviewer disagrees with Rubin. He sees the step toward Israel as the fulfillment of "its own unfinished evolution": the PLO finally came to terms with its problems in September 1993 and is on its way to an honest resolution with Israel. Or, as Hani al-Hasan, a founder of the PLO, puts it: "it took us a hell of a long time to come unambiguously to terms with reality." While Rubin acknowledges that "sincere conviction" had something to do with the PLO's extremist position, he sees this resulting mostly from "a practical grasp of Palestinian political realities."
But there's another possibility: that the continued talk about destroying Israel expresses heartfelt sentiments. Structure, after all, does not explain everything. The well-established reluctance to accept reality and the well-known tendency toward the extremes certainly may continue to dominate Palestinian politics. Certainly, little since September 13th - neither the words of Yasir 'Arafat nor the behavior of Palestinian groups - gives much reason to think that a basic shift has finally been made.
