A Durable Peace by Benjamin Netanyahu

Author:Benjamin Netanyahu [NETANYAHU, BENJAMIN]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780446564762
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

When we speak of the armed struggle, whose legality is recognized by the United Nations, we are speaking of all the occupied territories of Palestine.… It is our right to fight the enemy that has taken over our land, whether this be in the 1967 occupation or in the previous one in 1948. 64

But in the Western press such candor was extremely rare. Most of the time the PLO took pains to obscure its intentions. Indeed, one of the most successful devices for creating the impression of moderation in the PLO’s goals has been the game of Declaration and Retraction, whereby PLO leaders have issued ambiguous statements that could be interpreted as signifying a concession, such as the recognition of Israel’s right to exist, only to have them withdrawn immediately thereafter. A famous illustration of this technique is a document that Arafat purportedly signed in his besieged bunker in Beirut in 1982 in the presence of visiting American congressman Paul McCloskey. According to McCloskey, Arafat said that he was prepared to recognize Israel in the context of all UN resolutions, a statement he had actually made before and whose value was dubious even then. But McCloskey, apparently enthralled by his proximity to what he believed to be a world-changing event, promptly announced this “breakthrough” to the press, which dutifully trumpeted the news of Arafat’s new openness to the world—only to have the entire event denied by the PLO a few hours later. 65

As in each of its previous Western-oriented stratagems, the principal aim of the PLO “recognition of Israel” game has been to conceptually conquer Washington. Long before the ultimate collapse of Soviet power, it had become clear to the majority in the PLO leadership that the road to putting real pressure on Israel passed through the White House, the Congress, and the American voting public—a realization that has gradually dawned on all the Arab world, most notably on Syria after the American victory in the Gulf War in 1991. The PLO strategy was thus built logically on Arab propaganda concepts that had already gained currency. Having reduced all Middle East turbulence to the Arab-Israeli conflict, having reduced that to the Palestinian-Jewish dispute, and having reduced the Palestinians to the PLO, the Americans and the West were now to be asked to accept the last link in the chain: The PLO was to be shown as the party of compromise and peace, Israel as the obstacle resisting peace. America would then respond by engaging the “moderate” PLO and pressuring the “intransigent” Israelis.

Getting this campaign off the ground required that the PLO overcome one major hurdle. In 1975, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had signed a memorandum with Israel that obligated the United States to refrain from negotiating with the PLO as long as the organization did not recognize Israel’s right to exist and rejected UN Resolution 242. The United States subsequently undertook not to deal with the PLO until it had ceased engaging in terrorism. To meet the memorandum’s demands,

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