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34
FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 1989
BACKGROUND
h"---
I
Rejectionists Keeping Arafat
From Negotiations With Israel
GIORA SHAMIS and
LOUIS RAPOPORT
•
Special to The Jewish News
T
he Middle East spot-
light has swept from
the Shamir election
plan, to U.S. Secretary of
State James Baker's con-
troversial speech, to the man
in the middle — Yassir Arafat.
He is not only getting the
light, but the heat, caught
between American
diplomatic pressure to accept
West Bank elections and
threats from the Arab rejec-
tionist camp. The Insider's
sources in the Western in-
telligence community have
revealed that the Syrians are
plotting to kill Arafat in order
to derail any prospect of a
diplomatic breakthrough.
If Middle East affairs are
perceived as "political tec-
tonics," in which any change
moves all the plates around,
then the implications of a
possible sudden removal of
the Palestine Liberation
Organization leader become
clearer.
This Syrian plot is one of
the unpublicized violent reac-
tions set off by the fledgling
Israeli peace plan. They in-
clude the escalating confron-
tations between Palestinians
and Israelis, and also tie in to
the looming threat of all-out
war in Lebanon, which could
affect the whole Middle East
equation.
An attempted terrorist at-
tack on Israel from northern
Lebanon over the weekend
demonstrated how Syria is
using Lebanon as a laun-
ching pad from which to
undermine Arafat's
mainstream PLO, while strik-
ing at Israel.
The aborted attack, in
which two gunmen were kill-
ed and two captured just in-
side Lebanon, was mounted
by rejectionist leader George
Habash, the Damascus-based
Talut Yacoub Palestine
Liberation Front, and the
Iranian-backed Hizbollah
Shi'ites — a cross-section of
the radical forces lined up
against Arafat.
Such operations, promoting
the standard PLO line of
"armed struggle," make it
harder for Arafat to agree to
elections or any other
negotiated solutions with the
enemy.
The Americans, at the same
time, are pressing hard to get
Arafat to give Palestinian
leaders in the territories the
•
Yassir Arafat, left, walks with Morocco's King Hassan II at the Arab
League meeting in Casablanca.
go-ahead to take part in the
proposed poll.
Secretary of State Baker's
controversial May 22 speech
to AIPAC confirmed the
suspicions of Hafez Assad and
other Arab peace rejectionists
that Yassir Arafat is hell-bent
on doing business with the
Americans, and through
them, Israel.
The speech exacerbated
frictions all around. It outrag-
ed Israelis by equating them
with the Palestinians, and it
breathed fresh life into the in-
transigent settler movement
by condemning the
"unrealistic vision of a
Greater Israel."
Baker's speech coincided
with the important Arab
summit in Casablanca, in
which moderate Egypt was
accepted back into the Arab
League for the first time since
Anwar Sadat's peace in-
itiative. Nonetheless, it was
the radicals, led by Syria, who
set the tone at the important
summit. The majority, which
had been determined to get
Syria out of Lebanon, was
forced to back down. By
definition, this gave Syria
more room for its covert
maneuvers, as well.
According to our sources,
Assad's military intelligence
chiefs held a special con-
ference at the president's
palace in April to decide what
to do about Arafat's overtures
to Israel. Since the Algiers
meeting of the Palestine Na-
tional Council in Algiers last
November, a watershed in
PLO history, Arafat has pur-
sued the path of diplomacy,
while retaining the terrorist
option. He is therefore a
renegade in the eyes of hard-
liners, especially Syria and
the Damascus-backed Palesti-
nian rejectionists.
In their meeting with
Assad, the two top Syrian
secret police chiefs, Gens. Ali
Duba and Mohammed al-
Khouli, argued that unless
Arafat were eliminated, the
Israeli plan to hold Palesti-
nian elections would go for-
ward, leading to a self-
governing Palestinian entity
short of a state. This would
defeat the aims of the Arab
rejectionist front by pulling
the entire Palestinian move-
ment over to the Arab
"moderate" bloc — Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and Jor-
dan — and into the American
orbit.
Assad was convinced by his
intelligence chiefs that the
situation today could repeat
the Sadat "disaster" of 12
years ago. From the Egypt-
Israel breakthrough of 1977
onward, Assad seemed
paralyzed. He did not believe
that Sadat would actually
sign a peace treaty with
Israel. Now, Assad's generals
have urged him to act before
it is too late, stopping Arafat
from following the Sadat ex-
ample. They know that once
Arafat is removed, the long-
dominant radicals committed
to "armed struggle" will take
over the PLO.
Assad is also aware of how
long it took Damascus to
recover its position in
.1
•
4
•