&4411 an 3 t Eighty years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in al reprints. The va By PETE HAMILL SLOWLY, WiTH the stately in- decision that most Republican gentemen usually reserve for ques- tions that might involve Jews, the Nixon Administration seems to be moving toward intervention in Jordan. First you parachute a field hospital into the desert, with the best intentions in the world; then you find that you must have someone to protect the field hos- pital, and the Marines land on the next C-130. And then the 82nd Airborne is flown in to secure the perimeter for the Marines. and you find yourself enmeshed. Again. And yet. there is some feeling that the defeat of King Hussein miaht not bp such a very bad . thine. It could, in fact, lead to a lue Of SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1970 NIGHT EDITOR: ROBERT KRAFTOWITZ a Palestinian state kind of peace in the Middle East that the great powers and 'the various contending governments might not be able ever to obtain. THE HEART of the matter in the present Middle East situation is the fate of the 2.5 million Pales- tinian Arabs; some 600,000 are scattered through the refugee camps in Egypt, Jordan. Syria and Lebanon; othershave done well in these countries and else- where in the Arab world; some live under Israeli rule. In 1948, when the UN proposed partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, the Palestinian Arabs did not seize the moment. They have been literally stateless since then. The fedayeen are Palestinian The Middle East impasse Arabs. The urban terrorists are Palestinian Arabs. The men mov- ing across the deserts of Jordan Are Palestinian Arabs. For too long the older generation of Israeli leaders (especially those of Golda Meir's age, the Eastern European Zionists) have refused to recognize their existence. They refuse to bargain with them, on the grounds that Israel bargains with states. not movements, certainlytnot ter- rorists. It is the position the U.S. tried to maintain for so long with- out success about the Viet Cong. The Palestinian Arabs might call themselves Marxists, Maoists, or any of a dozen other names; but in essence they are nationalists. Like the Israelis, they want a piece of land to call home, a place in the sun, a state. A refugee camp is not a state. IF HUSSEIN were defeated they would have a state. Jordan, after all, was arbitrarily sliced out of the map by Winston Churchill in 1921 as a payoff to the Hashemites who supported the British in the First World War; Hussein's an- cestors aren't even from the coun- try (they're from Saudi Arabia). If the Al Fatah revolutionaries (and the other revolutionary groups around them) were to win, they would have to make the pain- ful transition from romantic rev- olution, with all its gaudy rhetoric, to the dull and plodding process of governing. But at least they would have a home. They would have a state (which could be called Palestine if they chose). This would take some changes in attitude on the part of both the Palestinian Arabs and the Israelis. The Arabs will have to gave up the nut rhetoric abofit driving the Israelis into the sea. That is not going to happen; the Israelis are there to stay. But the Israelis would have to cooperate too. Those Palestinian Arabs who lost their homes and properties -in 1948 would have to be compensated for, their losses. But more important , the Israelis would have to rec- ognize the legitimacy of the Pales- tinian Arab government. ,* SUCH A SOLUTION would have mutual advantages and some large dangers. The ?alestinians are pro- ducts of the olitics of grievance (as, in some important ways, are the Israelis); some of their leaders. think that the way to relieve old grievances is to slaughter Israelis. They would have to be contained by more moderate elements. Some Israelis and the U.S. government, might object to a Jordan that is Marxist or radical; but the Pales- tinian Arabs are already led by Marxists, and have, already been radicalized. The difference now is that they are also outlaws; given responsibility and a home state, they might stop acting like cut- laws. "Ultimately," wrote Prof. Shlo- MORE THAN three years ago, prior to the six-day war, it wa§ relatively easy to make a "rational" judgment on the situation in the Middle East. Then it seemed isolated Israel deserved the world's support. Threatened with anni- hilation, Israel appeared to have few al- ternatives when it launched a pre-emp- tive war for self-preservation. Lines were clear-cut; there was no agonizing decis- ion to be made. Today, following 39 months of conflict, terrorism and retaliation, with no appar- ent end in sight, the lines of right and wrong, and justice and injustice have been swept away by the shifting sands of war. At a time when the need for a ra- tional solution weighs on all concerned. eyes are blinded or diverted by existential prejudices and- ideological one-sidedness' which only provide the simple explana- tions necessary to motivate human beings to kill one another. Every day, Israelis and Arabs confront each other in the death landscape to which the Holy Land has grown accus- tomed. Few believe that a solution to the conflict will be 'reached in their lifetimes, and virtually all seem resigned to some form of extended battle. Even more horrifying is the growing consciousness on both sides that peace is more than impossible - that it is un- desirable. People say they are willing and ready to fight wars of "attrition" against their enemies rather than accept a n y form of compromise. And as for the gnawing reality that the costs of these wars of attrition amount to watching the Editorial Staff MARTIN A. HIRSCHMAN, Editor ISTUART GANNES JUDY SARASOHN Editorial Director Managing Editor NADINE COHODAS. ......Feature Editor JIM NEUBACHER . ..... Editorial Page Editor ROB BIER .......... Associate Managing Editor LAURIE HARRIS Arts Editor JUDY KAHN ...Personnel Director DANIEL ZWERDLING ....... ... Magazine Editor ROBERT CONROw. .........Books Editor NIGHT EDITORS: Dave Chudwin, Erika Hoff, Steve Koppman, Robert Kraftowitz, Lynn Weiner EDITORIAL NIGHT EDITRS: Jim Beattie, Lindsay Chaney, Steve Koppman, Pat Mahoney, Rick Perloft Sports Staff ERIC SIEGAL, Sports Editor PAT ATKINS, Executive Sports Editor PHIL HERTZ Associate Sports Editor LEE KIRK.. ............Associate Sports Editor BILL DINNER . .. Contributing Sports Editor young and the innocent waste their lives in orgies of killing and -useless slaughter; a common explanation echoes: "This is the price we have to pay." Behind the daily violence which oc- cupies everyone in the Middle East, ithe vibrations of hatred oppress all normal life, building anxiety into all social rela- tionships. A whole generation of child- ren has been raised against this back- kround of, hatred and intolerance, and as time passes the Middle Eastern vortex grows stronger sucking more and more people into its confusion. HOW WILL the Middle Eastern dilemma be resolved? The arguments on both sides are powerful. Certainly it is under- standable that Jews emerging from a war-torn Europe desired their own state. And certainly the Palestinians have been wrongly deprived of their homeland. However, three years of Palestinian ter- rorism have finally taken their toll on the Arab population, where bitter fraternal fighting has ripped Jordan apart. As for Israel, the question of its right to exist verses its "colonialization" of Palestine is a moot point. What is important is that the militaristic, hard-headed arrogance which lubricates the army has worked its way into all the joints of society, causing a coldness and brutality which raises doubts about the very value of Israel's existence. It is as if the continuous war - which is the means of Israel's existence - h a s corrupted the idea of a Jewish state. For the motivating concept behind Zionism was always more than political. It was always hoped that Israel would be a social experiment, a just society. But the war has transformed many Israelis into noth- ing less than chauvinists, completely and egotistically engaged in the preservation of their state - where right loses its meaning in terms of ideas and re-emerges as a function of fire-power statistics. How does one confront a situation which has no rational solution, no just alternatives? While answers are lacking and negotiations seem hopeless it is ob- vious that somehow, Arabs and Israelis must learn to live together. No argument will ever justify the continuation of this insane war. -STUART GANNES Editorial Director mo Avineri of "Hebrew University (Commentary, June, 1970) "there is no conflict between Israel and Egypt, or between Israel and Syria; the conflict is between Is- rael and the Palestinians." That seems clear, event at this distance. The Palestinian Arabs have been treated so badly by Arab governments which helped keep them; in misery that they 'annot be expected to owe loyalty to anyone but themselves. There might not have been a Palestinian Arab identity in 1948, but there is one now, and it must be dealt with. Editor's note: The author is a featured ° columnist for the New York Post). e New York Post .soviet 4 $ The virtue of a Commando EDITOR'S NOTE: The fol- lowing article is reprinted from the Sept. 28 edition of News- week magazine.) As the contending forces in Amman were rushing headlong toward undisguised civil war, a little-noticed event took place farther north in Irbid, the se- cond-largest city in Jordan. There, Al Fatah commandos proclaimed a "liberated" area and set about creating the first revolutionary city-state in the Middle East. On hand to wit- ness the birth of this Palestinian ,oviet was Newsweek's Loren Jenkins. His report:, POWER TO THE people has long been one of the principal tenets of the Palestinian libera- tion movement's Marxist fringe. But most outside observers have disrr issed such revolutionary slo- ganeering as the boastful prattle of coffeehouse intellectuals. After what happened in Irbid last week. no one can afford to sneer. The actual take-over of the ramshackle trading community of 150,000 peo- ple occurred two weeks ago while Jordanian authorities were bus- ily trying to free the hundreds of hijacked passengers held at near- ,by Dawson Field. After Bedouin supporters of King Hussein masacred 23 guerrillas in an ambush near Irbid, local Fed- ayeen - most of them members of Al Fatah and an extremist com- mando group called the Popular Democratic Front for the Libera- tion of Palestine (PDF) - brought the bodies of their dead comrades into the city and dis- played them in front of the main mosque. "They were completely mutilated," one Irbid shopkeeper told me. "Some had their hands tied with their intestines, others had their eyes gouged out or had been dismembered." THE REACTION of the popu- lace was what the commandos had expected - instant outrage. "Those who had never believed us abo- :t the barbarity of the army were suddenly awakened to ac- tion," said one guerrilla. In a seemingly spontaneous explosion of anger, the Irbidians swarmed out of the mosque and laid seige to government buildings. B u t after the initial flare-up there was little bloodshed. Early last week, a hastily summoned "people's court" condemned nine Jordanian Army officers to death, but since all government troops had already retreated from the city, the sent- ences were meaningless. The gov- ernor of Irbid and several score of his supporters who had sought refuge in the central m i 1i t a r y casern were provided with food and water by the commandos and told that they would be allowed to leave if they surrendered their weapons to the insurgents and re- nounced their allegiance to King Hussein. By midweek, when I arrived in Irbid, the city seemed surprisingly calm. Shops were doing a brisk business and people were milling around the fly-infested souk (market) or sipping thick Turk- ish coffee in side-street cafes. The only outward signs of change were the heavily armed commando patrols which ambled about the city, often with a sheepish-look- ing policeman in tow to prove that the guerrillas were willing to make their peace with coopera- tive government authorities. "Many of the government people have been willing to work f o r us for the good of the revolu- tion," a young chemical engineer who claimed to be the city's chief commissar told me. "See for your- self how normal the situation is. We are now ruling here and things are working better than before." BUT DESPITE the surface tranquility of life in Irbid, genuine. revolutionary activity was going on behind the scenes. To replace the city administration, the com- mandoes set up on every street "people's committees," which in turn elected members to larger dis- trict committees. These groups. composed of commando commis- sars as well as leading residents of Irbid who support the Palestinian cause, held evening meetings to discuss such matters as the future organization of the city and pre- parations for its defense. Although they are similar in structure to the local soviets that the Bolshe- viks formed in the early days of the Russian Revolution, the com- mittees seemed to be a relatively spontaneous response to local events with no overt influence from Moscow or Peking. "We have not had enough time yet to crystallize our thoughts," a Syr- ian doctor who is a member of one committee told me. "Every- thing is moving so fast that we just try to cope with things as they come up." Clearly, however, the Marxist leaders of the Pop- ular Democratic Front were more certain about where they were headed. "This week .you are see- ing the birth of the first Arab liberated area," commented a commando chief. "You could call it - and I prefer to call it - the first Arab soviet." BEFORE I left Irbid, a "peo- ple's congress" met in the center of the city and resolved to bar all pro-government officials from the city and to resist any attack by the Jordanian Army. Toward that end, some 1,200 commandos hast- ily dug trenches along the main routes of attack and set up road blocks to control movement to and from the city. "We are pre- paring to fight here until the end," said Lt. Abu Kussai, a burly 30- year-oldPalestinian college grad- uate who is in charge of the city's defenses. "We are a poor nation in a very big struggle, but we- are confident of victory." By the end of the week, how- ever, that confidence seemed somewhat premature. There were reports of skirmishes between the commandos and units of the Jor- danian Army in the'vicinity of Ir- bid. And it seemed only a matter of time before the army would launch a major assault on the Marxist stronghold. "If Hussein is going to rule his country, he will have to retake Irbid," com- mented a Western diplomat based in Amman. "No government can allow such a situation to exist and still pretend to be a government." o Newsweek 9' 4 6UOTTOKJ. .--- ..- 1 ARM~Y, Ulf- PEF60612 (NT W F1CGW OF 13AT4 LEU&{-ATDOM 7~ I-~I I'JOT X M~TO"J C PUSH ThJ SCOMU~ BUTTON 12,PUSH THE FIFt E3 -r---) .---7 f 6ECAOSC (MPA17IJT &'ACFITS tOST ViC1e GEAR~ TrPUSH4 1 6 WT 1OU ANf; 71i& ISGATOaJ(sT Gc0MM~T To IbET1AU6) BY PeFAVIT TO THE , cfQ VISTJ59 Letters to the Editor Terrorists? To the Editor: IN THE WAKE of the recent hijackings of civilian aircraft, an interesting dilemma has arisen in describing the people who execut- ed these acts, namely the mem- bers of the Popular Front for the Liberation- of Palestine. The Front, spokesmen constant- ly refer to themselves as "freedom fighters," European and American press intermingle the labels "ter- their homeland for their people, they indulge in Marxist-Maoist ideology which has helped them in the formation of a philosophy which advocates peaceful coexist- ene for all religious groups in the Holy Land. So what shall they be called?. I HAD AN interesting experience in Israel this year during a visit to Acre. The Israeli government has made a former British prison into a museum, I believe it to be dent of the right wing Gahal par- ty which advocates retention of all the land gained in the 1967 war and former minister without port- folio, was head of this organiza- tion and has publicly claimed re- sponsibility for, among other things, such acts as the bombing of the King David Hotel in which 100 people were killed, the slaugh- ter of 250 men, women, and chil- dren at Deir Yassin, and placing a time bomb in the British colo- nial office. fP05(4 T6 A% FWJPTh I i Vl l s 1 -"_\ I"' /f 'fl0JTY YEARS §OPS- tO!)OM BLYTc*3 / /' R .