Guns and Olive Branches

"I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." Yasser Arafat's tenor voice was urgent and his fluid arms moved to match his Arabic imagery last week as the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (TIME cover, Nov. 11) concluded an extraordinary 80-minute speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Arafat, dressed in a fawn windbreaker and brown trousers and wearing both his familiar black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh and a pistol holster, which aides insisted was empty, finished his perorations, walked away from the mottled-marble rostrum and clasped his hands over his head in a boxer's victory stance. Led by delegates from Arab nations, the crowded Assembly Hall--the seats were predictably empty at the table reserved for Israel's delegation--burst into a roar of applause. U.S. Ambassador John Scali and most Western delegates, however, politely sat on their hands.

That tumultuous reception marked perhaps the high point in the extraordinary career of the Jerusalem-born guerrilla-politician, who is now recognized by all the Arab states as chief spokesman for the cause of an independent state of Palestine. In a move that added to particularly high tension and fears of still another war in the Middle East, Arafat came to the U.S. to lead off a two-week debate on a controversial proposal that would change the designation of the Palestinians, in U.N. documents, from refugees to a "displaced nation."

Disembodied Spirits. Apart from Pope Paul VI, Arafat is the only person who does not represent a government ever to address the plenary Assembly. The Pontiff had a claim to legitimacy as head of a state; he is ruler of Vatican City. Arafat heads a heterogeneous organization whose popular strength is untested, but the Arab nations nonetheless greeted him as a conquering hero.

"I am a rebel, and freedom is my cause," Arafat told the delegates by way of presenting credentials. The P.L.O. chief went on to offer his version of Palestine's history from the time of Theodor Herzl's creation of the Zionist movement in 1881, to the U.N.'s division of the embattled land in 1947, to more recent punitive acts of Israeli "terrorists," including the destruction of 19,000 Arab houses during the past seven years. He complained that the rights of Palestinians had been ignored when the Jewish homeland was created.

Said Arafat: "If we return now to the historical root of our cause, we do so because present at this very moment in our midst are those who, while they occupy our homes, as their cattle graze in our pastures and as their hands pluck the fruit from our trees, claim at the same time that we are disembodied spirits, fictions without presence, without traditions or future."

To those who waited for Arafat to offer some new accommodation toward negotiation, the P.L.O. leader's "most generous solution" was a disappointment. Echoing many previous public statements, Arafat proposed to create a new secular democratic state of Palestine in which Christians, Jews and Moslems could live together in peace. That proposal implicitly requires the dissolution of Israel, which goes against a long series of United Nations and other international affirmations.

Humane Paradigm. Arafat tried to distinguish his respect for the Jewish faith from his hatred of Zionism and appealed to his Jewish listeners to abandon the cause of Israel. "Let us remember that the Jews of Europe and the U.S. have been known to lead the struggles for secularism and the separation of church and state; they have also been known to fight against discrimination on religious grounds. How do they then refuse this humane paradigm for the Holy Land?"

Although P.L.O. moderates may eventually be resigned to some kind of territorial compromise with Israel, Arafat obviously considered last week an inappropriate time to mention it. His hard line was clearly aimed toward P.L.O. supporters in the Arab world, where the speech was beamed by satellite. Not since the heyday of the late Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt had any speech been so eagerly awaited. On the streets of Beirut and Cairo, people gathered round anyone carrying a transistor radio to listen in. In the refugee camps of Beirut, Sidon and Tripoli, a holiday was declared; schools were closed, and employees of the U.N. refugee agency took the day off.

In Beirut the morning after his speech, the newspaper an Nahar displayed a cartoon of a smiling world tipping its hat to Arafat. In the General Assembly, meanwhile, Third World delegates showed their enthusiasm not only by applauding Arafat for a full minute at the end of his speech, but by pointedly walking out on the later rebuttal by Israeli Delegate Yosef Tekoah.

The Israeli ambassador accused the U.N. of having "prostrated itself before the P.L.O., which stands for the premeditated murder of innocent civilians, denies to the Jewish people its right to live and seeks to destroy the Jewish state by armed force." Tekoah dismissed any need for Palestinian statehood: "What is Jordan," he asked, "if not a Palestinian Arab state?" He also warned that "Israel will not permit the establishment of P.L.O. authority in any part of Palestine. The P.L.O. will not be forced on the Palestinian Arabs. It will not be tolerated by the Jews of Israel.

"Israel remains ready to take together with the Arab states the road of peace," Tekoah concluded. "Should they, however, espouse continued hostility and aggression, the Arab states will find Israel equally ready . . . To all who challenge or ignore our rights in this Assembly we reply: in freedom the people of Israel shall live now and forever."

The tough tone of Tekoah's speech had been dictated by Jerusalem. It reflected not only the policy of the Israeli government but the outrage of millions of Jews that an Arab terrorist like Arafat could be honored by the U.N. The P.L.O. chairman, though, is hardly the first revolutionary to acquire respectability (see TIME ESSAY).

Naked Terrorism. The Jews of Greater New York--who outnumber the combined populations of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem by more than a million --raged against the P.L.O. leader's Manhattan appearance last week with threats of violence and demonstrations that taxed the city's police department. Outside the U.N., the scene was complicated by the appearance not only of anti-Arafatists but of pro-Palestinians as well. More than 1,000 policemen were detailed to handle security for Arafat's visit. The most ominous threat came from the militant but tiny and discredited Jewish Defense League, which boasted that it would assassinate Arafat. FBI agents arrested J.D.L. "Operations Officer" Russel Kelner, 33, on a charge of "transmitting in interstate commerce" a threat to kill Arafat; he was held on $100,000 cash bail.

In Israel the reaction was uniformly and expectably hostile. Premier Yitzhak Rabin called Arafat's position "a challenge to our very existence and a threat to our survival." The morning daily Davar called Arafat's speech "the voice of naked terrorism." Commented the Jerusalem Post: "He has no interest in borders, territories, compromise and peace with Israel. What he seeks is peace without Israel, and, as King Hussein undoubtedly also understands, peace without Jordan as well."

Hussein, who grudgingly surrendered his right to act on behalf of West Bank Palestinians under pressure from Arab leaders at last month's Rabat summit, had no comment on the speech. Expectations are that he will dissolve Parliament this week, form a new Cabinet and proceed with his announced plans for a "Jordanization" of his kingdom that would exclude Palestinians from power unless they opt for Jordanian nationality. An anti-Palestinian movement has sprung up among East Bank Jordanians. They are urging the King to approve a law that would in effect make Palestinians who fled to the East Bank after 1948 second-class citizens. They would be given passports but would be denied the right to vote.

Palestinian leaders, on the other hand, are pleading with Hussein not to move against Palestinians in his kingdom until an independent state is set up. Privately, both the Egyptians and the Saudis have urged the King to move slowly lest it appear that he is trying to force the Palestinians to opt for Jordan and against the P.L.O. Nothing, of course, would please Washington and Jerusalem more than if a majority of Palestinians did in fact side with the King and reject the fedayeen organization. The Israelis, who remain adamant about not dealing with terrorists on any matter whatsoever, hope that their hard stance will create a diplomatic deadlock on West Bank negotiations. Once the Arabs realize that it is futile to expect any talks to develop between Israel and the P.L.O., so goes this scenario, they will abandon Arafat and bring Hussein back into the picture.

Cooling Off. Arab diplomats think that the King is finished on the West Bank and the Israeli scenario is unrealistic at best. Many think that Israel missed a golden opportunity in not negotiating with Hussein before Arafat was endorsed as spokesman for the Palestinians at the Rabat summit. Certainly Hussein feels that way now. "I think Israel was terribly slow in terms of moving toward peace," he said recently. As for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose plan for a gradual settlement is in clear danger, he believes that two things are needed now: a "cooling off" period for the Arabs to contemplate what the Secretary regards as their blunder in endorsing Arafat; and a period of "quiet diplomacy" for Kissinger and his aides to convince the Arabs that they should keep their options open.

For the moment, however, Arafat is the darling of the Arab world. Still basking in his U.N. triumph, the P.L.O. leader last week flew off to Cuba aboard an Algerian Boeing 707 to confer with another revolutionary turned politician, Fidel Castro. Meanwhile, there were six dead in more border clashes along the Israel-Lebanon frontier last week, and there was a dramatic partial mobilization of Israeli forces directed toward Syria, which, according to Rabin, was unloading some 20 shiploads of Soviet arms at the port of Latakia. Alarming as the mobilization was, neither the Israelis nor Kissinger felt that hostilities were imminent. Indeed, earlier in the week Rabin had emphasized that Israel is prepared to carry out the disengagement agreements and expects the Arabs to do the same. But he also warned: "If they force war on us we will fight, and we will fight well."

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