The Great P.L.O. Juggling Act

As the murder of Issam Sartawi last week so dramatically illustrated, the Palestine Liberation Organization remains a babel of rival factions with disparate methods and goals. It has taken the energy and political savvy of Yasser Arafat to keep the uneasy coalition together, but the question now is whether he will be able to continue doing so.

The wonder of the P.L.O. is that it has managed to stay together so long. The umbrella organization is actually composed of at least eight groups. Foremost among the factions is Fatah, which holds an overwhelming majority of the seats on the Palestine National Council, the organization's de facto parliament. Headed by Arafat, Fatah enjoys the support of middle-class moderates and has few ideological goals other than the liberation of Palestine. Though Fatah receives most of its funds from the gulf states, primarily Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian diaspora, it is the only group without binding ties to an Arab government. That independence, along with the fact that about 80% of the P.L.O.'s fighters are under its command, has made Fatah a formidable power base for Arafat.

The next most influential is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Its founder and leader is Dr. George Habash, a staunch Marxist who contends that a Palestinian state can be won only through armed struggle. Backed by Syria and Libya, Habash has clashed repeatedly with Arafat. During the late '60s, some disillusioned Habash supporters set up two splinter groups that are just as radical: the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, headed by Naif Hawatmeh, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril. Both also enjoy strong support from Syria. Other groups include the Libyan-and Iraqi-backed Popular Struggle Front and Saiqa, a guerrilla force that serves practically as a division of the Syrian army.

Arafat's relatively moderate stance is also threatened by a group outside the coalition: an elusive band of guerrillas led by Abu Nidal, who broke away from the P.L.O. in 1974 after angrily accusing Arafat of growing soft toward Israel. So strained are their relations that Arafat and Abu Nidal have publicly ordered each other killed. Abu Nidal and his group obviously are quite capable of mayhem: besides admitting to Sartawi's murder, they took responsibility for trying to kill Israeli Ambassador to Britain Shlomo Argov last June. The P.L.O. blames Abu Nidal's group for assassinating its representatives in Europe over the past five years.

Never an easy task, leading the P.L.O. has grown more difficult for Arafat since the organization's military defeat in Beirut last summer. The Fatah guerrillas bore the brunt of the fighting and so took most of the blame for the rout. At the same time, the dispersal of P.L.O. forces throughout the Middle East broke up the centralized chain of command so carefully nurtured by Arafat in Beirut. Says in top P.L.O. military officer: "All the battles we fought in Lebanon drew us together. Now that we are scattered, the divisions have become more apparent again." Arafat has aggravated tensions by refusing to mend his differences with Syrian Hus Hafez Assad while trying to negotiate with Jordan's King Hus sein. Even many moderates have begun to fear that their leader seems too willing to compromise P.L.O. principles in order to preserve his public standing after Beirut.

One of Arafat's greatest talents has always been his ability to play the various factions against one another. Says a Western diplomat in Damascus: "As long as he could keep all the balls in the air, Arafat could use the divergent tendencies in the P.L.O. to keep one from becoming too dominant." In the aftermath of Beirut, Arafat has fumbled enough to unite his opponents and call his leadership into question. Yet he has met and survived challenges before, and even radical P.L.O. members realize that he is the only Palestinian leader who enjoys international stature. If the great juggler cannot keep all the balls in the air, the question will be whether the P.L.O. is turning toward those who killed Sartawi or those who mourned him. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.