A road to peace?
By Benjamin Cohen
"I know of imperialism giving people napalm, death, destroyed cities, destroyed countries, bloodshed. But they don't give them states." These words were spoken by Said Hammami, the PLO representative in London, in an interview in 1975 with the Israeli socialist journal Matzpen. In February 1978, Hammami was gunned down in his office by a member of the Abu Nidal terror gang.
Two features distinguished Hammami's politics. First, he never trusted imperialism. Second, he actively pursued dialogue with those Israelis who were committed, as he was, to a joint struggle towards a common future for Arabs and Jews in Palestine.
As peace talks open in Madrid under the shadow of the New World Order, the Palestinians face an Israeli delegation whose only commitment is to rejection. The conference is a kind of dialogue between Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs, but it is a far cry from the sort of cooperation which Said Hammami and many other courageous Israelis and Palestinians hoped and fought for.
Since 1986 Israel has deemed it a crime for its citizens to talk with members of the PLO. For the Israeli government, the only permissible dialogue is one which tells the Palestinians face to face that they have no rights.
The sight of the United States publicly rebuking Israel and withholding financial aid has raised the hopes of many Palestinians. The Zionist state is no longer the strategic asset to the US which it once was. But — as Said Hammami would have realised — no Palestinian state is in the offing at the Madrid negotiations.
The experience of the Israel-Egypt peace talks in 1977 is instructive here. After winning back the Sinai Peninsula, Cairo conceded its approval of Israeli plans for Palestinian "autonomy" in the occupied territories.
The Israelis are using the massive wave of Soviet Jewish immigrants to create more "facts" in the occupied territories. Some 250,000 Israelis now live in the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem), and Israel plans to double the population over the next three years.
This leaves the Palestinian delegation, all of whom are seasoned and respected leaders, with a very difficult job. Palestinians in the occupied territories have had to accept that they will not be represented directly by the PLO. Now they may have to face the prospect of something less than an independent state.
That is why the declaration that the intifada will be intensified as the conference goes on should be welcomed. The US and Israel may have cut down the Palestinians' bargaining power, but their defiance, after four years of intifada, remains.
Said Hammami was right. Imperialism does not give people states. Neither do its allies. Even so, the voice of Palestine will be the occupied territories, in spite of Israel's attempts to suffocate it. At the same time, more Israelis are questioning the occupation, and are realising that without peace there is no future. Whatever schemes may be dreamed up in the offices of Bush, Baker and Shamir, nothing can be achieved without the support of the masses. Imperialism and occupation have their diametrical opposites: fraternity and coexistence.