The historic relationship between the United States and the PLO seems to have been obviously one of mutual hostility. Yet this basically accurate assessment conceals some fascinating elements.

The United States largely saw the PLO as an extremist terrorist force opposed to U.S. interests, trying to destroy an American ally, Israel, and as partner to the USSR and anti- American Arab states. The PLO considered the United States as an imperialistic great power, opposed to Arab and Palestinian interests, and either (in a sense, both) Israel's master and puppet. of Israel.      Aside from this principal aspect were more complex considerations. First, the United States had several conflicting interests. It wished to keep good relations with various Arab states which supported the PLO, wanted to limit Soviet influence and to win away Moscow's clients, and sought to encourage an Arab-Israel peace which might require incorporating the PLO. A minority view in the American policy debate favored a stand more accommodating to the PLO.

As for the PLO itself, it required U.S. recognition to gain any negotiated settlement and needed to split the United States from Israel in order to destroy that country or force it to make major concessions. While the pro-PLO view in the United States lost the debate--in no small part because of the PLO's own actions--the PLO was forced toward a rapprochement with U.S. interests which, in turn, enabled a change on the part of U.S. policy as well. 

The PLO's image of the United States was an important element in its formulation of methods and goals. If the United States was inevitably at odds with Palestinian aspirations and Israel was a fascist state doomed to extinction, negotiating with such entities was futile and compromise was unthinkable. But the PLO inability to defeat them required a different strategy and new analysis which it was slow to develop or implement.

The PLO's historic interpretation underestimated Israel's endurance and overestimated that country's dependence on the United States. Expecting its power could compel a change in U.S. policy or force Israel's surrender made other options less attractive for the PLO. Believing that Washington could be persuaded to abandon Israel or order it to yield territory led to miscalculations. The difficulty in seeing Israel as a viable and independent country caused the PLO to continue using radical means and rhetoric which hardened Israel's aversion to negotiating with--much less yielding territory--to it.

A spate of events damaging the PLO's interests in the 1980s and early 1990s made this analysis harder to maintain, though it still served a useful function within Palestinian politics. Nevertheless, if the PLO and its allies could not expel U.S. influence or defeat Israel on the battlefield, the diplomatic route became the only viable option. Whatever moral or historical arguments Palestinians might employ, the reality was that not one inch of land could be obtained without some agreement with the only two states that might materially affect the Palestinians' fate for the better.

The PLO was pushed toward tough decisions and irreversible choices as West Bank/Gaza Palestinians demanded action, Arab rulers reduced support for the PLO and involvement in the conflict, the USSR collapsed, U.S. power grew, and Israel became stronger and more deeply entrenched in the territories. The opening of direct Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian negotiations in 1991 further challenged PLO leaders to bridge the gap between opportunities and limits imposed by internal politics or ideology in order to advance from revolutionary movement to governing authority. This situation made the PLO's view of its foes even more central in determining its strategy and fortunes.

In the 1970s and into the 1980s, some U.S. policymakers and opinionmakers had at times believed--as Arafat did--that the Arab-Israeli conflict was the region's overriding central issue: uniting all Arabs and Muslims; guaranteeing their active, energetic support for the PLO; and determining their relations with the United States. Yet when the PLO could not accept a compromise solution, it was unable to take advantage of the limited leverage it did enjoy.

Instead, the PLO provided no prospect of a viable solution to those overestimating its power and no actual concessions to those overestimating its moderation. U.S. policymakers were frustrated in efforts to work with Arafat as the apparent impossibility of finding an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, the PLO's hostility to U.S. interests, and evidence that the PLO's power was limited, all undermined the appeal of a changed policy. Failing to endanger U.S. interests or to help in a diplomatic breakthrough, the PLO found U.S. policy largely ignoring its concerns. By the time the organization began moving toward a more flexible position both its psychological and material advantages had eroded.

Although the PLO's diplomatic contacts with West European and Third World countries were steadily increasing in the mid- 1970s, the PLO's terrorism and ideology prevented it from making headway with the U.S. government. U.S. policy, first formulated by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1975, was to refuse to deal with the PLO until it accepted UN Resolution 242, abandoned terrorism, and recognized Israel's right to exist. These conditions were designed to show that the PLO had genuinely changed its position so as to make possible successful talks and a stable settlement. There were some secret contacts between U.S. embassy officials and the PLO in Lebanon for security purposes and indirect exchanges in which Washington tried to persuade the PLO to meet the conditions. Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young had to resign in 1979 after he saw his PLO counterpart in a brief, unauthorized meeting.

Those highlighting the PLO's importance had predicted that unless the Palestinian problem was solved as soon as possible on terms acceptable to it, the Middle East would explode, U.S. interests and influence would be destroyed, and pro-U.S. regimes would be overthrown or decide--from anger or self-preservation-- to embrace Moscow or Islamic fundamentalism. Terrorism, anti- Americanism, radicalism, revolution, Islamic fundamentalism, and every other regional phenomenon was attributed to this single- cause explanation, appealing in its simplicity and focus on the regional issue with which Americans were most familiar.

All the area's problems were said to be rooted in this dispute. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1975:  "It is impossible to seek a resolution to the energy problem without tackling head on--and doing so in an urgent fashion--the Arab-Israeli conflict." Otherwise, "any stable arrangement" was impossible. But in fact the oil crisis and related financial issues were handled successfully on their own. "Unless the United States makes a real concession to the Palestinians soon by recognizing the PLO," The Middle East magazine wrote in 1979, "it may find it has burnt its bridges." In 1980, the influential scholar Malcolm Kerr claimed that because the issue "has continuously been the number one preoccupation" of the area, "The decline in American prestige hangs like a cloud over...any other form of diplomatic initiative in the Middle East that Washington might wish to pursue." (1)

No matter how much the USSR lost or the United States gained ground, some were ready to argue this was only a mirage. The Arabs, wrote Professor Edward Said in 1979, were "losing hope" in U.S. credibility and turning "to Moscow...because they felt they had been left with no alternative. America has been paying heavily for the unresolved conflict in many large and small ways. These include the radicalization of half a dozen Arab regimes, the strengthening of their ties with Moscow...their hostility to the United States; [and] the destruction of Lebanon." (2) A leading regional expert, John Campbell, insisted in 1981, "The Palestine question remains a formidable obstacle and burden to U.S. relations with the Arab world. It undermines the moderates and strengthens the wild men. It plays into the hands of the Soviet Union. It threatens to isolate the United States with Israel as the only friend in the region." (3)

"The way to increase security of Western interests in the area and to promote common shares in cooperation is through progress on the Palestine problem, not around it," claimed Professor William Zartman in 1981. (4) Yet if that issue was unresolvable at the same time when U.S.-Arab cooperation was possible on other matters, the matter was better avoided than highlighted.

In 1983, the journalist David Lamb wrote that U.S. policy had convinced most Arab governments, "that the Reagan Administration cannot be an honest broker in the stalemated Arab-Israeli conflict." Time magazine opined in 1986, "On the Arab side, the sense of betrayal is deep. The Arabs feel that Washington has moved closer to Israel than ever before, thus endangering U.S. strategic interests and abandoning claims of being an honest broker." (5) Yet that was precisely the role Arab states repeatedly asked the United States to play.

The Arabs of the Persian Gulf were supposedly obsessed about the Arab-Israeli conflict and allegedly mistrusted the United States as a result. "We should not assume," warned author Robert Lacey in 1982, that the Saudi royal family "will continue to be as pro-Western as it is at present....[It] could very easily shift itself in a more radical direction." Professor Udo Steinbach wrote in 1983 that until a settlement of the Palestine question was achieved "which will correspond approximately to [Arab] views of a `just' solution--then close cooperation with the United States cannot fail to operate in a destabilizing manner for the states of the [Persian Gulf] region." (6)

Yet at that very moment, Saudi Arabia was cooperating with the United States, buying vast amounts of arms from it and overbuilding military facilities for U.S. use if that country's protection was ever needed. In 1987, Kuwait put American flags on its tankers and asked the U.S. navy to convoy them in order to stop Iranian attacks. An Arab summit meeting endorsed the arrangement although no progress had been made on resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Saudi Arabia did not hesitate--just a few months after the United States broke off its dialogue with the PLO--to invite U.S. troops to save it when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Egypt, Syria and other Arab states aligned with Washington against Baghdad in a war.

By the same token, anti-Americanism was no mere reaction to U.S. help for Israel or opposition to the PLO. A U.S. policy defending the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, and Iraq in the 1950s against radical forces--at a time it had only minimal links with Israel--angered radicals seeking to overthrow incumbent rulers and expansionist states eager to take over neighbors. American power frightened Pan-Arab nationalists and Muslims who thought a Western cultural and political invasion threatened to swamp their way of life, destroy their independence, and block their plans for unity. Radicals would have fomented revolution and regimes would have battled over regional hegemony even if Israel had never existed.

In fact, while the Palestine issue was undoubtedly an important one for Arab states, it neither pushed them into the Soviet camp nor prevented them from cooperation with the United States when it was otherwise to their advantage. They were more preoccupied with their own problems and strife, largely a natural aftermath of their independence, search for identity, and traumas of development comparable to those elsewhere in the Third World. These factors generated crises often having little or no relation to the Arab-Israeli one, constantly drawing attention and resources away from the PLO's cause and dragging it into costly diversions.

The "Arab cold war" and frequent coups of the 1950s and 1960s was followed by such strife as Qadhafi's takeover in Libya and subversion of neighbors; instability in Sudan; Lebanon's civil war; the fall of Iran's shah, displaced by an Islamic republic; Kurdish revolts and the Iran-Iraq war; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Islamic fundamentalism; the upward spiral of oil prices; and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. In these circumstances, Arab support for the PLO was limited or distorted by state interests.

Unwilling to fight Israel--as respect for its strength grew-- and increasingly concerned by threats from Iran or Iraq, internal problems, and internecine quarrels, Arab states devoted diminishing resources to help the PLO. Pro-PLO statements did not stop Saudi Arabia and Egypt from strengthening ties with the United States, nor did Iraq let PLO interests stand in its way when it needed U.S. aid to defeat Iran during their war. (7)

Arab rulers attacked the PLO in the name of the Palestinian cause, assassinating or jailing its leaders, helping anti-Arafat factions, and withholding aid. The PLO had to compete with Jordan's claim to represent the Palestinians and rule the West Bank, as well as Syria's claim to Palestine as "southern Syria" and demand for veto power over its policies. Arafat found no consistent champion in any Arab leader or government.

Instead, these regimes gradually accepted Israel's existence. Egypt and Israel made peace. In practice--though not formally--Jordan and Israel settled into peaceful coexistence; Syria and Israel avoided strife. Competing with Israel for U.S. favor, many Arab rulers improved relations with the world's strongest state. The very anxiety that U.S. power might be used against them made radicals more cautious. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy explained that close U.S. ties "to both Israel and Arab states [made it] the only superpower trusted by both." In contrast, "the Soviet Union, without diplomatic relations with Israel and with limited diplomatic ties and bilateral relations in the Arab world, has only a peripheral role to play." (8) Even Kerr conceded that alliance with Israel aided U.S. interests, "As long as the Arabs let the United States get away with...managing to befriend Israel without sacrificing important interests in the Arab world." (9)

Despite Moscow's role as the PLO's superpower patron, its influence declined in the Arab world, which found the USSR to be an unreliable champion, a miser on aid, and ineffective in exerting diplomatic or military leverage. Egypt and Sudan expelled the Soviets; Iraq turned its back on them. Even South Yemen--whose close alignment with Moscow was hardly inspired by the Palestinian issue--gave up and merged with conservative North Yemen. Constantly proving superior in technology, reliability, and power to the USSR, the United States had clearly won the Cold War in the Middle East several years earlier than elsewhere. (10) Despite the many times when the U.S. position was said to be on the verge of ruin, it succeeded in limiting regional instability, defeating its Soviet rival, containing extremist regimes, protecting allies, maintaining influence, and ensuring access to oil.

Thus, through the 1970s and 1980s, the PLO had only limited and declining Arab and Soviet backing, no capacity to defeat or destroy Israel, and little leverage in changing U.S. policy. While Arafat was aware of these general trends, he also continually overestimated his assets, banking on the PLO's centrality in the Arab-Israeli conflict and that issue's alleged primacy for the region, repeatedly threatening to unleash a volcano destroying U.S. interests unless Washington met his demands.

Yet as history moved in the opposite direction, the PLO, unable to force a U.S. retreat, needed a strategy inducing U.S. policy to be more favorable. In short, the power balance meant that the more moderate the PLO's position, the greater its chance to enter negotiations and achieve some form of Palestinian self-determination; the more ambiguous or hardline was the PLO's stand, the less likely the United States would deal with it, endorse its direct inclusion in talks, or accede to a West Bank/Gaza Palestinian state. Since only the PLO and the Palestinians gained nothing from the status quo--and U.S. interests whether or not it resolved Palestinian grievances--the burden of proof for achieving any change was placed on the PLO. (11)

If the PLO could not bring progress by force or revolution, only moderation and diplomacy could do so; if it was disinclined to change policy in order to alleviate current Palestinian suffering, the United States could hardly be expected to do so. But as early as the mid-1970s, U.S. policy did provide a way to involve the PLO in a diplomatic process by giving Arafat a choice. He could show a readiness to change the conflict's terms, and hence move toward a resolution, by meeting three conditions--recognizing Israel, accepting UN resolutions 242 and 338, and rejecting terrorism--or he could choose pro- but non-PLO delegates to represent Palestinian interests.

Such a strategy's requirements, however, clashed with the PLO's goals, structure, tactics, and rhetoric. For the PLO, anti-Americanism had been both ideological tenet and a reaction to the U.S.-Israel alliance. On the one hand, it assumed that U.S. imperialism sought to dominate the Middle East. In 1968, Arafat claimed that Israel was a U.S. or Western "military base" established to ensure the Middle East remained "disunited and backward." (12) Almost two decades later, in 1986, he called the United States in 1986, "The controlling force of neo- colonialism, imperialism and racism [which] employs Israel to spearhead its strategy of domination in the Middle East." (13) There could be no rapprochement with--only a struggle against-- an America trying to dominate and exploit the Middle East, using Israel as a tool and inevitably opposing Palestinian rights.

According to an advocate of this determinist view, the Palestinian-American Palestinian National Council (PNC) member Edward Said, "The United States, as a government and as a society, is hostile to us." It was not an arbiter but "a party to the conflict." He urged the PLO to turn military defeat into political victory by dealing "with the United States the same way the Vietnamese dealt with Henry Kissinger in Paris." (14) This stance implied that the PLO could subvert domestic U.S. support for the client state; erode U.S. willpower by protracted struggle; and make agreements, only to break them as soon as possible.

On the other hand, the PLO wanted to split the American patron from its Israel client. But how could this be achieved if the United States was so irredeemably hostile? Arafat's solution to this paradox was to claim that the way for the PLO to succeed was by forcing America to bend by its own strength and persistence rather than by enticing it to bend by changing its own policy.

Thus, the PLO rejected completely--rather than try to develop in a direction more to its liking--such U.S. initiatives as the Camp David accords of 1978, the Reagan plan of 1982, and other initiatives. Although the organization was understandably angry at the failure of U.S. guarantees for the safety of Palestinians in Lebanon in 1982, it did benefit from a U.S. safe-conduct for its own withdrawal in 1982 and 1983. Indeed, the PLO often identified the United States as its chief enemy. The PLO, Arafat said, had fought bravely against a U.S.-directed attack, held Beirut for over two months, and yielded only because of a lack of Arab support. (15)

Despite the rejection of the Reagan plan by Israel's government, the PLO refused a chance to enter a process in which it could have worked to take over power in the territories during the transition period, gain U.S. support, and then propose itself as their rightful ruler. Habash called the Reagan plan a "political bomb no different from the cluster bombs which our fighters confronted bravely in Beirut." Hawatmah called it an "imperialist American-Zionist plan."  Arafat, too, scorned the proposal. "I have not heard a single Palestinian say that he accepted Reagan's plan," said his ally Abu Iyad. He closed the 1983 PNC meeting by claiming Israel's invasion of Lebanon was a U.S. plot "to destroy the PLO" and that U.S. warships had convoyed Israeli troops there.

Yet was U.S. opposition to Palestinian rights so inevitable or did the PLO also miss chances to exploit opportunities and change U.S. policy? (16) The main reason the United States became the PLO's enemy was due to that organization's behavior and professed goals. The PLO view of America as hostile was, in part, a self-fulfilling prophecy. During the long Cold War decades, a PLO policy aligned with Moscow, putting a priority on armed struggle, employing terrorism even against U.S. citizens, and seeking to destroy Israel gave the United States no compelling political or strategic incentive to change, take risks, or weaken its own ally. (17)

  Even Said thought that "negligence, corruption, and incompetence" damaged the PLO's attempt to improve its image in the United States. (18) It failed to take advantage of such elements in American political culture as sympathy for "underdogs" and support for self-determination. Moreover, an American tendency to attribute conflicts to misunderstanding or poor communication--rather than from clashing interests--created an expectation that proof of good intentions and concessions might transform enemies into friends. Thus, even those journalists, experts or officials eager to recognize or even exaggerate moderation from the PLO were denied evidence of its predicted "pragmatism." in recognizing Israel or stopping terrorism.

The PLO's transparently cynical approach to handling these issues during much of its history had a counterproductive effect on its credibility in the United States. For example, the organization's handling of the Achille Lauro affair and Arafat's subsequent Cairo declaration was rejected by the United States which would not, Shultz commented, approve Arafat's renouncing "all terrorism except in Israel or the West Bank." "The U.S government," said Ambassador for Counterterrorism L. Paul Bremer III, "has always considered politically motivated attacks against noncombatants anywhere (including Israel and the occupied territories) to be terrorism." (19) After Abu Jihad's assassination by Israel in 1988, Arafat claimed the U.S. government was planning to kill more PLO leaders and ordered attacks on U.S. citizens and facilities. (20)

Viewing U.S. patronage of Israel as inevitable and innate encouraged PLO leaders to believe that any attempt at negotiation, compromise, or moderation was useless. The extent of U.S. support for Israel, of course, was no mere illusion. Aside from a large, politically active Jewish community, American public opinion was positive toward Israel for such reasons as memory of the Holocaust, Israeli assistance to U.S. interests, mutual opposition to Soviet influence and radical Arab states, and greater cultural proximity. A PLO newspaper claimed in 1991 that pro-Israel forces, "Terrified all U.S. presidents of the past 40 years and became so strong that any state wanting to move closer to the White House and to enjoy its care and loans had to obtain Israeli approval first." Abu Iyad claimed in 1989 that it "to a large extent controls the United States." Hani al-Hasan said in 1990, "It is regrettable that a superpower...the greatest one at present, is governed by the Zionist lobby." (21)

The PLO Charter had defined Israel not as the result of Jewish nationalism but as a "base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat" Arab liberation, unity, and progress...to secure continued imperialist robbery and exploitation of our country." (22) Commented Khalid al-Hasan in 1989, "We don't consider ourselves as fighting Jews but the U.S. military. Israel itself cannot do anything. And if Israel is left alone without this kind of military support we could have solved the problem long ago." (23) In 1993, he quoted an old antisemitic forgery to make the point: "As George Washington said [Jews] cannot live except by sucking the blood of others. The Israeli political leadership is like a coward seeking protection from a strong man....Israel is the United States' slave." (24)

But by the late 1980s, the PLO was exploring an approach based on its long-standing idea that the United States was Israel's master. Now the view of Israel as a U.S. puppet was deemed a factor that might be turned to the PLO's advantage. Concluding that "nothing can get done in the region without the United States," Arafat sought serious talks with Washington by meeting its conditions for a dialogue in December 1988. (25) Instead of trying to defeat America, the PLO sought both to pressure and woo it as a substitute for making peace with Israel. If, as Arafat explained, Israel merely did what America said, "Peace is not in Israel's hand, but in the hand of the United States, because Israeli decisionmaking is in Washington and not in Tel Aviv." (26)

PLO Executive Committee member Abdallah Hourani said, "The party that decides...is neither us nor Israel. It is the two superpowers and the [UN] Security Council's permanent member states." Nabil Sha'th insisted, "The United States is a realistic country. The longer the uprising continues and the wider Palestinian peace movements spread or gain supporters in the world, the more the United States is forced to change its line." (27)

Several factors were said to be forcing U.S. policy to accommodate itself with the PLO. Especially important was the intifada, whose extensive coverage in the U.S. media brought more sympathy for the Palestinians. "People are being killed," said a Palestinian newspaper, "Muslims and Christians, children and women, using American taxpayers' money." (28) In speech after speech, Arafat assured the Palestinians that a few more months of steadfastness and struggle would bring total victory. Muhammad Milhim, the PLO's coordinator with the intifada, asserted, "The maintenance of the current PLO policy and the continuation of the PLO's firm strategy will force Israel and the United States to accept the Palestinian peace initiative." (29)

The PLO also thought its hand was strengthened by the end of the Iran-Iraq war--letting Arabs, Arafat claimed, "devote more of their attention to supporting the Palestinian people's cause"--and of the Cold War. Khalid al-Hasan suggested the latter event would undermine U.S. support for Israel: "When the Zionist entity becomes an obstacle in the vital American interests, Washington will be the first to jettison Israel." Qaddumi asserted, "International detente has diminished Israel's strategic value." (30)

But rather than subverting U.S.-Israel relations, the Cold War's end reduced any American need to woo the PLO or Arab states away from the Soviet camp, extinguishing the old argument that only concessions to the PLO could prevent a pro-Moscow Middle East. Furthermore, while the United States knew that only an Israeli-Palestinian agreement could bring a breakthrough, the PLO believed that internal weaknesses and U.S. pressure would force Israel's withdrawal without requiring a clear and major revision of PLO policy, tactics, or goals.

From the PLO's standpoint, diplomatic progress was impeded by the fact that the United States and Israel rejected an independent Palestinian state and preferred dealing with West Bank/Gaza Palestinians rather than itself. It feared a permanent Israeli occupation might be hidden behind an offer of local autonomy. Yet these problems were not so insuperable as they might appear at first glance. Whatever reluctance the PLO's two enemies had shown to a fully independent state, they were open to a Palestinian federation with Jordan, which the PLO had officially accepted. In addition, the peace process was designed with an interim stage of self-rule in the territories, which the PLO could use in order to consolidate control, creating, step- by-step, an infrastructure which would ensure its own future rule and make any loosening of Israeli control an irreversible process. At the same time, the PLO could have developed a strategy to strengthen the opposition Labor party's position in Israel while trying to weaken U.S.-Israel ties by putting forward a serious peace initiative.

Moreover, if the Palestinian people were as united behind the PLO as it claimed, the organization could certainly negotiate through a screen of West Bank/Gaza Palestinians. This arrangement even arguably had advantages for the PLO, since it would not have to make the concessions--ceasing armed struggle, for example--that would be necessary if it were to enter negotiations directly.

But the PLO did not act to defuse U.S. and Israeli suspicions deriving from its own acts and goals nor, even while moderating its stand, developed no such comprehensive strategy for advancing the diplomatic process. Instead, it remained enamored of the idea that the United States and Israel could be defeated or outmaneuvered with the minimum modification of its own policies. The PLO was more concerned with proving itself to be an indispensable rather than an acceptable negotiating partner. Palestinians easily rationalized their stands on the basis of historical and current injustice, but the real issue was that the PLO's approach was ineffective. (31)

The round of diplomacy between the United States and the PLO between 1988 and 1990 is a model in showing the PLO's mixture of misperception and deliberate strategy toward that country. The PLO understood that to obtain U.S. recognition required it to appear flexible and moderate. "The days of indirect contacts with the United States are over." said Khalid al-Hasan in 1988. "They took us nowhere in the past twenty years." (32)

Indeed, the 1988 PNC meeting was dedicated to changing U.S. policy. In sharp contrast to the past, anti-Americanism was largely absent. But the effort to meet U.S. preconditions for dealing with the PLO came up against the leaders' own hesitancy to change their policy and risk splitting the organization. Thus, the PNC tried to give the impression that it was recognizing Israel, while not recognizing Israel; accepting UN Resolution 242, albeit with major qualifications; condemning terrorism, but with loopholes; and seeking a Palestinian state on just the West Bank and Gaza, though never actually saying so. (33)

But the U.S. government was unconvinced by the PNC meeting's results, calling its resolution a step forward that was not yet satisfactory. Equally, the State Department still refused Arafat a visa to speak at the UN General Assembly in New York, identifying 22 PLO terrorist acts--some of them against U.S. citizens--between its 1985 declaration promising to stop international terrorism and March 1988. (34) When the General Assembly voted to convene a special session in Geneva, Switzerland, to hear him speak, the State Department secretly told Arafat that it would open a dialogue if he met the U.S. conditions in that talk; Arafat pledged to do so.

Thus, as Arafat mounted the podium on December 13, 1988, the U.S. government expected a breakthrough. Shultz scheduled a press conference to announce a U.S.-PLO dialogue; State Department officials settled down in front of a television, copies of the agreed language in hand, to watch the performance. But Arafat again broke his promise, making a polemical speech instead of a conciliatory one. The State Department noted "some positive developments" but was actually quite discouraged. Shultz canceled his press conference. One more long diplomatic effort was on the brink of failure. (35)

But the PLO's leaders did not take full advantage of this opportunity. Arab and Palestinian factors pressured them against concessions. Moreover, PLO leaders assumed that Israel was a U.S. puppet which would do what Washington ordered. They seized on the dialogue as a triumph to show its constituents that the intifada was forcing a change in U.S. policy. Since the United States was being forced to give the PLO a state, they did not have to convince Israel to do so.  The Palestinian uprising, Iraq's victory over Iran, and other factors, Nabil Sha'th claimed, "changed the balance in favor of the Palestinian cause." PLO broadcasts to the territories boasted, "The U.S. Administration has...been forced to cooperate with the PLO as the Palestinian people's sole representative. (36)

While the PLO now expected that the United States would meet its demands, the United States saw this step as just the start of a negotiating process in which the PLO would have to prove its moderation and convince Israel that a solution with Arafat was possible. The U.S. government defined the new stage as a constructive dialogue, not as negotiations, which would endure only if the PLO was seen to live up to Arafat's pledge in Geneva.

Arafat disagreed, claiming that the PLO had great leverage over the United States and that the Arabs held "99 percent" of the cards. This was a carefully chosen image. A decade earlier, Anwar Sadat had justified making peace with Israel through U.S. mediation by commenting that the United States held "99 percent" of the cards. (37) Rather than try to persuade Israelis that they could achieve peace and security by dealing with the PLO, Arafat argued that only Washington counted. Israel's decisions, he insisted, were made "in Washington and not in Tel Aviv." He recalled the 1956 Suez crisis, when Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt but pulled back at President Dwight Eisenhower's insistence. "What happened when he ordered them to withdraw? They immediately withdrew." He expected Israel to do the same now, quickly and simply, from the West Bank and Gaza. (38)

The PLO feared that U.S., Israeli or even Egyptian plans might split people in the territories from the PLO. PLO leaders now began complaining, "The Americans haven't done anything for us" and Washington was merely "stalling while waiting for the intifada to die." Occasional U.S.-PLO meetings in Tunis between U.S. Ambassador Robert Pelletreau and a PLO delegation, however, were far less important than the efforts being made in Washington.

President George Bush's new administration took office in January 1989. "We are concerned," explained Secretary of State James Baker, that if we act too precipitously we might preempt promising possibilities." He wanted to find a way to address both "Israel's legitimate security needs and...the legitimate political rights of the Palestinian people." This involved a delicate balancing act to avoid losing either side's cooperation. (39)

The U.S. argument was that Israel's May 1989 offer was a serious one that could break the deadlock in the peace process. U.S. officials lobbied for the plan with the PLO and West Bank/Gaza Palestinians. But to balance this position, the United States made gestures toward Palestinian political rights and indicated support for an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. To respond to one of the PLO's criticisms, Baker called on Israel to help find a "creative solution...to enable the participation of Palestinians who do not currently reside in the West Bank and Gaza Strip" and urged that country to give up "the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel." (40)

the State Department bent over backwards to avoid acknowledging any terrorism in order to maintain the U.S.-PLO dialogue: minimizing the PLO membership of the smaller groups, ignoring evidence of continued terrorism by Fatah, and refusing to define attempted attacks across the Lebanon-Israel border as terrorist on the grounds that their targets "were unclear" since Israel killed or captured the terrorists before they were able to carry out their mission. Abu Iyad explained that while the PLO rejected the idea that the intifada itself use arms, it wanted to escalate "the armed struggle away from the intifada's areas but in interaction with it." In other words, the PLO could continue cross-border attacks. "We did not promise the Americans or others that we would stop the armed struggle," he claimed, totally denying the basis of the U.S.-PLO dialogue. Terrorism meant only international operations; armed operations inside the territories or against Israel were permitted, even if they "affect civilians by mistake." (41) This was different from the commitment the United States thought Arafat made at Geneva where he stated that any group engaging in terror "shall be expelled from the PLO ranks." (42)

U.S.-Israel tension presented the PLO with an opportunity to divide Washington and Jerusalem further. Washington was about to support a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied territories in April 1990, but the PLO and some Arab states kept demanding tougher language and the deal fell through. Similarly, the State Department promised Arafat to raise the level of the U.S.-PLO dialogue if he gave a temperate speech to the May 1990 UN session in Geneva. Instead, he made a hardline one. (43)

Finally, the May 30 attack on Israel's coast by a PLO member group could not be ignored by the United States. (44) When the PLO refused to criticize or punish the act, despite U.S. efforts to salvage the dialogue, the Bush administration felt compelled to suspend it on June 20.

The PLO, however, was already deeply involved with Saddam Husayn's drive for Arab leadership which would lead to Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. At a January 1991 Baghdad rally, a few days before fighting began, Arafat said that if the United States wanted war, "then I say welcome, welcome, welcome to war." "Iraq and Palestine," he continued, would be together, "side by side" in battle. In February, he proclaimed, "If they want to have o-i-l, then they have to also take P-L-O" and called for military attacks on Israel. (45)

The result of this strategy was another debacle for the PLO, again demonstrating that it could get nowhere except through negotiations, mutual compromise, and an agreement with Israel. "The Palestinians," an Arab writer said, "do not accept the proposition that, in the age of the people's right to self- determination, they should be singled out for denial of this right." (46) Yet they could not achieve this goal while denying it to Israel. By maintaining a hard line in doctrine and tactics, the PLO ensured that U.S. and Israeli policy excluded it, and exclusion became a rationale for preserving a hard line. To decide that it was ready to redefine the conflict was the PLO's central task in the 1990s.

When the PLO finally did accept the Rabin/Kissinger conditions, U.S. policy was helpful--if not always to the PLO's liking--in advancing negotiations and a process which would make possible a West Bank/Gaza Palestinian state. But the breakthrough required direct talks with Israel and acknowledgement that only Israel could make peace for itself. The theory that Israel was either America's puppet or master had to be abandoned. The outcome was an agreement signed on the White House lawn, with a U.S. president as host and facilitator. (47)  

NOTES  

*This article originally appeared in Avram Sela and Moshe Ma'oz, The PLO and Israel, From Armed Struggle to Political Settlement (St. Martins Press, 1997).

(1) The Middle East, June 1979, p. 14; Malcolm Kerr, "American Middle East Policy: Kissinger, Carter and the Future," Institute for Palestine Studies Paper #14, 1980, pp. 7-8, 27.

(2)Edward Said, The Palestine Question and the American Context, (Institute for Palestine Studies, Beirut, 1979), p. 17.

(3) John Campbell, "The Middle East: A House  of Containment Built on Shifting Sands," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 60, No. 3, (1981), p. 626.

(4) I. William Zartman, "Power of American Purposes," The Middle East Journal, Spring 1981, pp. 165-66.

(5) David Lamb, Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1985; William E. Smith, "Plight of the Moderates," Time, June 16, 1986, p. 19.

(6) Robert Lacey, "Saudi Arabia: A More Visible Role," The World Today, January 1982, p. 11; Udo Steinbach, "The Iranian-Iraqi Conflict and its Impact Upon the `Arc of Crisis,'" Journal of South Asian and Middle East Studies," Summer 1983, p. 15.

(7) For a broader discussion of these issues, see the author's Cauldron of Turmoil: America in the Middle East (NY, 1992).

(8) Testimony, House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, March 6, 1986.

(9) Kerr, op. cit., p. 11. Its worst setback came from the revolution in non-Arab Iran, where the Arab-Israeli conflict was--at most--a marginal concern.

(10) The PLO and radical regimes saw the USSR as a model for development, an enemy of the rulers against whom they rebelled, and an ally helpful in achieving their ambitions. Nasir's alliance with Moscow took place shortly after the United States saved his regime in 1956, preventing its own allies--Britain, France, and Israel--from overthrowing him. The Soviet regional position was strongest in the early 1960s, when the Arab-Israel conflict was quiescent. Syria and Iraq sided with the USSR in exchange for its support against neighbors and such huge material benefits as virtually free loans, military advisers, and large amounts of arms.

(11) Presidents only risk prestige and spend political capital when sensing a reasonable chance for success on a problem, given the number of other pressing or promising issues. As long as the PLO sought to destroy Israel through a terrorist, anti-American strategy, there could be no settlement with the PLO just as there could be none without it. Before engaging in any effort, commented Secretary of State George Shultz, "I should have at least a 0.1 probability of accomplishing something." Washington Post, January 6, 1989. Shultz spoke from experience. In his 1982 Senate confirmation hearings, he made resolving the conflict his top priority. But the PLO, Israel, Jordan, and others were less cooperative than he had been led to expect. U.S. mediation efforts in 1982-83, 1985-85, and 1988-90 ended in failure as both sides pulled back from private promises or public hints of flexibility. Progress was possible only when the parties in the dispute were ready to take the necessary steps. Otherwise, the United States had neither the stake nor ability to break the deadlock. For a history of U.S. policymaking, see the author's Secrets of State: The State Department and The Struggle Over U.S. Foreign Policy, (NY, 1985), and William Quandt, Peace Process (Washington, DC, 1993).

(12) International Documents on Palestine 1968 (Beirut, 1969) pp. 301, 379. When Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated by a Palestinian in 1968, Fatah claimed the killer "must undoubtedly have been a tool employed by world Zionism, by persons having political, personal or capitalistic interests, and by the American CIA."

(13) "Yasir Arafat," Third World Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2, April 1986.

(14) Interview with al-Anba (FBIS October 19, 1989, pp. 1-8). For the PLO's response, see Abd al-Rabbu in al-Quds al-Arabi,äM October 13, 1989 (FBIS, October 19, 1989, p. 6).

(15) Arafat, Middle East, May 1983; Khalid al-Hasan, al-Madina, August 31, 1982, (FBIS, September 9, 1982); Arafat speech, Voice of Palestine (Aden), September 8, 1982, (BBC, Survey of World Broadcasts, September 11, 1982).

(16) There were some cooperative contacts but these were largely non-political. In November 1973, PLO leaders held a secret meeting with deputy CIA director Vernon Walters in Morocco and promised not to attack Americans. Ali Hasan Salama, one of Black September's leaders, was the organization's liaison to the CIA. After about 1975, the PLO helped protect U.S. diplomats in Beirut. David Ignatius, Wall Street Journal, February 10, 1983; Lally Weymouth, "Andy Young Wasn't Alone," Washington Post, June 4, 1989. There were reportedly 35 meetings between U.S. diplomats and the PLO between 1978 and 1981 to discuss embassy security and the release of U.S. hostages in Iran but not political issues. U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean coordinated his travels with the PLO and Abu Jihad may have helped released 13 hostages from Tehran. The PFLP had assassinated U.S. Ambassador Francis Meloy in 1976. Salama reportedly visited the United States to meet with CIA officials in 1976, early in the relationship.

(17) Terrorism was a particular cause of friction. Even on the eve of the U.S.-PLO dialogue in 1988, the PLO was blocking the extradition from Greece of Muhammad Rashid for bombing a U.S. airliner and killing a passenger. Rashid's boss, Colonel Hawari, a close associate of Arafat, had been convicted in court for attacking U.S. targets including another bombing which killed four Americans, including an infant. The State Department denied Arafat himself a visa based on his direct involvement in attacks on Americans. Two years later, a terrorist act by a PLO member group, which the organization refused to denounce, destroyed the dialogue. See, for example, Washington Post, March 3, 1988.

(18) Al-Anba interview, op. cit.

(19) L. Paul Bremer Jr., "Countering Terrorism, U.S. Policy in the 1980s and 1990s," speech at George Washington University, November 22, 1988, pp. 10-11.

(20) New York Times, February 22, 1988; Washington Post, May 11, 1988.

(21) Abd al-Bari Atwan, "Counter Storm?" al-Quds al-Arabi, September 16, 1991 (FBIS, September 19, 1991, p. 4.). On Abu Iyad, see Al-Madina, July 7, 1989 (FBIS, July 19, 1989, p. 1); al-Anba, April 12, 1990 (FBIS, April 19, 1990, p. 5).

(22) Y. Harkabi, The Palestinian Covenant and its Meaning, (London, 1979), p. 73.

(23) Interview with author in Tunis, August 13, 1989.

(24) Al-Quds al-Arabi, January 7, 1993 (FBIS, January 12, p. 10)

(25) FBIS, December 28, 1988, p. 1.

(26) Edward Said, The Palestine Question and the American Context, op. cit., p. 12; "Year-Old Palestinian Uprising Will Continue--Arafat," Reuters, December 9, 1988.

(27) Voice of the PLO (Baghdad), January 26, 1989, (FBIS, January 30, 1989, p. 6); al-Siyasa, January 30, 1989, (FBIS, February 1, 1989, p. 4); al-Dustur, November 17, 1988, (FBIS, November 17, 1988, p. 4).

(28) Al-Quds al-Arabi, February 12, 1990 (Middle East Mirror, February 12, 1990).

(29) Al-Anba, September 19, 1989 (FBIS, September 22, 1989, p. 7).

(30) Matti Steinberg, "The Pragmatic Stream of Thought within the PLO According to Khalid al-Hasan," Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, Vol. No. 1 (1989); al-Qabas, October 3, 1989, (FBIS, October 5, 1989, p. 2).   

(31) Al-Akhbar, September 22, 1989, pp. 3 and 8, (FBIS, September 25, 1989, pp. 1-5). Al-Ra'y, October 10, 1989, pp. 1 and 16, (FBIS, October 11, 1989, pp. 4-6).

(32) Le Monde, July 1, 1988.

(33) Key sources for the Palestinian National Council Resolution were the September 1982 Fez Arab summit resolution,  Text in Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, The Israel-Arab Reader (NY, 1990), pp. 663-65, and Arafat's speech to the June 1988 Arab summit, text, FBIS, June 10, 1988, p. 6.

(34) Washington Post, October 25, 1988; Interview, Voice of Lebanon, December 3, 1987, (FBIS, December 4, 1987, pp. 3-6); Washington Post, January 4 and 5, 1989 and March 1, 1989; Bremer speech, op. cit., pp. 10-11.  On PLO attacks just prior to the PNC meeting, see also Los Angeles Times, October 25 and November 14, 1988.

(35) Text, Voice of the PLO (Baghdad), December 15, 1988, (FBIS, December 15, 1988, p. 3); New York Times, December 14, 1988. 

(36) Voice of the PLO (Baghdad), October 16, 1989, (FBIS, October 17, 1989, p. 6).

(37) FBIS, January 25, 1989, p. 4; al-Musawwar, January 19, 1990. Sadat's comment, February 17, 1977, International Documents on Palestine, 1977, (Beirut, 1978), p. 329.

(38) Voice of Palestine (Algiers), March 9, 1989, (FBIS, March 21, 1989, p. 11).

(39) New York Times, February 12 and 22, March 11, 14, and 16, 1989; Washington Times, February 16, 1989; Washington Post, February 24 and May 2, 1989.

(40) New York Times, March 31 and April 7, May 24 and 28, and June 25 and 30, 1989; Washington Post, May 24 and June 29, 1989; Washington Times, June 8 and July 19, 1989.

(41) Al-Tadamun, February 5, 1990 (FBIS, 5, 1990, pp. 5-6). For a similar statement by Abu Iyad, see al-Thawra, April 22, 1989, p. 2, (FBIS, April 25, 1989, p. 4).

(42) Reuters, "Guerrillas Killed as Radicals Keep up Attacks on Israel," March 2, 1989.

(43) See, for example, Algiers Television, March 22, 1990 (FBIS, March 23, 1990, pp. 4, 6).

(44) Washington Post, August 28, 1990.

(45) Jordan Times, February 23, 1991; New York Times, January 21, 1991. See also Barry Rubin, "The United States and Iraq" and "The PLO and Iraq" in Amatzia Baram and Barry Rubin, Iraq: Politics, History, Prospects (St. Martins, 1994).

(46) Muhammad al-Hallaj, director of the Institute of Arab Studies, cited in Cheryl Rubenberg, The Palestine Liberation Organization, Its Institutional Infrastructure (Belmont, Mass., 1983), pp. 1-2.

(47) New York Times, September 15, 1993; Congressional Quarterly, September 18, 1993, pp. 2469-71.