Yasser Arafat, leader of the El Fatah, asserted Sunday that there will be no Mideast peace except under the terms of a “Palestinian revolution,” which means, he said, the overthrow of Zionism the return of Arab refugees and the creation of a Palestinian state within historic boundaries with Christians, Arabs and Jews co-equal. Arafat was interviewed in the Sunday Telegraph by Sir Hugh Greene, former director of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Sir Hugh said that should the Arabs and the Jews miraculously accept the United Nations resolution of November, 1967, it would still be rejected by the Palestinian commandos. King Hussein, he noted, is currently pessimistic about peace chances.
Sir Hugh quoted the leader of the politburo of the Palestinian Democratic Popular Front of Liberation as expressing contempt for both King Hussein and the “Nasserite regime.” He also quoted an unnamed Arafat colleague as believing that the collapse of the Israeli army would lead to the collapse of Israel. If Israel were to extend its military strikes further into Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, the source said, she would have to deal with a hostile population and an organized underground while protected only by a weakened army, producing a war weariness in Israel. “We can lose two, three, or four times. The Israelis can lose only once,” boasted Arafat.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
