Behind the Headlines the PLO Image in the U.S.

Two nationally prominent U.S. Senators, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who believed they saw the bloom of “moderation” on the Palestine Liberation Organization a year ago are now disappointed with it.

Statements by PLO leaders, before and after the Security Council debate on the Middle East last month have made it plain that the PLO’s intention to bring about Israel’s disappearance has not changed. The intense campaign by important politicians and media in the West to wrap the PLO in a cloak of respectability in the hope, analysts here believe, that encouragement from the West might induce the terrorists to become reasonable, has failed.

Sen. Charles Percy (R.III.) last winter angered many of his constituents by implying Israel should deal with the PLO following his visit to the Middle East. On Feb. 19, however, after the PLO’s leadership showed no change of intent, he said: “I believe it is a terrible mistake for the PLO to rule out recognition of Israel because such an attitude is counter-productive. Recognition of Israel would have to be one condition of any future agreement for the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Sen. George McGovern (D.SD) was hailed as a hero by the PLO and its supporters for being the first high American official to speak with PLO chairman Yasir Arafat. A statement issued by his office Feb. 18 said: “In light of recent statements from some Palestinian leaders with opposition to eventual recognition of Israel by the Palestinians, Senator McGovern today reconfirmed his conviction that an eventual peace settlement in the Middle East must include full recognition by the Palestinians of Israel’s right to exist as a nation.”

TRUE POSITION SHOWN

Percy and McGovern were asked for their views by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency following the statement published Feb. 16 in Beirut newspapers by Salah Khalaf, known also as Abulyad, the second in command of El Fatah, the PLO’s principal body.

Khalaf was quoted as saying that the Palestinians were being asked to pay the “high price” of recognizing Israel in return for a Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. “There is something the world must know,” Khalaf said. “Let us all die, let us all be killed, let us all be assassinated, but we will not recognize Israel.”

The previous Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, Arafat, who heads both El Fatah and the PLO, re-emphasized Israel must disappear, pointing out in English that Israel “is still, in my opinion, Palestine” and that he will not negotiate with Israel.

Zuheir Mohsin, head of the PLO’s military department and a leader in Syria’s governing party, said early in February that the solution of the Lebanese crisis would enable the PLO and its allies to devote all their energies against Israel. On Dec. 12, in an interview with West Germany’s weekly, Die Zeit, Mohsin said that “eventually” Israel will “have to accept” an end to existing as an independent state. “We want back every piece of land, every field, every village and every house that was ever ours. We will not yield on that.”

In an appearance on ABC-TV Jan. 14, the PLO’s deputy observer at the United Nations. Hassan Raman, said the “one condition” for negotiations with Israel is “de-Zionization of the State of Israel after the return of the Palestinian people to their homes and property.”

Israelis have consistently pointed out that the PLO has never altered its position when making statements in Arabic but sometimes spoke and acted more softly in the presence of Westerners and toned down terrorism when in the presence of Westerners, particularly Americans whom they wish to persuade to abandon Israel.

PLO NOT CHALLENGED

The campaign in the West to dress up the PLO as moderate and respectable reached a climax shortly before the Security Council debate began in January. The New York Times strove for Israel’s entry and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger himself suggested the Israelis take part, although not necessarily in the same room with the PLO. The Times prominently featured the PLO’s representative in America as a calm, civilized individual with conservative tastes in clothes and manners.

The Washington Post gave the Arab League’s apologist in America, Clovis Maksoud, the opportunity to examine an article it had from Dr. Nahum Goldmann, the World Jewish Congress leader, before publishing both Goldmann’s and Maksoud’s views on the same page. The Post emphasized Goldmann as saying “Once the PLO is ready to recognized the State of Israel, Israel will have to recognize the existence of the Palestine problem.”

Having given Maksoud knowledge beforehand of Goldmann’s views, the Post stressed Maksoud’s statement with an obvious appeal to Americans’ sense of fairness: “To ask the PLO to initiate a political process when none of the Palestinian people’s rights are fulfilled is unfair.” CBS, without any challenge, allowed Maksoud to broadcast that Israel is to blame for Lebanon’s civil strife. The Post editorially stressed after “the PLO debate” that both Israel and America “must move” in the direction of the Palestinian problem.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, Premier Yitzhak Rabin faced a battery of four reporters, including arch-critic Rowland Evans whose hostility towards Israel was unconcealed. When Arafat appeared on the same program a week later, three reporters handled him so gingerly that at one point after Arafat’s declaration that Israel is still Palestine, Jonathan Randal. The Post’s Middle East reporter, commented “very good sir.”