Buckley, Jackson Clash over Whether the U.S. Should Recognize the PLO

William Buckley, the conservative author and syndicated columnist, and Rev. Jesse Jackson, head of Operation PUSH, locked horns yesterday over the issue of whether the United States should recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization. Their debate, before faculty, students and guests at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Mich., was featured on the television program “Firing Line,” televised here by Channel 13 of the Public Broadcasting System.

The subject was “Resolved, the United States Should Deny Recognition to the PLO.” Buckley spoke in favor of that resolution. Jackson, who aroused a storm of controversy when he visited the Middle East and met with PLO chief Yasir Arafat following the resignation of the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, was apposed.

Other participants in the debate, which will be concluded next Sunday, included Prof. Allen Weinstein, a professor of history at Smith College and Abdeen Jabara, chairman of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign.

SKEPTICAL OF PLO CLAIMS

Buckley, at the outset, expressed skepticism of the PLO’s claim to represent “four million Palestinians, ” a figure he said that was supplied by Jackson, who are scattered among a dozen countries in the Middle East and elsewhere He stressed that the PLO remains bound by its Charter, adopted in 1964 and revised in 1967, which holds that armed struggle is the only way to achieve Palestinian goals, that it is the overall strategy, not a tactical phase and that by the liberation of Palestine, the PLO refers to the entire State of Israel.

Buckley noted, in that connection, that the PLO Charter holds as “illegal” not only the 1947 Palestine partition resolution of the United Nations but the Palestine Mandate and the Balfour Declaration as well.

He also emphasized that the PLO is an umbrella organization covering 13 or 14 fedayeen groups that engage in international terrorism as a matter of policy. He noted that one of those groups, Dr. George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has been linked by U.S. Air Force intelligence to terrorist groups active in 14 countries, not necessarily associated with the Middle East conflict.

CLAIMS WHOLE STORY NOT TOLD

Jackson maintained that the American public is not told the “whole story” of the Middle East. He claimed that the PLO has offered a secular democratic state in Palestine, Including Israel, in which Christian, Jews and Moslems could live in amity. Since this was rejected by Israel, the PLO is willing to compromise and accept a Palestinian state on the Gaza Strip and West Bank which comprise only 23 percent of the territory that was Palestine in 1948, Jackson said.

According to Jackson, the central strategy of the PLO is not terrorism but diplomacy. “The PLO does engage in terrorism and we deplore that, he said. “But it is just one dimension of their activity.” The real power in the PLO is not the terrorists, he said, but the educated Palestinians, doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and skilled workers who make valuable contributions to the countries in which they live.

To support his argument for U.S. recognition of the PLO, Jackson stated that the PLO is recognized by 116 nations while Israel is recognized by only 51; that the PLO enjoys observer status at the United Nations and that it is a full member of the Arab League. The U.S. must recognize its interests in the Middle East, he said. Jackson enumerated these as a secure Israel within recognized international boundaries, justice for the Palestinians, the territorial integrity of Lebanon and normal relations with the Arab world.

Another panelist, correspondent John Cooley of the Christian Science Monitor, suggested that it was anomalous for the U.S. to refuse to talk to the PLO without preconditions when many prominent Israelis have met with PLO officials in various countries in recent years. Buckley replied that he had no objection to “talking” to the PLO — ” I would talk to John Dillinger, ” he said — but reminded Cooley that the subject of debate was “recognition” of the PLO by the U.S.