Zuhayr Muhsin “defense minister” of the Palestine Liberation Organization and second in command, a leader of the Syrian-supported terrorist organization As Saiqa (Thunderbolt) and a leader of the ruling Baath Party in Syria, was recently interviewed in Damascus by Die Zeit, a widely read weekly published in West Germany. The interview, which appeared in the weekly’s Dec. 12 issue, indicated the position the PLO is expected to take during the Security Council debate which begins tomorrow. What follows is an excerpt of this interview as it was released here by the American Jewish Committee.
DIE ZEIT: What will be the PLO’s objectives when it participates in the Security Council’s Middle East debate?
MUHSIN:…The positions of the PLO in the United Nations must be strengthened, the legitimate and national rights of the Palestinians must be firmly grounded, and all UN resolutions concerning Palestine back to 1947–that is, back to the Partition Plan–must be mobilized against Israel. The Palestinian question must never again be dealt with in the United Nations as a mere refugee problem, but must be handled with a view to a separate Palestinian state.
DIE ZEIT: Would this also create a basis for recognition by the PLO of a separate Israeli state, of Israel’s right to exist?
BULLETS AND SHELLS
MUHSIN: I don’t like to answer this question. If Israel remains what it is–a racist, Zionist, imperialist state–all it will get from our side is bullets and shells. Not until Israel has become something different will the Jews see our faces and, indeed, our outstretched hands–not unless they are ready for peaceful dialogue with us, so as to create with us the democratic, secular State of Palestine. We want to coexist with them, in a unified state or a state with two cantons. We don’t want to throw them into the sea or drive them into the desert.
DIE ZEIT: But that really amounts to denying them the right of existence in a state of their own, doesn’t it?
MUHSIN: They will have to accept this eventually. Our right of existence in all of Palestine comes first.
DIE ZEIT: And a Palestinian state confined to the formerly Jordanian West Bank and Gaza would not satisfy these juristic claims?
MUHSIN: No, never. We want back every piece of land, every field, every village and every house that was ever ours. We will not yield on that. Right, natural right, is on our side.
FUTURE WARS INEVITABLE
DIE ZEIT: Can one put it to the Israelis to commit this sort of national suicide?
MUHSIN: They will have to learn to understand, but they won’t understand until they change their outlook. That will happen when they are down on their knees before us, when we have smashed them to pieces by force of arms.
DIE ZEIT: In other words, peace is not in sight?
MUHSIN: For now. neither war nor peace. And in the future, war again, new wars. It’s inevitable.
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.
