The Gun and the Olive Branch - Palestine Liberation Organization Documentary (1979)

Rashid Khalidi: The Palestinians left really only because they were terrorized, in some cases forced out at the point of a gun.

Ehud Ya'ari: The only thing, or the main occupation, is planting bombs in the market of Jerusalem, or in a bus in Tel Aviv, or trying to raid Israeli settlements along the Lebanese frontier. Shoot and run away. And this is pure terrorism.

Izzy Cohen: For them, there is no choice. There was one Auschwitz. They always compare Nazi Germany To the fate of Israel today, the threat of the Arabs is parallel to the threat of Hitler.

Rashid Khalidi: The prime minister of Israel is the former head of a group called the Irgun Zvai Lumi. His men rolled barrelfuls of dynamite and nails into Arab marketplaces and killed women and children.

Speaker 4: Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, appeared before the United Nations General Assembly in November 1974 with a gun in one hand and an olive branch in the other. He said, do not let the olive branch fall. The Gun and the Olive Branch, a documentary on the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Speaker 5: I'm a Palestinian.

Speaker 4: Israel and the United States have denounced the PLO as a terrorist organization, which does not deserve world recognition. In this program, we will be taking a closer look at the history, structure, and ideology of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Because the PLO has been linked to terrorism, first we will examine how terrorism is used and defined in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Jack Donnelly: Terrorism, as I understand it, is essentially the random violence directed against innocent people. The crucial elements in it are the innocence of the people who it's directed against, and even more so, the randomness of the violence.

Speaker 4: That was Jack Donnelly, a lecturer on government at Mills College and an expert on human rights. Ehud Ya'ari, who is director of the Middle East division of Israeli TV, describes the anxiety of Israelis.

Ehud Ya'ari: And when my wife goes to the market in Jerusalem, she has just to, to take every precaution and watch the stands. What's beneath the stands? Perhaps it's a bomb planted there.

Speaker 4: Some would assume that terrorism is exclusively practiced by individuals and small groups, but there is no internationally accepted legal definition of terrorism. Mary Kaufman, international lawyer and former prosecuting attorney at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, describes terrorism as used by governments.

Speaker 7: During World War II, the Nazis initiated the concept and practice of total war. And total war meant that the war activities would be aimed at the people to break their will, psychological warfare. And so Civilians became the targets of World War II, and the Allies utilized that approach themselves during World War II. And the— we're all familiar with the firebombing of Dresden, or for that matter, and of Tokyo. And for that matter, we know of the use of the atom bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, the Allies—

Speaker 8: Yes.

Speaker 7: did not charge the Nazis with aerial bombardment because they themselves had engaged in that practice. And a lot of people, jurists for example, would say that the practices of World War II rendered laws of war which protected civilians obsolete.

Speaker 5: We've seen schools, we've seen private homes destroyed.

Speaker 8: We've seen one, almost 2 entire cities practically deserted and largely destroyed by Israeli shells.

Speaker 4: That was Alison MacDonald, an American living in Beirut and a member of Americans for Justice in the Middle East. Ehud Ya'ari covered the war in southern Lebanon for Israeli TV.

Ehud Ya'ari: What's happening in south Lebanon is quite different. You have the PLO bases stuck inside villages, inside refugee camps. Now, most of these camps are now deserted for some years now. When the Israelis have to retaliate and they never initiate this fighting in South Lebanon, they go for the PLO bases. Now, the Israeli— an Israeli pilot will do his best because these are his orders to try and hit the target. They are not always successful. It's quite difficult. technically speaking, while you are so high up in the sky. And of course, when one side initiates a war and they are attacking our civilians, when we have to retaliate, yes, sometimes civilians get hurt.

Speaker 4: Annie Kanafani, widow of the assassinated Palestinian writer Hassan Kanafani, works with children in a Palestinian refugee camp.

Speaker 8: If the resistance movement had done an operation inside Israel and maybe 2, 3 people had been killed, and they had to Go the Israeli to revenge, and they of course for them it's not enough to kill three people. They will have to kill as much as possible. When in July this year they just indiscriminately bombed the road between Saida and Sur, where people a Sunday afternoon were coming home from their picnics. They bombed the the beach area. What do you call that? Is that terrorism or what is that?

Speaker 4: Ahudia Ari.

Ehud Ya'ari: But this is— this never was intentional. And if you try to follow and analyze Israeli military operation in South Lebanon, you will find that in most cases, there were exceptions, but in most cases, yes, every precaution was taken in order to prevent harm to civilian population, innocent population.

Speaker 8: Children, they are amazing in a way. Of course, they are scared when the planes come. But in the same time, they might tell you, oh, this one is that and that warplane.

Speaker 7: You know, they learn—

Speaker 8: it's very strange. They can know by the sound which kind of warplane. Is it a bombing plane? Is it a spy plane?

Speaker 7: Or what is it?

Speaker 8: But, of course, it has a very deep effect on them. And that you mainly see in their drawings.

Speaker 7: I was born in 1948.

Speaker 4: Dawood, a Palestinian who lives in California. The systematic violence, for some reason, by a state is condoned. You know, when you have people wearing uniforms engaged in systematic killings and destruction, somehow this is condoned as being done by a state.

Rashid Khalidi: If you're going to condemn Palestinian terrorism from a pacifist point of view, well, then condemn Israeli terrorism from a pacifist point of view. But do it, do it in terms of the value of human lives. I don't believe that one Israeli is worth more than 100 Arabs.

Jack Donnelly: One can't say that simply by living in a country One becomes a justifiable target to be killed. That makes no sense to me. We have— all of our moral intuitions seem to me to go in completely different directions. And in any moral sense, one must say killing these people indiscriminately— and that's what we're talking about when we're talking about setting off bombs in marketplaces or when we're talking about terror bombing campaigns—

Speaker 7: Right.

Jack Donnelly: Killing these people must be morally unjustified, regardless of the political efficacy or inefficacy of doing it.

Speaker 4: Rashid Khalidi.

Rashid Khalidi: I think, though, if anybody were to have said to the French under German occupation, why do you persist in blowing up trains and shooting Germans? Why do you persist in carrying out these violent activities? Why don't you simply register your protest at the occupation in a In a civilized way. Why do you insist on using armed force? I think that that person would have been taken for a collaborator or a fool. And I think that anybody who says the same thing to the Palestinians should expect to be treated in that way. The Palestinians are living under military occupation. I am from Jerusalem. I cannot go to Jerusalem. Okay, now maybe in certain circumstances it's stupid for me to use a gun or stupid for me to use a certain tactic, but that is something that's determined by the general situation and not by— The Palestinians. Some American or Westerner coming along and saying, please don't use violence, it offends my moral sensibilities.

Speaker 5: Bombs are planted in Israeli markets and buses, while Palestinian refugee camps and Lebanese villages Are bombarded from the sky. Terrorism cannot be viewed in isolation from the political conflict that instigated the fight. Violence has been used by both sides as a means toward a political end. I'm a Palestinian.

Speaker 8: This was in '68, I think, or '69. Nobody in the West knew what's the Palestinians. So the Palestinians had to do something to say, we are here, and you have to listen to us. As once somebody interviewed my husband and told him, now, look, this is terrorism, and this is not good, and the public opinion will be against you. And my husband told him, look here, during all this year, we did not hide your bicycle. and the public opinion were against us. So really, we don't care too much about that.

Speaker 4: The Palestinian cause was only brought to world attention after a series of hijackings. Izzy Cohen, a member of the Israeli socialist organization Matz Pen, comments on the PLO strategy.

Izzy Cohen: First of all, they have a certain objective, and then the tactics come out of the objective. If they want to achieve independence, they do the best thing to achieve that. Any attack On any civilian part would help them to achieve that. History taught us that in Algeria, in Kenya, any country, any example that I remember, terrorism helps.

Speaker 4: The Israelis, who defeated the Arab states in 3 conventional wars, weren't equipped for this new Palestinian assault. Ehud Ya'ari serves in the Israeli Reserve Army.

Ehud Ya'ari: If they want to engage in this kind of conventional warfare, we will welcome any conventional war with the Palestinians instead of this terrorist activity. It's much more difficult for us to tackle terrorist activity, because this is going, let's say, with civilian population.

Speaker 4: PLO spokesperson Rashid Khalidi.

Rashid Khalidi: There's a scene in The Battle of Algiers, where a— a film by Costa-Gavras, where an Algerian terrorist, so-called, is captured and brought before a press conference. And this is, this is following a wave of bombings in public places. And the Algerian leader, the FLN leader, is asked, how do you permit yourselves to allow young women to place bombs in crowded marketplaces, in baskets, hidden in baskets? And he answers this question by saying, well, if you, the French, would give us your jet planes, your heavy artillery, your tanks, your automatic weapons, we would be glad to give you our women with, bombs in baskets. And I think the Palestinians would answer that to the Israelis. If we had F-15s and we had 175mm artillery, we had cluster bombs, we had napalm, if we had automatic weapons, if we had a navy which could strike hundreds of kilometers away from our shores, if, if, if, if, if, then I'm sure that no Palestinian would dream of using plastic explosives and, and the other, the other, the other weapons of the weak.

Speaker 4: Jack Donnelly.

Jack Donnelly: People who justify, for example, the firebombing of Dresden do it in terms of the higher goal, the defeat of Hitler and the Nazis. People who justify the actions of the PLO do it in terms of the higher goal of Palestinian nationalism and autonomy. That's where we have to look. So then I'd say you have to look both at the goal being pursued and the alternatives available. If there are no other even close alternatives available, and if one can agree that the goal is of such high moral importance, then it is justifiable.

Rashid Khalidi: Well, certainly what the Palestinians are engaged in now is a struggle for national liberation. If certain means are justified by the ends at all, Then the end of national liberation certainly should be seen or could be seen as justifying much of what the Palestinians do. It's, it is, it seems like a nasty thing. I mean, it's hard to, it's hard to see striking at civilians under any circumstances as being justifiable. But it has to be set against the fact that the Israelis, since, since the struggle in Palestine began, Uh-huh. have directed their violence, generally much, much, much greater violence against Palestinian civilians. Terrorism.

Speaker 5: Which has no legal definition, is usually condemned either by pacifists who oppose all forms of violence or by people who deplore attacks on civilian populations. Governments who attack civilian populations justify their actions by reason of national security. National liberation organizations say their fight for freedom To understand the Palestine Liberation Organization, we have to look at what has happened to the Palestinian people. In 1948, the creation of the State of Israel displaced 600,000 Palestinians and destroyed the fabric of Palestinian society. These displaced people fled to neighboring Arab countries, Where many of them have lived in refugee camps ever since.

Speaker 7: After '48, the structure changed within the society, especially in the refugee camps.

Speaker 4: Leila, from the occupied West Bank.

Speaker 7: The camp lost the means of their production, the land, right? So the woman had to— the father was unemployed, okay? He couldn't find a job, or the jobs that he was able to find were temporary. So that gave the woman the chance to work, because that was the only— how do you say it? The only solution or the way.

Speaker 4: The Palestinians found themselves for 20 years in makeshift camps without electricity or running water. The camps were under the control of the host governments. Annie Kanafani describes the living conditions in the camps.

Speaker 8: You were not permitted in the camp to do any improvement of your houses, to do any kind of political work, or to do any kind of social work.

Speaker 4: The United Nations resolution in 1948 had guaranteed the displaced Palestinians the right to return. Israel refused to let them come back. Wherever they lived, be it in refugee camps, cities of the Arab world, Europe, the United States, still they waited and hoped.

Speaker 8: Many young Arab, Western-educated and educated in the States or Germany or anywhere, they came back. Maybe they were Doctors, engineers, economists, or so on. They came back to join the resistance movement. Their parents had been sitting waiting to return back, believing in UN and so on. But these young people who were born in Palestine but did not— they left when they were very young. They were the ones who took up arms.

Speaker 4: Rashid Khalidi, who studied for 10 years in the United States, was one of those who returned.

Rashid Khalidi: Palestinian commando action started. With the first operations of Fatah. This was in January 1965. So that as a movement, we can say that the Palestinian resistance has been operating since 1965. The PLO was founded a year earlier in 1964, really by the Arab governments. And it was not until the end of the '60s that the PLO was taken over by the Palestinians themselves and became the the representative of Palestinian national ambitions and aspirations.

Speaker 4: Until 1967, the Palestinians relied on the Arab governments to liberate their homeland. But the success of the Algerian Revolution in 1962 and the defeat of the Arab armies by Israel in 1967 proved that they had to carry the struggle on themselves. Izzy Cohen of the Israel Socialist Organization, Matzpen.

Izzy Cohen: Only after '67 The PLO was a major force in the area. And then— and since then, you really see a surge in nationalism in Israel and in the occupied territories with Israel, OK? Because that was also the first connection between Arabs who were under Israeli rule for 20 years and those who were under Jordanian rule for 20 years. And these 2 groups of people belonged to the same nation 20 years ago. I mean, they belong to Palestine. It was the first time, so this kind of connection between the 2 groups of Arabs enhanced their nationalism.

Speaker 7: Men used to participate more in trying to organize things, in trying to distribute leaflets, write political— what do you call them— political statements. Women did not. And men at that time refused women to participate. '67, we see that the resistance movement developed, and it started to call for a people's war. In a people's war, every segment of society should participate, and each segment should be educated politically, also should be trained militarily, and should carry the arms for the revolution. And that's when you see the rise of the Mujahideen, the Mujahideen For the armed struggle, and part of that was the women.

Speaker 5: In the late '60s, the Palestine Liberation Organization The Palestinian Liberation Organization developed into a national liberation front similar to other liberation fronts in Africa and Asia. The United States and Israel refuses to acknowledge that the PLO represents the Palestinian people.

Speaker 4: It is alleged that the PLO does not really represent the Palestinians.

Rashid Khalidi: It's an interesting fact, though, that wherever Palestinians have had a chance to vote, they have voted for the PLO. Palestinians under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza voted for candidates who overtly identified themselves with the PLO. The same thing is true in elections Everywhere else, amongst the diaspora, wherever Palestinians are, wherever free elections can be held. For example, here in Lebanon, in Kuwait, in the United States, for example, amongst Palestinians living there. In fact, inside of Israel, inside Israel itself, the Arabs of the Galilee region are voting increasingly for Rakab, the Israeli Communist Party, which explicitly identifies itself with the PLO and supports the, Karim Khalaf is the mayor of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. And the people who elected us, they elected us because we are behind the PLO and with the PLO.

Speaker 4: Despite Israel's attempts to destroy the PLO, support from the Palestinian people grew. Izzy Cohen is an Israeli sociologist.

Izzy Cohen: Oh, there is no question at all that the popular sentiment of the Arabs In Israel, I mean, in smaller Israel or in bigger Israel, as with the PLO, there's no question at all. They are suppressed. They can't express it. But even though they can't express it, they do express it more than anything else by demonstrations, by leaflets, by strikes.

Speaker 4: Under the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a large number of Palestinian men have been imprisoned or deported. Others left to find work. Since then, women and children have led the resistance to occupation.

Speaker 7: The Zionists are used to something that's organized, in a way, a demonstration that's organized, planned for. They know ahead of time. They can predict what's going to happen. Okay, the role of the kids, okay, since they have no organization experience whatsoever, demonstrations were not organized. They were Done on the impulse. This made the demonstration itself very successful, because the Zionists could not predict what's going to happen next, and things seemed to be going out of control to a certain point. They couldn't follow it up. So, in a way, this gives the Palestinians an An impetus, they say, gives you a— that it could be done. It's not, it's not hard, but it depends how you do it and when to do it, to demonstrate, to rebel, stand against aggression.

Speaker 4: Not only do the Palestinian people support the PLO, but a growing number of nations around the world have recognized the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Annie Kanafani, who was born in Denmark, now lives in Beirut.

Speaker 8: In Europe, you know, people there have been exposed to war in another way than people in America. We had the German occupation, for instance, in Scandinavia. People were freedom fighters there. Though they had an emotional relation with the Jews because of the discrimination, the killing of the Jews during the war, they realized that there's another people suppressed.

Ehud Ya'ari: Well, I would say that the PLO has won quite wide recognition. In fact, there are more countries today recognizing the PLO as the sole legal representative of the Palestinian people than there are states recognizing the state of Israel or the right of the state of Israel to exist. And from our point of view, this is, of course, pitiful, but we don't have much control over the situation.

Speaker 5: Popular support for the Palestine Liberation Organization has grown since the days when it was just a collection of commando organizations. Today, it's more integrated into the fabric of Palestinian society.

Rashid Khalidi: In fact, Palestinian struggle has developed a lot from the early days. Nowadays, it has a political dimension, it has a diplomatic dimension, it has an informational dimension, it has a nation-building dimension, which I think has broadened it and deepened it and enabled it to encompass things which, which make it much richer than when it was simply a military thing. And I think it probably is going to expand enormously in these directions. I think you're going to see more hospitals and more clinics and more universities and more, more efforts in all kinds of other spheres.

Speaker 4: Palestinians who live in refugee camps are most in need of social services. Annie Kanafani.

Speaker 8: In the camps, you would have, first of all, clinics, because though we have the UNRWA clinics, they are not sufficient at all. So what happened, that the different groups of resistance movement set up clinics to serve the people in the camps. Besides, as our group have been setting up kindergartens, now there are quite a few kindergartens in the camps.

Speaker 4: In the occupied West Bank, an infrastructure is being built to meet some of the needs of the local population. Leila grew up on the West Bank.

Speaker 7: In the West Bank, there's the Arab Women Union, and this is one organization of several organizations. It creates many services for the Palestinian kids. For instance, there are many Palestinian kids that don't have food to eat. Okay? They have daily lunches for the kids to— after school, to come and eat. The lunch is studied of— it's a proper diet, with— they give them vitamins and stuff like this. Also, they create jobs for mothers who cannot find a job. And they don't— instead of going and working for the Israelis, okay, as maids and being maltreated, they create for them their jobs within the West Bank region.

Speaker 4: To coordinate these functions and services, both on the West Bank and wherever Palestinians live, the PLO has developed an elaborate decision-making structure. Rashid Khalidi.

Rashid Khalidi: At the top, constitutionally speaking, is the National Council. Which is made up of something like 350 to 380 representatives drawn first from the various commando organizations, secondly from the popular unions, thirdly from the various geographical areas where Palestinians reside, and fourthly from a group that is called independents, enabling intellectuals, businessmen, people who might not be represented in any of the other categories And yet who play an important part in Palestinian community to participate.

Speaker 4: There are 4 major parties in the PLO. Fatah, the largest group, is a broad-based nationalist organization without a strict ideological platform. Sa'ika is affiliated with the Syrian government. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is an Arab nationalist organization with a Marxist leaning. And the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine The smallest of the 4, follows a Marxist-Leninist ideology. Daoud, a Palestinian living in the United States. It is a movement of a whole people, and in it are reflected differences that exist within the Palestinian people, be it class differences, be it differences of ideologies that reflect this particular class. element of the difference between the various groups within the PLO, the various factions. So it is, in fact, a very broad spectrum of social and class forces that are engaged in a struggle for national liberation. And the PLO is simply the framework that groups or brings together all those organizations and all those elements within the Palestinian people.

Rashid Khalidi: Rashid Khalidi.

Speaker 4: interviewed at the headquarters of the PLO in Beirut.

Rashid Khalidi: For day-to-day decision-making, there's the executive committee, which is made up of 14 people in charge of various departments of the PLO, whether foreign relations, the political department, military affairs, education, social affairs, information, and so on and so forth. This is responsible for things like the Palestine Red Crescent, which runs a hospital in every one of the 14 camps in Lebanon and a number of clinics. It's responsible for the orphanages. It's responsible also for things like social affairs, which is to say social benefits to those families who have lost somebody in, either in the fighting in Lebanon, fighting in Jordan, in operations inside Israel or occupied Palestine, or in any other—

Jack Donnelly: War.

Rashid Khalidi: phase of the struggle. This pays benefits amounting to a little bit more than $100 per person per month to more than 15,000 families. It includes one of the most important things is the national fund, which finances this vast, really, government in exile.

Speaker 7: And I think that's a good point.

Speaker 5: As a government in exile, the Palestine Liberation Organization administers a diplomatic corps, a press agency, social service agencies, and a budget office for over 4 million Palestinians around the world. Along with the other functions of government, The PLO maintains standing commando forces.

Speaker 4: Ehud Ya'ari reported on Israeli military activities in Lebanon for Israeli TV.

Ehud Ya'ari: Well, first I must say, they have about 3 brigades today. I'm just giving you in a way of example. They have 3, let's say, regular brigades or semi-regular brigades stationed in South Lebanon within, let's say, 30 kilometers of the Israeli frontier. These forces never take part in action.

Izzy Cohen: Did you know that?

Ehud Ya'ari: They never take part in action. The regular forces of PLO, and they have 3 regiments today, 3 brigades. They never take part in any— they're keeping it.

Izzy Cohen: Okay.

Ehud Ya'ari: These forces, and they prefer to send these guys with the bomb and these women with the bombs into Israel.

Izzy Cohen: It's the easier way.

Ehud Ya'ari: It's more sensational.

Rashid Khalidi: It's more bloodshed.

Speaker 4: Rashid Khalidi is the leading spokesperson for the PLO news agency, Wafa.

Rashid Khalidi: If one were to ask, why are the commandos armed in Lebanon, the reason is not so much anymore to carry out operations across the frontier. That has been That has not been practiced really for, uh, almost 5 years, since 1974. The main reason that the commandos are armed is so that we can— the Palestinians can protect themselves.

Speaker 4: Palestinian civilians in refugee camps are more vulnerable to attack. Annie Kanafani.

Speaker 8: In the camps, you have a defense, and you need to have that. If there was no attacks on the camp, you didn't need it. Well, this is a place where people are living. In the camps, you have The houses of the people, you have the clinics, you have the kindergartens, you have the schools, and of course you have to defend these places.

Speaker 4: In 1978, the Israeli army invaded southern Lebanon, an area populated by Lebanese and Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi.

Rashid Khalidi: Because the Palestinians, as I say, are a guerrilla army. In March '78, they fought where they could. Where it was impracticable in the face of a huge conventional force, they withdrew. Oh, they inflicted fairly heavy casualties on the Israelis. The Israelis didn't stop only because of international pressure. They stopped because they were afraid of taking more casualties.

Ehud Ya'ari: There is no guerrilla warfare on the part of the PLO. There never really was. There is no conventional military warfare that one can notice on their part. The only thing, or the main occupation, is planting bombs in the market of Jerusalem, Or in a bus in Tel Aviv, or trying to raid Israeli settlements along the Lebanese frontier. That is, they even— they don't really attack a settlement. They just put a Katyusha— that's a rocket thrower, Russian-made rocket thrower. They will put the Katyusha within a distance of, let's say, 12 miles from an Israeli kibbutz or an Israeli settlement, shoot and run away.

Speaker 4: Rashid Khalidi.

Rashid Khalidi: There are over 10,000 armed commandos in the south who do not engage in operations across the frontier. The only thing that they do is to respond to Israeli artillery fire. In fact, the UN has now confirmed that. If you check the weekly, weekly communiqués put out by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, you'll— they specify who fired first.

Speaker 4: The fighting over the past 30 years has taken a heavy toll on Palestinian families. Leila comments on the impact this has had on Palestinian life.

Speaker 7: Well, the fedayeen are the soldiers, the Palestinian soldiers. If a family loses a child, it does not mean that this is the end, but there's always another son in the family that will carry on the fight for the benefit of the whole. You see, how the West looks at it is the— how you— if a family here loses their son, OK, they look at it how they are affected by it alone.

Rashid Khalidi: Right.

Speaker 7: OK. And in a very individualistic manner. But rather, we're looking at it as to how it is going to help our society as a whole. So each family is ready to sacrifice themselves and their kids, as well, to let everybody go back to their home. And we know that it's going to take a long time.

Speaker 5: Thank you. The Palestine Liberation Organization does not have a standing army, air force, or navy. But it does have commando forces that are used to protect its political existence and its people. In the last 10 years, the Palestinian commando forces Have twice successfully engaged the Israeli army in regular battles.

Speaker 4: While the political and military conflict has gone through many stages, the issue of who will live on this land remains the same. Ehud Ya'ari has grown up in Israel.

Ehud Ya'ari: You must bear in mind that the PLO still sticks to its original target. The destruction of State of Israel. I mean, there can be a lot of rhetorics concerning this point, but the fact remains the PLO still states and still insists that the aim is the total destruction of the State of Israel or the Zionist state, whatever they call it.

Speaker 4: Israeli-born Izzy Cohen.

Ehud Ya'ari: They see the PLO more or less as they would have seen the Nazis.

Izzy Cohen: I mean, from my experience in Israel, because the The propaganda machine is pretty efficient in Israel, and the motto is just the Arabs want to kill us all, to destroy us. I mean, the term in American papers also is pretty frequent, to destroy Israel. What does that mean, to destroy Israel? I never understood, really. To annihilate each member of the Israeli community? To conquer the country?

Ehud Ya'ari: Is it—

Izzy Cohen: I mean, if it's to conquer the country, Israel destroyed the Arab world for 3 or 4 times already.

Jack Donnelly: Yeah.

Izzy Cohen: But anyway, that works, and people in Israel really believe that if the Palestinians would get a state, there is a real threat for their existence.

Speaker 4: Rashid Khalidi was born in Palestine.

Rashid Khalidi: There is nothing in the National Covenant which says the Israelis as a people are to be eliminated, or the Israelis are to be expelled from Palestine. There's nothing which talks about genocide. There's nothing which talks about national, national elimination. of the Israelis as a people. The National Covenant or Charter as it was adopted in '64 and modified after that remains the basic— how should I say— embodies the basic objectives of the Palestinians. Now, these have sometimes been described as the destruction of Israel. The PLO National Covenant does not call for the destruction of Israel. You have to understand that we, we come from this country. It is our country.

Speaker 7: Right.

Rashid Khalidi: Our forefathers have lived there for millennia. To us, the establishment of Israel is not seen in quite the same way as it is, for example, in the West. To us, establishment of Israel is something that took place at our expense, on our land, as a result of our national— of the destruction of the Palestinian national entity and the dispersal of the Palestinian people. My grandfather's home in Jaffa Is housing a number of families. I don't know where they're from, but it's not my house anymore. It's not my father's house. It's not our house any longer. So that it's a personal thing and it's also a national thing. In response to this, the Palestinians in the, in the National Covenant have set down what to them are the most important things that have to be done if there is to be peace in Palestine and if there is to be a just settlement. Okay. Now, it must be understood these are long-term objectives. It must be understood that these are goals. These are not day-to-day policies. But they include things like the elimination of the Zionist structures which through colonization and through expulsion have created the status quo. Now, to us, it seems impossible for there to be peace in the long run in a situation where you have a society which is essentially a colonial society. I mean, you have to, again, see it from our point of view. Here we are living in this country and Europeans who've suffered in another part of the world, who've been oppressed, who've been in many cases annihilated as in Germany, come along, lay a claim to our land, and proceed to build a national home for them, for themselves in it. From the Palestinian point of view, obviously, this is something which is an unmitigated disaster.

Ehud Ya'ari: Right.

Speaker 4: Isi Cohen of the Israel Socialist Organization, Matz Pen.

Izzy Cohen: We look at the PLO as a national liberation movement, and both its tactics and its strategy just follow this line. They never claim to be socialist. They don't say they are. They just want to liberate the Palestinians in a very similar sense than any other African or Asian society, you know.

Rashid Khalidi: Our objective, again, our strategic objective in Palestine is a secular democratic state where people of all faiths, Jews, Christians, Muslims, can live together and where there will be no discrimination, where there will be no exclusion of one people at the expense of another. And then you can see the position taken by the PLO in its various national councils. since 1974 as being the immediate goal, which is to say the establishment of a Palestinian state on only part of Palestine, in effect leaving, leaving the great part of Mandatory Palestine, pre-1948 Palestine, in Israel.

Ehud Ya'ari: While some Zionists might agree with this short-term solution, the long-term goal of a democratic secular state and the return of Palestinian refugees Essentially, what Zionism was born to do and is trying to do, not always very successfully, was to give every Jew the opportunity to choose between living in this Jewish homeland, Israel, a Zionist Israel, and staying where he is. And I think this is the real importance and the real quality of the state of Israel. I think that's a very important point. It does not, let's say, charge any Jew with the duty to come to Israel. It seeks to convince Jews to come to Israel and live in Israel.

Rashid Khalidi: What the covenant does focus on is Zionism, is the ideology which says this is the country of only one people, only this people has a right to a national existence in this country. Everyone else is here on sufferance. Everyone else is here as a second-class citizen, in effect. This, to the Palestinians, is intolerable.

Speaker 4: Yossi Cohen.

Izzy Cohen: I believe that the solution of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, unlike, for example, unlike the solution of the conflict between, say, the liberation movement in Africa and the Rhodesian whites, is that You must have some kind of united struggle between the two people. I don't see the solution of the problem, for example, by the Jews going back to Europe or being subjected to—

Speaker 4: being subjected to an Arab rule.

Rashid Khalidi: We no longer accept or believe what our forefathers did, and the people who preceded us in the struggle against Zionism. That there's no room in this country for the Jews, that there's no room in this country for the people who've come to it. What they were saying when they called for a secular democratic state was to say, we, a colonized people, accept the right of the people who've come here as colonizers to live in this country and for it to be their country also. Now, this is always something that's glossed over, that's ignored. People point to things in the National Covenant which say dismantling of the Zionist state, or something like that, and they say this is genocide. In fact, what the Palestinians are saying is something that for colonized people, for people that suffered as the Palestinians have, is something which I think is very magnanimous. And in essence, they're saying, we, a people whose land has been taken away, recognize the right to live in this land in peace, in conditions of equality, in a secular democratic state of those people who've come and taken it or tried to take it away from us.