August 20, 1982 Dealing With The Palestinian Issue — Only After Solving The Lebanese Problem
Addressing the Knesset
Now, as the Beirut affair is coming to a close and we are all hopeful that a comprehensive solution to the Lebanon problem will be reached through political means, the Palestinian problem arises in all its acuteness and urgency.
The war in Lebanon appears to many in the world — and rightly so — as the first Israeli-Palestinian war since the War of Independence. It is worth remembering that all of Israel’s wars since May 15, 1948, were between the armies of the Arab states and the IDF, whereas in Lebanon the main fighting took place between the IDF and the PLO — namely, the Palestinians. This fact in itself turned world consciousness toward the need to finding a solution to the Palestinian problem.
There are those in Israel who reckon that following the hard blow the PLO received in Lebanon, more conducive conditions will emerge for negotiations on the Palestinian issue. I, on the other hand, think that this is not the case. And why?
The war, as seen by most governments in the world and by public opinion in the western world, created a feeling of guilt toward the Palestinians. The sights of Zor, Sidon, and Beirut under bombardment, which provided plenty of material for the television networks in the West, are the very things that evoked such a feeling. All of these have already caused — and will undoubtedly continue to cause — increased political activity in order to find a solution, and quickly at that, to the Palestinian problem, in a political-psychological climate that tends toward concessions to the ’poor Palestinians,’ who suffered so much in the course of this war.
I have already heard an expression of this from the American Secretary of State, George Shultz. At our meeting a few weeks ago in Washington, he told me the following: "It is now evident that the Palestinian issue requires a solution — and soon — as it is the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict."
I, however, have no doubt that a short while after the completion of the PLO’s evacuation from Beirut, we shall find ourselves facing new American initiatives whose goal is to bring about a solution to the Palestinian problem.
The voices rising from Cairo accentuate the toughening that has occurred recently in Egypt’s position regarding autonomy [for the Palestinians]. Egypt’s demand of the United States to now consent to granting the Palestinian people the right to self-determination — which means the establishment of a Palestinian state — is one of the expressions of this toughened stance. Therefore, once the autonomy talks are resumed, we shall find ourselves facing a much tougher approach from Egypt and the United States, and this at best — that is, provided that Washington does not attempt to diverge from the peace process based on the Camp David Accords and does not seek new ways and means of dealing with the Palestinian issue.
Anyone who believes that the PLO will disappear from the political map in the wake of the harsh blow it received in Lebanon is gravely mistaken. The Arab states abandoned the PLO in its war against Israel, and the PLO will definitely now make use of the Arab feeling of discomfort toward it in order to strengthen the support it enjoys as the sole representative of the Palestinian people in any future political negotiations.
All of this will create a backdrop that will make it more difficult for the moderate forces in Israel to withstand all the many demands that will be raised by the Arab states and the Western world, led by the United States, in the comprehensive political negotiations that will commence in the coming weeks. Therefore, it would behoove Israel to look for a way to postpone the beginning of dealing politically with the Palestinian problem until such a day when the world is free of the sights of Beirut and the guilt feelings toward the Palestinians. This can be achieved by diverting the political efforts of the Unites States, Israel, Lebanon and Syria to finding a solution to the Lebanon problem in the first phase, and only then returning and taking care of the Palestinian problem in a comprehensive way.
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