Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 10, 1993 TAG: 9309100224
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL PARKS LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Medium
They lay the foundation for a Palestinian state next to Israel, a sharing of the land and its natural resources that each has claimed as its own. More than that, they envision not just coexistence but cooperation. And they offer a pledge to live in peace with an enemy that each had seen as a threat to its very existence; with the PLO now promising to fight the terrorism it had long fostered, they renounce the use of force that has made violence endemic in the region.
Although the changes must be confirmed politically on both sides and put into effect, they effectively settle the core of the Middle East conflict: the Arabs' refusal to accept Israel in their midst, which stemmed primarily from the dispossession of the Palestinians during the creation of the Jewish state.
Now, in recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization as the representative of the Palestinian people, Israel also recognizes the Palestinians as a nation and acknowledges their right to self-determination.
The PLO similarly is accepting the legitimacy of the Jewish state that it had originally pledged to destroy, abandoning the armed struggle that Palestinians had waged for three decades as "the only way to liberate Palestine."
"I thought in my heart not only about the great revolution that has occurred among us, but also about the great revolution that has taken place within the PLO," Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told members of the Israeli parliament from his Labor Party. "Don't make little of that. We are not recognizing the PLO of yesterday, but rather the PLO of today."
"Our problem is people," Peres said. "If a land is peopled by another nation, there is no sense to talk about the land as though it were empty. Yet, that is what we did, and that is what we will no longer do. . . . They, of course, denied our right to exist, and that was futile."
"Our hearts sing with hope today," said Palestinian poet Sami Kilani, a proponent of dialogue with Israelis and a member of the Palestinian delegation to the Arab-Israeli negotiations. "We are leaving so many decades, generations really, of war behind.
"We have finally come to recognize that neither side will have peace and tranquility if it denies this to the other, that neither of us will establish our legitimacy by killing the other, that security comes from mutual acceptance."
Yet, minorities of ardent nationalists on both sides already are rejecting the compromises required to reach the accord and are threatening those who made them.
Radical Palestinians object to the acceptance of Israel in its present borders without matching concessions; they object to abandonment of their "armed popular revolution."
Muslim fundamentalists continue to see the Jewish state as foreign body implanted into the heart of the Islamic world.
And those who fled what is now Israel demand, "What about us?"
Their anger is as likely to be turned inward - against PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and others who support the pact - as against Israel. A Palestinian civil war is the ominous prediction when the occupied Gaza Strip is handed over to the Palestinians to govern.
On the Israeli side, the ultra-religious groups are allying themselves with the right-wing parties to fight the agreements, which they believe will quickly squeeze out Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank, the Judea and Samaria of the Bible. Here, too, predictions are multiplying of a civil war.
Denounced as a "traitor" by the right-wing opposition, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin will have to struggle for the votes needed to ratify the package of agreements, which are scheduled for formal signing Monday.
Ariel Sharon, a former defense minister in a Likud government, denounces secret diplomacy unhesitatingly as "a great victory for the Arabs."
"They have established a Palestinian state," Sharon said. "They declared it in 1988, but did not have territorial control. From today, they have that."
"Peace is not made with friends," Rabin told members of his Labor Party on Thursday. "It is made with enemies who are not at all nice. I will not try to beautify the PLO. It has been our enemy, and it is still our enemy, but negotiations are carried out with enemies."
Palestinian leaders are making the same point as they tour the West Bank and Gaza Strip to develop support for the autonomy plan that PLO negotiated with Israel in months of secret diplomacy.
"We cannot forget our martyrs, and we should not," Faisal Husseini, the head of the Palestinian team in the Arab-Israeli negotiations, told a meeting in Jerusalem this week. "But what can we do to ensure that there are no more martyrs? What will it take to end the killing, what should we do now to achieve our national goals? These are the questions we must answer."
by CNB