Dead men on leave
Christopher Hitchens
In early March 1976, I sat in a bare office in Baghdad, contemplating my good for- tune. Across the desk from me was the lean and striking figure of Mazen Sabry al- Banna, leader of the renegade extremist faction of al-Fatah and a man sought for murder and conspiracy by both the Israelis and the PLO. He didn't give many inter- views, and there was no decent extant photograph of him (the one since circulated in books about the 'terror network' seems to me to be of the wrong man). Under his nom de guerre of Abu Nidal, he had set himself against any attempt at binational or intercommunal accord over the Palestine issue. By way of opening proceedings, he had just invited me to visit one of his camps and perhaps to undergo a little training. How could one refuse without risking a change of mood or, at least, the termina- tion of the interview? My lucky assignation was turning sour.
Things got worse as our talk progressed. He took my declining of his offer quite calmly, but then shifted mercurially in his approach. Did I, he wanted to know, ever meet Said Hammami? Hammami was then the PLO envoy in London, who had in a celebrated article in the Times advocated mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestinians. I knew him and liked him and agreed with him. 'Tell him,' said Abu Nidal, 'to be careful. We do not tolerate traitors.' 1 delivered this billet-doux back in London, and Said shrugged. He had been threatened before, but saw no alternative to an 'open door' policy. A few months later, a man walked through his open door and
shot him dead. Abu Nidal 'claimed credit', as the argot has it, for the deed.
Still, the idea of a dignified composition of the quarrel between the Zionist move- ment and the Palestine national movement did not die with Said. The most zealous ex- ponent of the principle was Dr lssam Sar- tawi. His own story was a very instructive one. Born in Acre under the Mandate, he ended his education as a heart surgeon in Ohio. After the shattering events of 1967 he returned to the Middle East and to his fami- ly — now displaced to Amman, Jordan. Like many other young Palestinians of the time, he joined a radical combatant group and fought to erase the stain of defeat. It was this experience which led him, in his own words, to see things differently: 'Perhaps the most dramatic evolution in contemporary Palestinian thinking is that moment when Palestinians started looking into the question of the ex- istence of Israel. For me, it came in 1968 after the battle at Karameh (where PLO forces engaged Israeli armour directly for the first time). It enabled me for the first time to see Israel. Prior to that, when I closed my eyes to escape from the misery of non-nationhood, I could only escape to the Palestine of my dreams, to the Palestine of my childhood fancy, to the open spaces, to the green meadows. I really, truly did not see the new Palestine, the Israeli Palestine with its avalanche of immigrants, the destruc- tion of those green, peaceful meadows, the rise of the skyscrapers, the growth of the megalopolis .... It raised in my
'They say that Jehovah has clahned responsibility.'
mind Article Six of our National Cove- nant, because Article Six said only those Jews who came before the Zionist inva- sion will stay in Palestine. I remember what went through my mind: who do we send away? The Polish Jew who came in 1919? It was at this point that it dawned on me that we have to seek justice for our people without inflicting any suffer- ing on others.'
This interview was given to a friend of mine only a few months after the Palesti- nians had been hounded out of Beirut. At the time, Dr Sartawi was still Yasser Arafat's envoy to Western Europe; establishing warm contacts with Bruno Kreisky of Austria, Willy Brandt, Andreas Papandreou and others. He even set up a meeting in Tunis between Arafat and three senior Israeli doves, including reserve General Mattiyahu Peled. He did not, in short, confine his peaceful rhetoric solely to sessions with Western correspondents. He had, after three assassination at- tempts from Abu Nidal's gunmen, become slightly insouciant about the likelihood of his death. But his real disappointment came in February at Algiers, when Arafat for- bade him to defend his 'recognition' policY from the platform of the Palestine National Council. He resigned from the PNC the next day, criticising the official view that the siege of Beirut had 'objectively' been a victory for the Palestinians, commentlug sardonically that many more victories like that would see the leadership meeting ol Fiji. Abu Nidal must have smiled at that observation. It was his group which had shot the Israeli Ambassador to London; Mr Shlomo Argov, and thus given General Sharon his green light or red rag for the assault. Things, from his point of view' were going nicely. The conditions for com- promise were being physically destroyed. It only remained to stop the mouth of Dr Sar- tawi himself. (At the Lisbon conference where he was murdered, it was Shimon Peres of the Israeli Labour Party who kept Sartawi from the microphone.) All in all, it's been a pitiful year for those who hope for a solution short of colonisa- don, annexation or irredentism. In July' three senior Jewish figures, with the en- couragement of Issam Sartawi, signed What became known as the Paris Declaration• Pierre Mendes-France, Nahum Goldmann and Philip Klutznick called for Palestinian independence, mutual recognition between the two contending parties, and direct negotiations. They were, of course, snubb- ed and ignored by the Begin government despite the fact that Nahum Goldmann had nearly been the President of Israel and Was certainly the most distinguished living, Zionist. Since the statement was signed an°, published, both Mendes-France and Nahum Goldmann have died, and Issain Sartawi has been murdered. Israeli dissent is being swamped in a sea of chauvinisM: but any future Palestinian advocate of self criticism will have to consider himself a dead man on leave.
Previous page
