Divisions Among the Guerrillas

Most of the attacks by Arab terrorists on jetliners or airports, however savage and irrational, have been interpreted as demonstrations of anger and frustration by Palestinian refugees who were trying to draw attention to the plight of their people. But the massacre at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport two weeks ago, as well as other recent hijackings, seemed to have a special motivation. Not only were the casualties particularly high--32 died--but the attack came almost on the eve of the Geneva peace conference. The Rome attack was apparently the work of a Black September splinter group that is against any compromise with Israel.

Some Arab and Western leaders conclude that the terrorists were trying both to sabotage the Geneva conference and to embarrass the Arab "establishment," which includes Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and Jordan's King Hussein. The latest hijacking was one of several that have coincided lately with international meetings among Arab government leaders and others who might find a formula for peace. On the opening day of the Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Algiers last September, Black September gunmen attacked the Saudi Arabian embassy in Paris, took Saudi hostages, and finally surrendered in Kuwait. On Nov. 25, as an Arab summit meeting was under way in Algiers, terrorists seized a KLM jet over Iraq and flew around the Middle East before surrendering in Dubai.

If the Rome attack was planned to upset the Geneva conference, it backfired. The talks began without a hitch. The attack underscored an important fact about the Palestinian guerrilla movement today: it is badly divided.

At the heart of the division is the question of whether the Geneva conference will result in the formation of a Palestinian state, composed of some land now occupied by Israel: the West Bank of the Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Hemmeh region near Lake Tiberias. Opposing that plan are the hard-line commando elements, who will accept nothing less than the dissolution of Israel and the creation of a secular state that would cover all of pre-1947 Palestine. Some of them are talking of Viet Nam-style guerrilla action until that end is achieved. In this camp is George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has condemned the Geneva conference as "disgraceful," as well as the General Union of Palestinian Students.

Common Cause. On the other side are those commandos who are prepared to compromise, perhaps by accepting an "interim" Palestinian state. In this category are elements of Yasser Arafat's Al-Fatah and Nayef Hawatmeh's Marxist Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They feel that Palestinians must gain a "national territory," of whatever size, as soon as they can. Arafat is also head of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization, and he knows that he must bind together extremists and moderates in common cause. He is thought to argue that establishment of even a truncated Palestinian state would be far better than for the West Bank to fall again to the control of Jordan's King Hussein -- whom the Palestinian extremists despise more than any other man.

The dispute is partly a division between young and old. "If I were 25, I would probably take a more purist position," says a Palestinian intellectual in Beirut, "but at 45 one finds other possibilities. The interim-state solution would bring new hope in one's own life time." Even the extremists realize that the people most directly concerned are those who live on the West Bank and those who have lived for up to 25 years in squalid refugee camps. These Palestinians, some 2,000,000 in all, may decide to bypass the commando organizations and accept the offer of a Palestinian state. Jordan's King Hussein has offered to hold a plebiscite in the West Bank on the future political status of the Palestinians. "These are the people who want the Israeli boots out," says a P.L.O. source. "And if they say, 'To hell with you and to hell with King Hussein, we want a Palestinian state,' what are we going to do? Just stand there?"

In the meantime, last week the commando groups were engaged in a mission that gave them at least a momentary sense of unity: they sent four representatives, hand-picked by Arafat, to Kuwait to interrogate the terrorists who had been responsible for the Rome massacre. The Kuwaitis, anxious to avoid the blame for bringing the terrorists to trial, have said that they will turn them over to the Palestinian commando movement as a whole for "justice."

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