Untimely Rift in the Ranks

Scarcely five months ago, following Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's triumphant shuttle spectacular between Israel, Egypt and Syria, chances for a Middle East peace looked unbelievably bright. This week, as Kissinger undertakes another flying tour to Cairo, Damascus, Amman and Jerusalem, hopes for a settlement have been dangerously tarnished. One reason is that no one seems to know how to solve the problem of the displaced Palestinians--including the Palestinians themselves.

Alarmed by a resumption of terrorist raids over the Israeli border, Premier Yitzhak Rabin last week summoned a Cabinet meeting to review counterterror precautions. At the same time, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the political umbrella of the guerrilla movement, acknowledged a serious split in its ranks. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the second largest group in the P.L.O. after Fatah, withdrew from the P.L.O. executive council after bitterly attacking the moderate leadership of Yasser Arafat (see box). Another fedayeen group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine --General Command, has also threatened to leave. The P.L.O. central council, which functions as a kind of parliamentary committee, was alarmed enough to convene an emergency meeting in Damascus last week; it formed a committee to try to persuade P.F.L.P. Leader George Habash to reconsider.

At the root of the dispute is an ideological conflict that has flared up in the past and been papered over for the sake of unity. The militant Marxist P.F.L.P. opposes not only Israel but also such "reactionary" Arab monarchs as Jordan's King Hussein and Saudi Arabia's King Faisal. Although Faisal has generously subsidized Arafat's Fatah guerrillas, the King has never given a riyal to Habash. Beyond that, the P.F.L.P. still clings to the goal of creating a secular Palestine to replace Israel in which Jews, Christians and Moslems would live together. Fatah and the less extreme fedayeen would settle--temporarily, at least--for Palestinian control of the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The alternative, they argue, is that the territories might be turned over to Jordanian occupation.

Arafat has approved Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's decision to negotiate with Kissinger. For this, he has been accused by the P.F.L.P. of surrendering to the U.S. and even of trying to negotiate secretly with Kissinger's aides. Denying such "unfounded accusations," Arafat told the Beirut newspaper an-Nahar: "When Kissinger tried to meet me secretly in Egypt through Sadat, I refused." Washington denies that any such overture took place.

The organizational dispute broke into the open at an inopportune tune for the P.L.O. Only last month Sadat and other Arab leaders agreed that the P.L.O., rather than Hussein, should be sole spokesman for Palestinians on the West Bank (which was annexed by Hussein's grandfather King Abdullah in 1950 and held by Jordan until Israel seized it during the Six-Day War).

After a debate, the U.N. General Assembly, which up to now has dealt with the Palestinians as political refugees, will almost certainly approve a resolution confirming their right to nationhood. Many U.N. observers expect Arafat to come to New York City for the discussions, but his claims to speak for all the Palestinian people could be rendered suspect by the severe rift in the P.L.O.'s ranks.

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