Unity, with a High Price Tag

By Marguerite Johnson

Arafat carries the day, but without backing the Reagan initiative

Wearing his customary checkered kaffiyeh, Yasser Arafat rose to the podium as the 355 delegates and 4,000 invited guests cheered with rhythmic applause. Predictably, he assailed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon last summer and vowed that the Palestine Liberation Organization would fight on until "the Palestinian flag is hoisted atop the mosques and churches of Jerusalem." The rousing opening speech by the P.L.O. chairman brought a standing ovation at the Palestine National Council's meeting in Algiers last week. Sitting in the front row during later sessions, Arafat ebulliently hugged and kissed a long parade of well-wishers who had come to encourage the Palestinian movement. He even had warm embraces for his radical rivals in the P.L.O. when they took their turns at the speaker's rostrum.

The gathering at the Club des Pins, a seaside oasis outside the Algerian capital, was the first by the P.L.O.'s unofficial parliament-in-exile since the organization's military defeat by Israeli forces and the subsequent evacuation of its fighters from Beirut last August. Amid the tearful reunions, there was a defiant sense of triumph that the meeting was taking place at all, a public affirmation that the P.L.O. had not been destroyed by Israeli military might. Declared P.L.O. Spokesman Ahmed Abdel Rahman: "This meeting is an open message to the Arab world, to the U.S., and above all to Israel that we are still alive. Now, what are you going to do?"

In reality, Arafat, 53, and his colleagues had small reason to rejoice. Palestinian fortunes have not looked so bleak since Arafat took control of the shattered and dispirited organization following the 1967 Middle East war. The delegates, representing 4 million Palestinians dispersed among some 90 countries around the world, had come to make a number of fateful choices. Foremost among them was how to deal with President Reagan's Sept. 1 peace plan. The proposal calls for self-government, though not statehood, for the Israeli-occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in association with Jordan. The U.S. and Israel have both ruled out P.L.O. participation in any peace negotiations, but Washington has urged the P.L.O. to allow Jordan's King Hussein to begin talks with Israel on behalf of the Palestinian population in the territories.

Arafat has responded cautiously, noting that while the plan did not meet the P.L.O. objective of an independent state, it did contain "positive elements." He is well aware of the growing fear among Palestinian moderates both in and out of the P.L.O. that time is running out if the occupied territories are to be salvaged from encroaching Jewish settlements or outright Israeli annexation. West Bank Palestinians, who followed the proceedings in Algiers last week with rapt attention, sent Arafat a petition reaffirming their confidence in his leadership and in effect urging that the P.L.O. back King Hussein's entry into negotiations. Editorialized Al Quds, an Arabic-language daily published in Jerusalem: "There is now a real opportunity that should not be missed."

But Arafat was caught in his usual dilemma. He needed a strong show of support in Algiers to give Hussein at least a tacit go-ahead. At the same time, he wanted to preserve a P.L.O. position ambiguous enough to satisfy the hard-liners who oppose the Reagan plan or any other concessions to reach a real peace in the Middle East. The danger was that the P.L.O., a loose coalition of eight groups that run the gamut from Arafat's own moderate Fatah organization to the hardline Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine led by George Habash, would emerge from Algiers even more divided than it already is. To guard against any real threat to his leadership, Arafat made sure that thousands of Fatah supporters turned out from all over the world.

The precaution proved to be unnecessary. In a series of heated discussions before the public meetings began, the P.L.O.'s 15-member executive committee hammered out its positions in private. The organization's leaders agreed first of all that a show of unity was absolutely essential for the P.L.O.'s survival. Arafat then got his associates to agree that the Reagan initiative would not be rejected outright. Instead, the leaders condemned the plan as "insufficient to meet the whole aspirations of the Palestinian people." Arafat refused to give King Hussein a specific man date to negotiate on behalf of the P.L.O. In fact, TIME has learned that the P.L.O. will accept direct negotiations between the U.S. and Palestinian officials in the West Bank, thus bypassing Jordan, Israel and even the P.L.O. Arafat and the moderates also won approval of a proposal adopted at the Arab summit in Fez, Morocco, last fall that called for peaceful coexistence between Israel and all Arab states, in effect giving tacit recognition to Israel's right to exist.

Having won the day beforehand, Arafat patiently sat back and let the radicals speak their minds. For many delegates, however, the trauma of Beirut was enough to ensure their loyalty. Said a Palestinian delegate: "He was surrounded for 80 days in Beirut and as far as I am concerned, he won. We are all with him." Perhaps the most telling moment of the meeting came when Habash delivered a ringing denunciation of the "shameful and disgraceful Reagan plan." Said he: "We did not pay the price of blood in Beirut to record an American diplomatic victory." But then, turning to his old rival Arafat, Habash pointedly called for P.L.O. unity and declared: "Arafat is our symbol."

However reasonable Arafat's approach may have seemed, the P.L.O. was still not prepared to make the concessions necessary to help the U.S. pursue its plan for a peaceful solution to the conflict in the Middle East. The P.L.O.'s failure to come out more unambiguously in favor of Reagan's proposal, which has been rejected by the Israeli government, may make it more difficult for the U.S. to pressure Israel to freeze construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and to open negotiations with King Hussein. If neither Israel nor the P.L.O. soon makes a courageous gesture toward peace, the slight hope that emerged after the invasion of Lebanon last year will have evaporated.

-- By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by William Stewart/Algiers

With reporting by William Stewart/Algiers This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.