‘P.L.O. would trade peace for independent State’

Press, 15 August 1988, Page 10

‘P.L.O. would trade peace for independent State’

NZPA-Reuter Bagdad The Palestine Liberation Organisation is ready to trade peace with Israel for an independent State in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza strip, a senior official said on Saturday. “The P.L.O. is struggling for an independent Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza, not for the destruction of Israel,” Bassam Abu Sharif, political adviser to the P.L.O.’s chairman, Yasser Arafat, told Reuters. "The P.L.O. has made clear to the whole world it is ready to help establish a just peace based on the right of self-deter-mination for all people in the region, and to accept international guarantees for the security of all States in the region — at the top of them, Israel,” he said. Abu Sharif wrote a controversial article in May offering the prospect of a negotiated peace with Israel. Mr Arafat has neither endorsed nor repudiated the article, which Abu Sharif says was based on decisions by the Palestine National Council (P.N.C.), or Parliament-in-exile.

Mr Arafat, in an interview appearing in the September issue of “Playboy” magazine, called for a balanced peace which would assure security for everyone in the MiddleEast and offered conditional recognition of Israel.

“Let’s work for peace, a just peace, a balanced peace so that we can achieve security for all in the region, so that we can build for our children a future that can be called guaranteed and secure,” Mr Arafat told “Playboy.” “We are ready to recognise Israel only within international legalities,” he said, citing a 1947 United Nations resolution which called for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab States. "When it comes to (the 1947) Resolution 181, which created the State of Israel, we do take that resolution and accept it as a unit ... The Israelis choose to accept only parts of these resolutions,” Mr Arafat said. “Our offers for peace are genuine, and we are offering real chances for a lasting settlement in the region,” he added. A Palestinian source in Bagdad said Mr Arafat

planned to lay out a P.L.O. peace offer in an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in September.

“I think the Arafat speech in Strasbourg will be very important, clear and specific on a Palestinian offer for peace,” the source said, adding that Mr Arafat would adopt a position similar to the ideas in Abu Sharif’s article. Abu Sharif said his ideas and proposals for a declaration of independence and creation of a Government-in-exile for the occupied territories would be discussed when the P.N.C. met in emergency session in the next few weeks, probably in Algiers. The P.N.C. meeting was called to discuss how to respond to Jordan’s decision to cut legal and administrative ties with the West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 war.

A P.L.O. delegation now in Amman has asked Jordan to freeze implementation of the changes, including new passport rules which could deprive some of the West Bank’s 850,000 residents of Jordanian citizenship. “We are confident the

Jordanians will help us in this transitional period until (the P.L.0.) decides how to fill the vacuum left by Jordan’s withdrawal from the West Bank,” a P.L.O. official told Reuters in Amman.

Abu Sharif said Jordan’s move could impose hardship on Palestinians in the occupied lands. He urged Arab States to follow the example of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, who has offered to pay West Bank salaries stopped by Jordan.

“The Jordanian decision inflicts a burden. These issues will be discussed bilaterally and on the Arab level,” he said.

He said King Hussein’s decision to hand responsibility for the West Bank to the P.L.O. had killed the “Jordanian option.” “The U.S. Administration and all those betting on the Jordan option, as they call it, will have to deal with the Palestinians and in particular ... with the P.L.0., their sole, legitimate representative,” he said.

The option envisaged by Israeli Labour Party leaders calls for negotiations with Amman on the future of the West Bank.