- The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power and Politics, Helena Cobban, Cambridge: 1984.
This is a well-researched and documented study of the PLO by an experienced journalist who was based in Beirut from 1976 to 1981. The major section of the book, ‘The history of the PLO mainstream’, runs to over 100 pages. Cobban’s concern is primarily with the history of Fateh: ‘the roots of the resilience of Palestinian nationalism…lay not so much in the history of the PLO’s own rather ponderous bureaucratic apparatus as in the development over the preceding quarter-century of its dominant member group, Fateh’. The chapters in this section describe the historical development of Fateh and the PLO against the ever-changing political balance of the post-1948 Middle East.
Cobban’s book is a eulogy on the ‘historic’ generation of leaders—notably Yasser Arafat, Salah Khalaf, Khalil Wazier, Farouk Qaddumi and Khaled al-Hassan—who were active in Fateh before the launching of the armed struggle in January 1965, and who continued to dominate that organisation, and through it, the PLO. Her admiration for the Fateh/PLO leadership and her support of their political method define the parameters of the book. Two recurrent themes are the ability of these leaders to gain a consensus of support within the PLO to legitimise their actions and their ideas, and the development of these leaders as ‘statesmen’. Both are important arguments in the European bourgeoisies’ canvassing for the recognition of the PLO by the United States.
This book shows that for the Fateh leaders, the armed struggle went hand-in-hand with diplomatic manoeuvring to gain financial and political support from heads of state in the Arab world and beyond. Successful guerrilla actions brought new recruits and additional leverage with the Arab regimes. Defeats not only undermined the faith of the Palestinians in the ultimate effectiveness of armed struggle, but also created the necessary environment for acceptance of the Fateh leaders’ political concessions. In every bitter conflict from the Six Day War (1967) to the Battle of Beirut (1982), the Fateh leaders had an eye to the prospects for a negotiated settlement. The ultimate goal of a Palestinian state on the ruins of Zionist Israel receded over the horizon. In its place came the Palestinian ‘national authority’—a mini-state on the West Bank and Gaza.
Cobban describes the bumpy course of the Fateh leaders’ manoeuvrings with considerable insight. Thus, in the aftermath of the Lebanon war 1975/76, when the Palestinian groups most opposed to the mini-state solution had been significantly weakened, she writes: ‘one of the first moves of the Fateh/PLO bosses…was to start making preparations for the next session of the Palestinian National Council at which they could capitalise on this change, to strengthen their mandate for the turn towards diplomacy’.
Since the evacuation of Beirut in August 1982 and the massacres of Sabra and Shatila the following month, bloody splits have opened within Fateh and the PLO. Cobban’s study ends with the 16th PNC in February 1983 when the frustrations and dissent were only beginning to surface. However, she wrongly sees the PLO’s future as best safeguarded by the continued leadership of Fateh’s ‘inner core’ with their ‘real-politik’ approach to the resolution of the Palestinians’ quest for their homeland.
In May 1984, Arafat called for peace negotiations with Israel under UN auspices, stating that he favoured mutual recognition between the states of Israel and Palestine—once such a state is established. This is a far cry from the articles in Filastinuna which brought together the groups that formed Al-Fateh. It advocated ‘the eruption of a complete guerrilla movement from all the Arab lands’ to destroy the Zionist state. Arafat’s latest moves are a testimony to the inability of petit-bourgeois nationalism to develop a consistent and effective political method against imperialism and its allies.
Guerrillaism and bourgeois diplomacy are the two sides of petit-bourgeois nationalism. Cobban’s book reveals—despite her obvious sympathies—the mechanisms by which one side reinforces the other at the expense of a revolutionary victory over Zionism. Arafat is the incarnation of Palestinian nationalism. Despite the defeats and betrayals suffered under his leadership he remains the repository of the hope and aspirations of thousands of Palestinians. This fact is largely due to the absence of a principled alternative to Fateh and Arafatism. This much is clear too from Cobban’s account of the rival factions in the PLO.
Cobban’s book is not a history of the Palestinian resistance—it is a history of the PLO/Fateh. Not surprisingly, there is little coverage of the independent struggles of Palestinian workers and peasants in the occupied territories and the diaspora. Yet, together with the workers and peasants of the Middle East, this is the only force capable of crushing the Zionist state. A revolutionary Trotskyist party is needed to bring the working class to the head of the struggle that can build a secular workers’ republic of Palestine on the ruins of the Zionist state.
In the absence of such a critique, Cobban remains mesmerised by the resilience and popularity of Arafat. In the end she has written a book which comes unfortunately close to bolstering the fiction that history is a product of the strengths and weaknesses of ‘great men’.
