PLO Delegates work toward consensus

Bankers, Doctors - and Hijackers - Attend

from The Washington Post, November 18, 1988

By Nora Boustany &Patrick E. Tyler

ALGIERS, Nov. 14 1988 - Mazim Bandak, whose father was mayor of Bethlehem when Israel was created a few miles away in 1947, said he cannot forget the thousands of Palestinian refugees flooding the Christian village where he was born, most of them never to return to their homes.

"The scene of fleeing masses coming from the surrounding villages with the Israelis shooting at them is deeply imprinted in my consciousness," he said in an interview outside the auditorium here where the Palestine National Council was preparing to declare an independent Palestinian state and accept U.N. resolution 242, implicitly recognizing the right of Israel to exist within secure borders.

Each of the hundreds of Palestinians assembled here for the meeting as his own memories and his own idea of what the gathering may mean for the future.  They are bankers, executives, doctors, lawyers, professors, housewives - and hijackers.

As Bandak chatted in the hallway, Palestine Liberation Organization guerilla leader Mohammed Abul Abbas, alleged organizer of the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking in 1985, strolled nearby, surrounded by television cameras asking him to explain he death of Leon Klinghoffer, the American invalid who was pushed overboard in his wheelchair during the ship takeover.

They come from Europe, South America and the far reaches of the Arab world, and they seem as varied as any assortment of conferees as they assemble as a kind of PLO parliament-in-exile, the only body that gives them a sense of nation.

Bandak left Bethlehem in the 1950's, became an Arab nationalist, lawyer and editor of one of Egypt's leading newspapers.  Eventually, he settled in Paris, where he publishes what he described as an "anti-imperialist" magazine patterned after Reader's Digest.  He still holds no passport and travels on temporary documents.  "We all dream of going back home," he said.  "We Arabs are dreamers."

Bandak said he was opposed to resolution 242 but was willing to go along with a consensus of his colleagues.

In another part of the hall, drinking coffee with friends, Dr. Mohammad H. Said, an American physician from Ephrata, Washington, is attending the session by special invitation.  It is a historic meeting, he believes, and he feels obliged to help.

A member of the Democratic National Committee in the United States and a former convention delegate for Jesse Jackson, Said said he came to Algiers "really excited" and filled with optimism.  "All who are the diaspora, we come together with common ideas," he said.  "Palestinians here are not any more at the mercy of other governments to speak for them.  They have to speak for themselves."

Said's turn to speak came yesterday when he addressed the 200-member political committee drafting a new "peace and security" credo for the PLO.  His theme was the need for a strong denunciation of terrorism.

"Anything we build up over the years can be destroyed in five minutes by Abu Nidal," he said he told the committee, referring to the terrorist leader of a breakaway PLO faction.  Said then strongly criticized the membership of Abul Abbas on the PLO's 15-man executive committee, he said.  "I attacked him," he said.  "Achille Lauro was a disgrace, and how can this man still be on the executive committee?"

Said is not a member of the council, but he said PLO leader Yasser Arafat asked him to attend because he has been a strong advocate of peace and negotiated solutions.

"They like my opinion," he said, noting that in his home state of Washington he worked successfully with Jewish groups to pass Democratic Party platform planks calling for the need to ensure the security of Israel while also creating an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he said.  He is proud to be an American, he said, and his three children were born there and "like it there."

But he came, like all others, to be a part of a major event in the life of a people.  Like Edward Said, who came from Columbia University to translate the Palestinian Declaration of Independence from Arabic into English.  Like Mahmoud Darwishe, the Palestinian poet who was putting the final touches on the declaration.  Like Raymonda Tawil, a political activist who returned to the occupied territories today to continue to protest Israeli rule.

They came to witness the birth of what the Palestinians hope will be more than a nation on paper, more than a lofty concept scorned by those who believe the PLO will never change its terrorist ways.

"I am just trying to help them," said Mohammad Said.  "It's like a moral obligation."