What Chance for Peace Between Israel and the PLO?
By James GraffINTERNATIONAL efforts for peace in the Middle East are gaining momentum, but they may be thwarted by an immovable Israeli coalition government led by the reactionary right wing party, Likud. The European and Soviet push for peace is the direct result of the unarmed uprising -the Intifada -and of a PLO peace offensive. The PLO is now unambiguously urging what it had implicitly accepted since the mid-’70s: two states, Israel and Palestine, each with a right to exist within secure borders. This has been the stated objective of the leaders of the Intifada since January ’88. The Intifada has created new public images of Israel and the Palestinians. The brutality with which Israel has tried to smash the Intifada, its flagrant disregard of international law and its intransigence have revealed the Palestinians as victims struggling to free themselves from a colonizing oppressor. The Intifada has also created new facts on the ground: Palestinian self-confidence, unity and determin
