"Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart." —Yasser Arafat
The chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization was clearly fighting his emotions as he addressed the 18 Arab Kings, Presidents, Emirs and other leaders gathered round a horseshoe table in Morocco's Rabat Hilton. "This summit conference has been like a wedding feast for the Palestinians," said Yasser Arafat. After four days of sometimes bitter debate, the Arab summit—attended by such luminaries as Saudi Arabia's King Faisal, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, Algeria's Houari Boumedienne and Syria's Hafez Assad—had radically and dramatically altered the Middle East situation. The leaders, including even Jordan's acquiescent King Hussein, for the first time had unanimously endorsed Arafat instead of Hussein as "sole legitimate" spokesman for all Palestinians, including the 640,000 who live under Israeli occupation on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Moreover the Arab leaders declared that the P.L.O. should head an "independent national authority" to be set up on "any Palestinian land that is liberated" from Israeli control.
Agonizing Dilemma. Deliberately or not, the summit leaders had detonated the biggest political explosive yet in what U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has often called "the minefield" of the Middle East—the Palestinian problem. Besides humiliating Hussein by rejecting Jordan's somewhat tenuous historical claims to sovereignty over the West Bank, the Arab endorsement of the P.L.O. placed Israel in an agonizing dilemma. The Israelis have steadfastly insisted that any future settlement involving the West Bank must involve Jordan; they have refused even to consider discussions with what Premier Yitzhak Rabin has described as "terrorist organizations whose avowed aim is Israel's destruction." The Rabat decision seemed to mean that there could be no negotiations on the West Bank—and for that matter no overall settlement—unless the Palestinian question, meaning the P.L.O., was faced directly.
Henry Kissinger was in New Delhi (see following story) when he learned of the Arab leaders' endorsement of the P.L.O. Publicly, the Secretary would admit only that it delayed the progress of Middle East peace negotiations. "I do not believe," he said, "that the door to all negotiations in the Middle East is closed. But in what framework there can be negotiations—that will have to be seen." *
The plan that Kissinger had discussed with Sadat on his last visit to Cairo in October called for step-by-step phased negotiations between Israel and Egypt followed by talks between Jordan and Israel on the future of the West Bank—a program that now seems unlikely if not impossible. Kissinger will fly back to the area next week for a firsthand check on what the Arab decision does to his policy of "gradualism" in negotiations.
Discouraging Relations. Understandably, he has a particular interest in discovering how the summit decision affects the most moderate of Arab leaders, Egyptian President Sadat. At Rabat, Sadat denied that the endorsement of Arafat would affect his own negotiating plans. The fact is, however, that Egypt's