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Q. Why do you defend particular terrorists, for example Abul Abbas Zaidan, who led the hijacking of the Italian ship on which the American tourist was killed?
A. How? How?
Q. By keeping him on your payroll, so to speak, on your P.L.O. executive committee.
A. Our payroll? He was elected. I can't prevent that. ((Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak)) Shamir, who was wanted by Interpol, was later elected and is the Prime Minister. This is democracy. I did not elect Abul Abbas. It was the Palestine National Council ((P.N.C.)) that elected him. And a part of the reason is this, that it was a matter of indignity, national indignity; when Reagan breached the agreement with President Mubarak and they hijacked the plane and tried to put him in jail, that caused a reaction of sympathy for him.
Q. A lot of people in the West, when they hear your name, think of . . .
A. . . . a monster, a terrorist? Why? Who says that? I can't accept your saying it. George Washington was called a terrorist by the British. De Gaulle was called a terrorist by the Nazis. What can they say about the P.L.O., except to repeat this slogan? We are freedom fighters, and we are proud of it. According to international law and the United Nations Charter, I have the right to resist Israeli occupation. I don't want to harm anybody. But look how they are treating my people. These savage, barbarian, fascist practices against our children, our women!
Q. You have said that the U.S. Government is not being constructive when it keeps insisting that the P.L.O. is a terrorist organization.
A. I am sorry to say that is true. If they insist that any Palestinian who - does anything anywhere is the responsibility of the P.L.O., then I have to blame the American President for the Mafia, as an example, or for many Americans who are committing crimes and making mistakes.
Q. The U.S. says that the points to be resolved before it can have any contact or conversation with the P.L.O. are your acceptance of Resolution 242 ((which says a balance should be found between Israeli claims for secure and defensible borders and the return of territories it occupied during the 1967 war)), Resolution 338 and Israel's right to exist. In your own mind and formally, have you renounced terrorism?
A. I have declared it many times, but ((the Americans)) are not willing to listen. I have repeated that I have accepted 242 and 338 along with all United Nations resolutions. But there is an American policy to neglect the Palestinian people; self-determination is a sacred right for every people except the Palestinians. The self-determination that was one of the main items for the American Constitution. How can this be understood?
Q. Then your position is that you have renounced acts of terrorism anywhere but inside the occupied territories?
A. I am not dealing with terrorism inside our occupied territories. We will continue struggling and resisting occupation, which is the legal way. People who face oppression or occupation, according to the U.N. Charter, have that right. You Americans tasted British occupation and you faced it; Europe tasted Nazi occupation and faced it. We have the right to do the same.
Q. You want mutual recognition?