Arafat: As Patient as the Camel

One Arab group with which Israel refuses to negotiate is the Palestine Liberation Organization. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan insists that the Palestinians have lost their rights because of terrorism carried out by Al-Fatah and other fedayeen groups. "I will never negotiate with Yasser Arafat," says Golda Meir flatly of the man who founded Al-Fatah and heads the P.L.O. Last week in a rare interview, Arafat, 43, discussed the volatile Middle East with TIME Correspondent Spencer Davidson in Beirut.

Arafat seems obsessed with the CIA, which he automatically blames for almost any imaginable wrongdoing. He boasts that in its ninth year the Palestinian revolution is thriving "in spite of a bloc of enemies represented by international Zionism, international imperialism, especially the CIA, and Arab agents in this area. There is an Arab proverb, 'Nobody can hide the sun with his hand.' We are living whether Moshe Dayan wishes it or not. I don't see any course for the Palestinians except armed struggle to restore their rights. The Palestinian people have waited 25 years for the execution of resolutions by the U.N. Security Council. They gain nothing from all these resolutions but more and more dispersion and misery. Unfortunately, we are treated by the U.N. as statistics."

Other points made by Arafat in the interview:

FEDAYEEN OPERATIONS. I believe that military operations against Israel and the Zionists abroad could achieve certain gains, could lead to political discussion and diplomatic means to greater gains. Needless to say, we should distinguish between military operations in the occupied land and operations against Israelis abroad. We are concerned that our action should be a military action and not aimed against civilians.

ISRAELI STRATEGY. There is a Zionist-American conspiracy to liquidate the Palestinian people physically. Golda Meir is annoyed−and she declares this arrogantly−by the number of Palestinian babies born daily in the occupied land. Yet not a single voice in the world has been raised to condemn such a declaration. Does the world know that Israel has demolished 8,000 houses on the West Bank and 11,000 houses in the Gaza Strip? But our people refuse to be liquidated, to face the same destiny as red Indians in the U.S.