PALESTINIANS consider the whole historic land of Palestine, from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean, to be theirs by right, as they lived there until dispossessed of most of it when the state of Israel was established in 1948.

HIGH LEVEL VOCABULARY
concede	v.	yield
zealot	n.	a fanatically committed person
concessions	n.	things that are conceded
suppress	v.	to put down by force
elusive	adj.	hard to achieve
dispossessed	v.	deprived of the posession of something
embraced	v.	eagerly accepted
non-sectarian	adj.	not limited to a particular religious denomination
co-existing	v.	living in peace with another despite differences
explicitly	adv.	very clearly
endorsed	v.	approved
relinquish	v.	surrender
extremist	adj.	advocating measures beyond the norm
apologists	n.	people who defend or justify a cause
unequivocally	adv.	absolutely
subterfuge	n.	trick or tactic used to avoid something
tentatively	adv.	in a way that is not concluded
agenda	n.	plan
superseding	v.	replacing
placate	v.	pacify
legitimisation	n.	the act of making something legitimate
ultimate	adj.	final
intransigence	n.	unwillingness to compromise
duplicity	n.	deception
token	adj.	merely symbolic
demographic	adj.	relating to populations
tactical	adj.	relating to a manouuvre for achieving a goal
viable	adj.	practicable
perpetuating	v.	causing to continue indefinitely
strategic	adj.	relating to a strategy
partitioning	v.	dividing a copuntry into separate autonomous nations
coerce	v.	use force
intimidate	v.	inhibit by threats
insatiable	adj.	never satisfied
appeasement	n.	the attempt to pacify by granting concessions
autocratic	adj.	dictatorial

In 1969, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leadership embraced the aim of a shared Palestine in which Jews, Muslims and Christians would have equal rights in a single 'democratic, non-sectarian state'. It did not win widespread governmental support or appeal to any but a very few Israelis.

From 1974 onwards, the PLO moved towards acceptance of a Palestinian state limited to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, co-existing with Israel. Mr Arafat pushed for this goal to be accepted by the Palestinian liberation movement as a whole. It was explicitly endorsed by the Palestine National Council (the top PLO policy-making body) in 1988.

That was a huge compromise, Palestinians believe, involving as it did giving up 78 per cent of their country to Israel as the price of peace. That is why they are so determined not to relinquish anything more.

This attitude is now called 'extremist' by some of Israel's apologists in a typical case of Zionist shifting of the goal-posts. Before 1988, this label was attached to those who continued to call for a democratic, non-sectarian state covering the whole of Palestine, but, once the PLO mainstream had unequivocally accepted the 'two-state' goal, it became extreme to demand the whole of the 20 per cent or so of Palestine comprised of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

They choose to reset the timeframe for the Palestine-Israel conflict from its true historical dimensions to the post-1967 period, as if all that went before was irrelevant, and to reset the territorial framework from a struggle over the land of Palestine between two peoples to a dispute over the West Bank and Gaza Strip between Israel, a neighbouring state, and the Palestinians.

Many Israeli and pro-Israel writers have claimed that Palestinian acceptance of a 'two-state' solution was merely a subterfuge to deceive the outside world; that in reality, the destruction of Israel remained the true goal of Mr Arafat and the PLO.

Two pieces of evidence are often cited to support this claim. One is the 'Ten Point Programme' that, in 1974, tentatively opened the way to PLO acceptance of a 'two-state' solution. It called for the establishment of an 'independent combatant national authority' in areas from which Israel might withdraw in the future, but stressed that this would be merely a step towards the liberation of the whole of Palestine.

This, it is said, is the real Palestinian agenda up to the present day. (Why this policy declaration, and not the many others issued since that might logically be regarded as superseding it, should be regarded as authoritative is a mystery - except that it suits apologists for Israeli rejectionism better.)

In reality, the 'Ten Point Programme' was a compromise document. Mr Arafat and his allies, faced with strong opposition to relinquishing the goal of a single state in Palestine, looked for a wording that would placate their opponents while allowing them to move forward on the 'two-state' path. Once they had armed themselves with this legitimisation of the pursuit of an authority in part of Palestine, they focused upon that goal to the exclusion of the supposed ultimate objective.

From the mid-1970s onwards, official Palestinian statements increasingly treated the territorial component of the Palestine issue as one of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The 'steps' strategy that apologists for Israeli intransigence claim represents the true objective of the PLO mainstream never existed as a practical policy.

The right of return

THE other main piece of evidence for Palestinian duplicity on a 'two-state' solution is supposedly the insistence by Mr Arafat and others on the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

About 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled from areas that were made part of Israel in 1948. The survivors and their descendants number over three million today. Their desire to return home fuelled Palestinian political and military organising from the 1950s onwards. From the refugee camps came most of those who gave their lives in the liberation struggle.

Israelis, however, reject their return. They believe that if anything beyond a token number did come back, Palestinians would soon become a majority in the 'Jewish state'. They regard Palestinian insistence on the right of return as a tactic for achieving the destruction of Israel by demographic means.

It is true that many Palestinians do think that, if the refugees returned, there would soon be a Palestinian majority in Israel, but it does not follow that this is their aim in upholding the right of return. To them it is a matter of basic justice: they left this land against their will and it is their right to go back.

For a Palestinian leader to throw away the right of return would be regarded as a shameless betrayal by all Palestinians. It is this, not any tactical calculation, that stopped Mr Arafat from doing a deal in 2000.

The wall being erected around the more densely populated Palestinian West Bank areas shows what the current Israeli government has in mind as a territorial settlement. Over half of the land would remain in Israel's hands, and the remainder will be divided into three big segments, plus a few fragments, surrounded by Israeli-controlled territory. This is clearly not a recipe for a viable state and everyone knows it.

What of the 'generous offer' made by the Barak administration and rejected by Mr Arafat in 2000?

Under then-prime minister Ehud Barak's proposals, Israel would have retained between 10 and 13.5 per cent of the West Bank. This would have included a disproportionate share of its agricultural land, but, even more important, the areas that Israel wanted to retain would have cut deep into the West Bank, severing direct north-south communications and perpetuating the area's fragmentation.

This is not the product of chance, but of policy. Throughout the history of Zionism, the colonisation of land in Palestine has been guided by strategic considerations, particularly since the idea of partitioning the country was first seriously advanced by the British Peel Commission in 1937.

Following the 1967 war, Labour governments concentrated settlement activity on the fringes of the West Bank, in the sparsely populated Jordan Valley and, in particular, around Palestinian-inhabited East Jerusalem, which it has insisted on retaining under the terms of any peace agreement.

When the Likud government led by Mr Menachem Begin came to power in 1977, it was determined to ensure that Israel would never withdraw from the West Bank, whatever the declared policy of a future government. To that end, it constructed settlements in the heart of areas that were densely populated by Palestinians. Those settlements, and the roads that served them, were designed to make it impossible for the Palestinian territories to function as an independent economic or political unit by fragmenting them.

Whatever the initial motivation of the settlers, once they had been there for a while and brought up families, they would fiercely resist any attempt to remove them. This is exactly what has happened, and the direct consequence is the settlers are now a powerful anti-peace, anti-Palestinian bloc, extremely right-wing and ever ready to coerce and intimidate Israeli governments into accepting their insatiable demands.

Appeasement by the outside world, which has criticised the establishment of the settlements but never taken effective action to prevent it, allowed this problem to reach its present dimensions.

Mr Barak did not want to confront the challenge of evacuating all the settlements and perhaps feared that he could not carry most of the Israeli public with him on the issue. That was why he proposed a territorial agreement in which the larger settlements would be retained by Israel.

The problem is that, thanks to the policies of settlement construction implemented to bar the way to Israeli withdrawal, there are big settlements deep inside the West Bank. They are real obstacles to peace, not something wild-eyed Palestinian extremists dreamt up.

In 2000, Mr Arafat turned down proposals that would have been totally unacceptable to the Palestinian people. He has been accused - often with justice - of behaving in an autocratic way, and it seems that, on this occasion, Israel and the US would have liked him to do so. Instead, he acted as an accountable leader. That was to his credit.

It is true he may have failed to lead the Palestinians to statehood, but it should not be doubted that when an independent Palestinian state is finally established, Mr Arafat will be honoured as its father.

IMPORTANT CONCEPTS