Even as fellow terrorists with the same cause, Yasser Arafat and Nayef Hawatmeh were fierce rivals with no shortage of mutual hatred.
Hawatmeh, leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and mastermind of hijacking planes and taking Israeli schoolchildren hostage, once called Arafat “an American stooge” and condemned the PLO leader for signing the Oslo peace accords.
On Monday, all that animosity was patched over with an exchange of smiles and a cordial lunch of stuffed pigeon at an ancient Egyptian palace, the first meeting of the two Palestinian leaders in six years.
The session was an effort to unite forces in anticipation of negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak over the final, most intractable issues obstructing Mideast peace.
Hawatmeh came, almost hat in hand, after his Syrian benefactors indicated it is time he formally give up the rhetoric of armed struggle. After years of angry resistance, he now says he wants to visit the emerging Palestinian state that Arafat has crafted.
For both men, the meeting reflected an awareness that it is time for Palestinians to put aside differences, close ranks and prepare for making huge decisions on the future control of Jerusalem, the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees and the final borders of a Palestinian state.
“We hope there will be constructive dialogue that will include all Palestinian factions to strengthen the Palestinian position in the negotiations,” said Hani al-Hassan, an Arafat aide, after the two-day meeting.
Arafat plans to hold a series of such meetings with Palestinian factions opposed to the Oslo accords. The “rejectionist” groups contend that Arafat betrayed the cause by agreeing to give up warring with Israel for a peace process that has brought little improvement to Palestinians’ lives.
Some of those factions, such as Hamas, are unlikely to join Arafat in negotiating with the Israelis, though Arafat’s aides are trying to arrange a meeting with them.
Meanwhile, Hawatmeh and other rivals are coming to Arafat, asking for a say in Oslo’s final negotiation process. Earlier this month, Arafat met with members of the even more radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, though its leader, George Habash, stayed away.
In a joint communique after Monday’s meeting, Arafat and Hawatmeh called for “national reconciliation” and inclusive talks with the goal of “crystalizing” a Palestinian position prior to final negotiations. It also called for the Palestinian National Council to study the possibility of holding a referendum on any peace agreement.
“Our success in holding comprehensive dialogues, if it happens, will be a big achievement,” Hawatmeh told Egypt’s state-controlled Middle East News Agency.
The Arafat-Hawatmeh meeting came as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators moved a step closer to concluding an agreement on how to restart the U.S.-sponsored Wye River interim peace deal. They announced that they had agreed to implement by Oct. 1 an Israeli pledge to open the first of two “safe passageways” for Palestinians to travel through Israel between Gaza and the occupied West Bank. A second passageway would be opened in January.
Still to be untangled are snags over two other aspects of Wye–the further withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat are scheduled to travel Tuesday to Washington to confer with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ahead of her planned visit to the region next week. Many expect her to help craft a breakthrough on the Wye accord.
That would open the way for final-status talks, which are years behind the Oslo schedule, mostly because of the skeptical policies of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Under a plan proposed to the Palestinians by Barak, the two sides would sit down in February for a marathon round of negotiations similar to the Camp David talks that led to the landmark peace agreement between Israel and Egypt in 1979.
The ambitious “February plan,” as it has been labeled in the Israeli press, reflects Barak’s belief that he has a small window for quickly completing the Oslo talks with the Palestinians before the U.S. changes presidents in 2000 and while the aging Arafat is still healthy and willing.
The goal would be to negotiate a framework agreement on the toughest issues while leaving some of the details for later. For example, Barak envisions deciding what percentage of West Bank land will be returned to the Palestinians, while leaving a decision on which land it will be until later.
“There is a great deal of optimism involved here,” said Barak adviser Jacob Goldberg, acknowledging that the schedule would be ambitious. “But it would send an important message to the two peoples that an agreement is possible.”
If those talks take place, the goal of Hawatmeh and the other radicals is to make sure that Arafat doesn’t give away too much.
A devoted Marxist, at least in his younger days, Hawatmeh and his followers split from the main Palestinian resistance groups in 1969 and were then involved in bitter factional rivalries during and after the civil war the Palestinians fought with the Jordanian army in 1970.
In the 1970s, Hawatmeh’s faction hijacked a number of aircraft with Israelis aboard. His group’s most notorious act was a 1974 takeover of a school in the Israeli town of Maalot, where more than 20 children taken hostage were killed when Israeli troops stormed the school.
Hawatmeh’s DFLP took refuge in Syria when Soviet bloc funds were plentiful there for leftist revolutionaries. Over the last decade, however, his faction’s attacks against Israel were more verbal than violent, and Syria’s own interest in peace with Israel has made him feel less welcome.
Although he condemned Arafat for dealing with the Israelis, Hawatmeh was criticized by other radicals earlier this year when he greeted Israeli President Ezer Weizman at Hussein’s funeral and called the Israeli a “man of peace.”
By lunching with Arafat Monday, he indicated he might like a piece of any arrangement that might come of the negotiations he once so vehemently condemned.
In an interview with the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper this week, Hawatmeh said talks between Palestinians could lead to “comprehensive negotiations (with Israel) based on UN resolutions, especially the formation of a coalition leadership comprising all Palestinian forces and independent national figures.”
