Fateful Triangle

Aftermath587did lend themselves to an interpretation that is at least partially inaccord with Labor’s rejectionist stance, and were received with cautiousapproval by the Labor opposition. As we have seen, the leaders of theLabor Party also made it clear that the program was completelyunacceptable to them, but this conclusion was expressed either in theHebrew press or in circumlocutions which, it was rightly assumed,would be ignored by their well-disciplined American audience. The planalso evoked a partially favorable response by a number of Arab statesand the PLO. The Palestine National Council, the governing body of thePLO, met a few months later, in February 1983, and reached acompromise position on the matter. One senior PLO official quoted inthe New York Times described the Council’s stance as “saying yes andno at the same time” to the Reagan plan. PLO spokesman Ahmed AbdelRahman said that the PLO would continue to support the Arab peaceplan adopted in Fez in September 1982, which endorsed theinternational consensus, calling for a two-state settlement and peacefulcoexistence among Israel, the Palestinian state in the West Bank andGaza, and the other states of the region. The Council also declared thatit “envisages the future relationship with Jordan to be a confederationbetween two independent states,” one Palestinian and one Jordanian. 19In fact, the PLO reaction was rather similar to that of the oppositionLabor Party in Israel: neither acceptance nor outright rejection, withroom for maneuver to adjust the terms of Reagan’s proposal to their ownwishes—the international consensus in the case of the PLO, therejectionist Allon Plan in the case of the Labor Party. Furthermore, thePLO position appears to be closer to the literal sense of the Reagan planthan the rejectionist stance of the Labor party, though the plan is sovague that one cannot state this with any security.Commentary on the Reagan plan in the United States was highlyfavorable, including such predictable responses as that of the New YorkClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky