Saudi Arabia Newsletter
It is perhaps too soon to know whether King Hussein's recent visit to SaudiArabia did anything to alter the kingdom's traditional full support for Yasser Arafat's leadership of the PLO.
Hussein went to Taif to visit King Fahd immediately after closing the 25 Jordanian offices of the Fatah wing of the PLO and expelling Khalil al Wazir, the senior PLO official in Jordan and
Arafat's military aide. The closures and expulsion were explained as a reaction to PLO criticism of Jordanian policy in the Middle East. More likely, however, is that Jordan was using the criticism as an opportunity to put further pressure on the PLO to get rid of Arafat and choose a leadership that would better suit Jordanian policy.
Frontline Support
Since its foundation in the mid -1960s, the PLO has received important financial and political support from Saudi Arabia. Much of this support has been centred on the person of Yasser Arafat. Saudi support was made more formal at the 1978 Arab summit in Baghdad, at which a number of oil-producing countries made financial pledges to the "frontline states" against Israel. Syria and Jordan, as well as the PLO, have received regular disbursements since. Possibly, part of this financial support is an insurance against Palestinian political hostility and the threat of radical attack against a government, which, by any measure is a traditionally conservative one. But, more importantly, the kingdom's continuing financial and political support represents a genuine commitment to the Palestinian people and the PLO as an accepted representative body.
It also reflects another Saudi political principle, that of working to encourage Arab unity.
Saudi Commitment
A measure of Saudi Arabia's determination to help the PLO is that the kingdom, alone among those states that made the financial pledge in 1978, has continued its subventions. And this at a time when its oil revenues have fallen very sharply. The political near-eclipse of the PLO since its expulsion from Beirut in 1983 has not led the kingdom - so far - to alter its attitude to the Palestinian organisation.
However, there must now be at least the shadow of a doubt in the Saudi mind about the wisdom of its support to Arafat personally and whether that support is still in the best interests of the Palestinian movement.
West Bank Rivalries
King Hussein has been working to rebuild his political stock among Palestinians as a way either of wresting control of the liberation movement or provoking a change in the PLO leadership that would recognise UN Security Council resolution No. 242 and, ultimately, agree to a negotiated settlement of the differences with Israel.
It would have been a considerable coup for Hussein if he had been able to persuade King Fahd to withdraw his support for Arafat and to throw his considerable weight behind a change in the leadership that would be more amenable to Jordanian- led negotiations with the US and with Israel. But if King Fahd were to agree to this, it could provoke a strong Palestinian reaction against the traditional Arab monarchies. More likely, King Fahd, still hoping that an Arab summit might be convened in the near future and, in any case, unwilling to make sharp changes of policy, cautioned his brother monarch to try to avoid burning what few bridges - if any - still remain between Jordan and the PLO, and to make a final effort to restore good relations. At the same time, he is likely also to urge Arafat to sink his differences with Hussein.
No Reconciliation
It is difficult to see any reconciliation in the offing, and the Saudi ruling house must now be seriously reconsidering its support for Arafat and wondering whether it might not be worth taking some reactive criticism from the Palestinians, if the improving relations between Jordan and Syria can be further strengthened, and if this holds out any hope for a restoration of ties between Damascus and Baghdad. For some years now the PLO has been a diminishing political force, and the apparently unceasing peripatetics of its leader - his visits this month include Sudan, Ghana, Austria, Tunisia, Iraq and Namibia - to no apparent political effect, seem to be evidence of that fact.
There is no doubt that among Palestinians at large, Arafat is far and away the preferred leader. From this point of view, Hussein's recent attempts to win the loyalties of the West Bank by increasing spending on social welfare, such as schools and clinics, is unlikely to meet with any success. Despite 19 years of Israeli occupation, memories of the ubiquitous Jordanian security services are still too fresh in West Bank minds for King Hussein to expect a warm response to his overtures.
At the same time, there is a large question mark over Arafat's future. Despite strong support within the Palestinian constituency, the range of opponents lined up against him appears too formidable to allow him to recover any political initiative.
Arafat may no longer be the right man for the job, but such has been the nature of his leadership, that it is difficult to contemplate the movement under a new leader. It will be a measure of the PLO's political maturity that a change in leadership might be brought about - one, moreover, which might be able to unite the two broken wings of the movement - without the PLO's utter disintegration into rival factions.
Key Role
Saudi Arabia can play a key role in easing Arafat's passing. Arafat is an optimist and survivor par excellence, but the reality of the current political circumstances needs to be brought home to him. King Fahd, an acknowledged supporter and friend of the PLO leader, might ·be the-right person to persuade Arafat to move over. The Saudis would have a leading part in negotiating with Syria and Jordan for a new leader, one acceptable to all countries, and who might also re-unify the movement. If ·all political alternatives seem closed to the PLO and Arafat remains determined to keep the leadership, the PLO could be led into a new round to aircraft hijackings, political assassinations and attacks on "enemy" targets within the Arab world – the Israeli target being beyond its reach.
This would be a disaster for the Palestinians as it would for all the Arab states. Saudi Arabia is perhaps the only country which could prevent the potential disaster which now faces the PLO.
