Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire

National Review, March 30, 1992 by Amos Perlmutter

Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire, by Patrick Seale (Random House, 340 pp., $22)

PATRICK SEALE is, let us say, highly informed about and closely connected to Syria and its leadership, and to Arab nationalist radicals in general. His 1985 book, The Struggle for Syria, 19541958, is something of a classic, while his 1991 study, Assad, has led some observers to dub him a court historian.

His new book, Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire, mixes half-truths and a reasonable tone with inside information that is at least authentically flavored. The book is always fascinating, but it has its own complicated agenda.

Seale seeks to do more than merely tell the story of Abu Nidal. He also tries to explain why Abu Nidal is what he is. And what he is, according to Seale, is a renegade and an outcast, an aberration well outside the mainstream of the PLO, which is trying to shed its terrorist image and depict itself as willing to negotiate. Hence the title, which portrays Abu Nidal as nothing more than a vicious mercenary, bereft of allegiance or ideology.

But that is only the half of it. For Seale's Abu Nidal is not merely a creature of Palestinian radicalism and terrorist schooling. He is born of Israeli aggression and brutality. Seale goes to great lengths to uncover what he says are the real root causes of Abu Nidal's evolution. These lie in the partition of Palestine and the resulting war. Seale's analysis of these events is couched in the prose of "perhaps," "probably," and "maybe"-a mountain of qualifiers laid out in a tone of such measured reasonableness that one might almost forget how highly selective his evidence is.

"What happened in Palestine in 1947-48 is one of the most contentious subjects in modern history. This book is hardly the place to rehearse the old polemics or to set out the rival versions of history as seen by Arab and Jew," Seale declares, and then proceeds to give the reader his own version. He contends that the Zionists considered partition, the plan passed by the UN General Assembly, to constitute "international sanction for a country of their own," which in practical terms it was. Of course, the Palestinians could also have availed themselves of it. Fortunately, Seale is on hand to explain why that isn't the point: "But the way the state of Israel was created, with the violent expulsion or stampeding of its Arab inhabitants, left much to be desired and has been a source of furious controversy ever since."

Leave aside that states are often born amid violence (see 1776). Merely note Seale's implication that the displacement took place solely as a result of Israeli tactics. In fact, the invasion of Palestine by five Arab armies was at least as responsible as Israeli action for Palestinian displacement and subsequent resentment, if not more so. Palestinians who were expelled ended up either rejecting partition or having no voice in the matter at all, the decision being made for them by their Arab brethren in Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq. Seale reluctantly acknowledges the crux of the matter; then dismisses it: "Perhaps none of this would have happened had the Arabs accepted the UN proposal in 1947 to partition Palestine into an Arab and Jewish sector, but they didn't and the result has been more or less unending misery and violence."

Whatever the cause, the result according to Seale was that "thousands of Arab peasants, evicted from the land as it passed to Jewish owners, set up miserable shantytowns around the port [of Jaffal. Hostility between Arab and Jew, in Abu Nidal's youth, was an inescapable fact of daily life." Seale paints Abu Nidal as a victim of that misery.

But Abu Nidal, if a victim, is not quite a politically correct one. Indeed, he may be something worse: an instrument of Israel, if not a tacit ally. Thus, on page 319: "Abu Nidal is a professional killer who has sold his deadly services certainly to the Arabs and perhaps to the Israelis as well." My italics.) Why so? The speculation rests on the assertion that Abu Nidal has killed Arab moderates, weakening chances for successful negotiations, in the period when the ever more benign Yasir Arafat has been eager to start negotiations. Arafat is portrayed as being consistently foiled in his efforts by Henry Kissinger and by Labor and Likud alike. Why not by Abu Nidal too? In short, Mossad secretly nurtures the most radical elements of the PLO, the George Habashes and Abu Nidals, in order to forestall successful rapprochement. Damned clever, these Israelis.

Seale's proof of this theory is the fact that Abu Nidal is still alive. He has not been assassinated by Israel. Given the cunning of the Israelis, this has to be more than coincidence. Seale therefore adds the further speculation that Abu Nidal is useful in sustaining Israel's uncompromising stance, allowing it to continue to occupy the West Bank in perpetuity. As long as Abu Nidal continues his deadly work, Israel can wave the bloody shirt.

The truth is rather different. Abu Nidal was a follower of Arafat back when the PLO was completely dedicated to terrorism and the destruction of Israel. At that time, Israeli leaders -men like Ben Gurion, Sharett, Eshkol, Dayan, and Eban-were rejecting the concept of Complete Israel and permanent occupation. Israel accepted Kissinger's 1973-75 mediation, which opened the way for Sadat's historic 1977 trip to Israel and the 1979 Camp David Accords. The latter established the idea of Palestinian autonomy and remain the only real blueprint for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.