The Levanter Read Free

have taken note of them. But you may also question and wonder if this received view, this consensus, may be wrong. Given the chance, Ithink that you would prefer to form your own opinion.”
    “But since nobody has asked me to form an opinion about Mr. Ghaled and his Palestinian Action Force ...” I left the rest of the sentence in the air.
    “I am asking you.”
    “Unfortunately you are not my New York editor.”
    “You have wide discretion. Your wife told me so. I am speaking of an important personal interview by you, Lewis Prescott. It would be exclusive, of course.”
    I thought for a moment.
    “Where would this exclusive interview take place?”
    “Here in Lebanon. In secret naturally. Great discretion would have to be observed.”
    “When would it take place?”
    “If you agree today, I think I can arrange it within twenty-four hours.”
    “Does Mr. Ghaled speak English or French?”
    “Not well. I would be the interpreter. You have only to say the word, Mr. Prescott.”
    “I see. Well, I’ll let you know later today.”
    Edwards whistled when I told him of the proposal “So Ghaled wants to come out of the woodwork!”
    “Has he been interviewed much before? Hammad mentioned that she had done pieces on him.”
    “That was when he was an Al Fatah man. Since he started the PAF caper he’s been underground most of the time. The Jordanians put a price on his head and the PLO people in Cairo tried to persuade the Syrians to crack down on him. The Syrians wouldn’t quite go along with them on that, but he’s had to keep his nose clean there and be careful. Though he’s based in Syria he never sends his goon squads into action on Syrian territory. He’s poison here, of course. He could use an improved image, a little respectability.”
    “Frank, you’re not suggesting, I hope, that, to please pretty Miss Melanie Hammad, I’d do a clean-up job on him.”
    Edwards held his hands up defensively. “No, Lew, but I am reminding you that a personal interview of the kind you do tends to become a profile of the institution with which the person interviewed is generally identified. If you were to do a job like that in this case you’d be giving Ghaled a lift, the sort of international identity that he doesn’t at present have.”
    “If I were out to do a piece on the Palestinian guerrilla movement, which I am not, would I choose Ghaled as representative of it?”
    “Representative?” He looked blank for a moment, then shrugged. There are ten separate Palestinian guerrilla movements, more if you include groups like the PAF. You might do worse than choose Ghaled. He’s been in one or other of the movements since he was a boy.”
    “Isn’t he a maverick, though, a far-out fanatic?”
    “They’re all far-out fanatics. By hatred out of illusion, the lot of them. They have to be. They couldn’t have survived otherwise.”
    “No moderates at all? What about Yasir Arafat?”
    “He isn’t a guerrilla, he’s a politician. He’s against Palestinians killing Palestinians instead of Israelis. If he ever so much as hinted that a peaceful settlement with Israel might someday be possible, he’d have his throat cut within the hour. And it would be someone like Ghaled who’d order the cutting. Ghaled might even do the job himself.”
    “Well, I can see that you think he’s interesting.”
    “Yes, Lew, I do.” He screwed up his eyes. “You see, since the Second Betrayal...”
    “Come again?”
    “That’s what Ghaled calls the '71 Jordanian government crackdown. The first crackdown, in ‘70, when Hussein’s army turfed the guerrillas out of Amman, was the Great Betrayal. The Second Betrayal was the mopping-up operation that followed a year later. A lot of the steam has gone out of the guerrilla movement since then, at least as far as the Al Fatah and the PFLP are concerned. You could say that events have proved Ghaled’s original point for him. That alone makes him interesting. Personally I happen to