Chapter 3
Lewis Prescott
May 14
Michael Howell has left us in no doubt about his attitude toward reporters. I cannot altogether blame him. Some of my European colleagues have given him a rough time. However, as he has seen fit to exempt Frank Edwards and me from his blanket indictment, I hope he won’t mind too much if I now suggest that much of the hostile press and TV criticism of his part in the Ghaled affair he brought on himself.
In his anxiety to protect his company’s reputation — to say nothing of the reputations of his father, his mother, his grandfather, his sisters, Miss Malandra, and his brothers-in-law — he damaged his own. Under questioning he did himself less than justice. He said either too little or, more often, far too much; and invariably he sounded evasive. When a reporter asked a direct question — ”Mr. Howell, did you know what these arms were going to be used for?” — and received in reply, say, a lecture on the difficulties of dry-battery manufacture, the reasons why the Agence Howell had hired a Palestinian-refugee chemist, and the problems of the Agence Howell’s blocked Syrian assets, he was apt to conclude that Mr. Howell was dissembling. Mr. Howell’s too frequent protestations that what he was trying to do was to give the whole picture, background as well as foreground, didn’t help either. Reporters are inclined to believe that, given the essential facts of a story, plain and unadorned, they are quite capable of drawing the picture for themselves. “Garrulous smokescreen” may be a mixed metaphor, but I can understand the feelings of the man who mixed it.
That said, however, I am prepared to go on record as believing most of Michael Howell’s account of his part in the Ghaled affair. The situation in which he found himself was an appalling one. It is easy to say, as have his critics, that in reacting to it he should have thought less of his own safety and business interests and more of his higher responsibilities, but to do so is to miss the point. With even less knowledge of Ghaled’s plans and intentions than I had at that time, he did what he believed he had to do. To accuse him of irresponsibility is unfair; he did not then know what his responsibilities were. When he eventually did know he assumed them. At no time did he behave stupidly, and in the end he showed courage.
Those who condemn Mr. Howell and question his good faith were never in his shoes and don’t understand what he was up against. They have never met Salah Ghaled.
I did meet him, and it wasn’t an enjoyable experience.
I don’t usually take strong likes or dislikes to the persons I interview. I am not there to defend or prosecute, but to gather information and, hopefully, insights, which I can pass on to others. But Ghaled I actively disliked.
I am not going to quote the whole of my interview with him — a lot that he said was standard guerrilla radio hate stuff — but this edited version contains the essentials. I am also giving, from notes made at the time, accounts of my subsequent conversations with Miss Hammad and Frank Edwards. They have a bearing both on Ghaled’s thought processes and on my estimate at that time of his intentions.
The interview began easily enough with some questions about Ghaled’s early life and career as a guerrilla leader. They were not important, and I already knew the answers, but I don’t like microphones and tape recorders when interviewing; they tend to have an inhibiting effect. When I am obliged to use them, I find that a series of simple, easily answered questions at the beginning helps the subject to forget the microphone and tape. After this preparatory work I went on: “Mr. Ghaled, you seem to have devoted all your adult life to fighting on the Palestinian side in the Arab-Israeli conflict’’
The Arab-Zionist conflict, yes.”
“Most of the fighting, on your part, having been with guerrilla forces.”
“Not all, but most, yes.”
“Even when the armies of the Arab states, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, have not been engaged, you have continued to fight?”
“Yes.”
“Even when there has been peace?”
“There has never been a peace between the Arab states and the Zionists.”
“There have been peaceful periods, surely, prolonged cease-fires when things were peaceable enough for, say, Jordanian farmers to cross the border and sell their produce in Israel?”
He smiled faintly at my innocence. “Certainly there have been such periods. You speak of Jordanian farmers selling produce in so-called Israel. Let me tell you that there was a time when I used to cross the border that way myself. But one in five of the grapefruit that my donkeys carried to market had grenades in them. Peace at any price, Mr. Prescott, was never acceptable to us Palestinians. With or without our allies in the Arab states, we the fedayeen have always fought on.”
“But what do you think you have accomplished by doing so, Mr. Ghaled? To put the question another way, what do you consider has been the main achievement of the guerrilla, the fedayeen movement?”
“It has ensured that the Palestinian cause has been neither lost nor conveniently forgotten.”
“You say the Palestinian cause. I want there to be no misunderstanding. What, in your particular view, is the Palestinian cause?”
“I have no particular view, Mr. Prescott. My view, in that respect, is the same as Yasir Arafat’s or Dr. George Habash’s or Kemal Adwan’s — and Kemal, an Al Fatah man, is on the Central Committee of the PLO. We may disagree about means, but the end, our ultimate aim, is common ground.”
He went on to mention the names of other former colleagues in Al Fatah and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine with whom he shared this common ground. Had I not seen the bureau files so recently I would never have guessed that these were the men he had been denouncing as “running dogs”. “We ask only for justice,” he concluded proudly.
“Could you be more specific, Mr. Ghaled? What justice?”
“First, the destruction of the Zionist state. Note, please, that I do not ask for destruction of the Jews, only the destruction or dismemberment of the artificially created Zionist state. Second, the return of all Palestinian refugees to their lost lands and possessions. Third, the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state. Nothing less.”
“All or nothing, Mr. Ghaled?”
“Less than all would amount to nothing.”
“But hasn’t the history of the past twenty-three years shown this uncompromising, all-or-nothing demand to be self-defeating?”
There was some trouble over translating the phrase “self-defeating”. I was asked to put the question differently.
“As far as the Palestinian cause is concerned,” I said, “hasn’t the all-or-nothing policy failed? The all that it has achieved has been Israeli unity. The Israeli state that might once have been contained has instead been enlarged. The Palestinian cause may not be forgotten, Mr. Ghaled, but, as you present and define it, do you not think that it may reasonably be considered lost?”
“Considered lost by whom, Mr. Prescott? The United States government?” Jocular.
“I don’t speak for the United States government, Mr. Ghaled. I am merely trying to get your thoughts on the realities of the situation. Do you really believe that the destruction or dismemberment of the State of Israel, even if it were desirable, is any longer possible without a third and final world war?”
“Why should it not be possible, Mr. Prescott?” I could tell by his expression as he went on that there were more jokes on the way. “The West, and particularly the United States, is always expressing its wish to be helpful in resolving what it calls the Middle East conflict. Excellent. We accept. Let the United States send all the ships of its mighty Sixth Fleet to the ports of Haifa, Acre, Tel Aviv-Yafo and Ashdod. Then let them embark their Zionist dependents, all three million of them, and sail away forever. Where to, you ask? I hear that there are plenty of wide-open spaces in Texas and New Mexico that could accommodate these people. Of course, it is possible that the present owners of those spaces may object to three million Zionists taking possession of their lands. Such unreasonable persons will naturally have to be driven out and accommodated elsewhere. But this difficulty can be overcome. I am sure that UNWRA will be glad to build refugee camps for the dispossessed in the Arizona desert.”