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MR. BRINKLEY: Coming next, Edward Said of Columbia University and the Palestine National Council. And, shortly, Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state; and Benjamin Netanyahu, who has just resigned as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, in a moment.

(Announcements.)

MR. BRINKLEY: Mr. Said, thank you very much for coming in today.

MR. SAID: Thank you for having me.

MR. BRINKLEY: Glad to have you with us.

MR. SAID: Thank you.

MR. BRINKLEY: Here in the studio are George Will of ABC News, and Sam Donaldson, ABC News White House correspondent. Now, Mr. Said, as a Palestinian, if you had your way, what would happen in the Middle East tomorrow morning?

MR. SAID: Well, I think the main issue right now for Palestinians is the end of the occupation. I mean, we have had 40 years of no Palestinian sovereignty of any sort. We've lived through Calvaries that involved massacres, dispospositions, and many, many, many abuses of our human, political and civil rights. We feel ourselves to be on the road, an irreversible process, toward self determination. Yes, I mean I think the main--the main question now is how seriously--how seriously the Israelis and the United States take our presence there, not as insects, not as grasshoppers and so on, but as real people.

MR. BRINKLEY: Those are names the Palestinians have been called, right?

MR. SAID: That's right.

MR. BRINKLEY: All right. Now, you say, removal from the occupied territories is step one. Is the ultimate step to obliterate Israel?

MR. SAID: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

MR. BRINKLEY: Well, you're constantly accused of that.

MR. SAID: I know that. I know that. Whereas in fact

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it is our civil existence that has been obliterated. We have said repeatedly for years as a community that we are prepared--as recently as last, two weeks ago Mr. Arafat was interviewed by the New York Times, and he made it absolutely clear that what we had in mind was a Palestinian state that would live in coexistence, peaceful coexistence, alongside of Israel. I mean, I think the importance of these statements has to be calculated correctly, and not dismissed. But that's only one issue. The other issue is that both the Israelis and the United States, in a certain sense, stand now outside the international consensus. There are over 100 countries that recognize the representatives of the PLO, of the Palestinian people, who are the PLO. Now, you cannot negotiate peace if you refuse to recognize the representatives of your enemies. And I'll grant you, all the things that have been said about the PLO by the Israelis, let's assume every single word is true. But what is the alternative to negotiating with your enemy? It is precisely with your enemy that you have to face-to-face negotiate.

MR. WILL: Professor?

MR. SAID: Yes.

MR. WILL: Professor Said, you said a moment ago that the Palestinian people have been occupied for 40 years.

MR. SAID: No, I didn't say that. I said there's been an Israeli military occupation for the last 20 years.

MR. WILL: Okay. Now, between 1948 and 1967 Jordan controlled the West Bank. Now, was that a satisfactory arrangement?

MR. SAID: No, it wasn't. Mr. Will, I know your predilections towards Jordan. Jordan does not represent Palestinians, any more than the Belgians represent the Israelis. I mean, why is it the Palestinians are always asked to have someone else represent them when it's perfectly clear, not only to the rest of the world, but also to the United States and the Israelis that the Palestinians are represented by the PLO.

MR. WILL: I understand your point. The question is,

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why did this question of a Palestinian entity, a second, as it
were, Palestinian state, become an issue only after--

MR. SAID: No, that's not true.

MR. WILL: --Israel took over the West Bank.

MR. SAID: No, that's simply not true. There was a
great deal of Palestinian nationalist agitation during those years
against the Jordanian rule of the West Bank. And I must say that
of course Palestinian nationalism has developed much more after
1967 than before that. But there was still very strong feeling
for Palestinian self determination and independence.

MR. WILL: Mr. Arafat, when he says that he supports
Resolution 242, generally says--and correct me if this has been
changed--that he does so in the context of the other relevant UN
resolutions, one of which says Zionism is racism, and the composite
effect of these resolutions is to deny the legitimacy of the state
of Israel. Does--let's take the first first--do you and does the
PLO think that Zionism is racism?

MR. SAID: I would like to speak for myself. I will
certainly say that Zionism with regard to Palestinians has dis-
criminated brutally and radically against Palestinians who are
designated within the state, and certainly on the territories,
only as non-Jews with far less rights--in the case of the territories
no rights at all--than Israeli Jews. I mean, that is a fact that
no Israeli would deny. I mean, I think it's important not to
focus on that and leave it at that, but to see properly what the
heart of the problem is. The problem is that we have no national
rights in a land from which most of us, including myself, were
expelled. I mean, that's the point.

MR. DONALDSON: Professor Said, I don't think that I've
heard Mr. Arafat or the Palestinian council declare definitively
that it accepts 242 and 338 in all of its wording and all of its
meaning. Can you tell me this morning that they do?

MR. SAID: Well, I can only repeat what was said by Mr.
Arafat, that those resolutions are accepted in the context, first

of all, of other UN resolutions that are relevant to the Palestinian-
Israeli conflict, and will be the principle on which we will come
to an international conference.

MR. DONALDSON: But there you are--but there you are,
Professor Said. Until Arafat and the people who are responsible
for the PLO say definitively that Israel has a right to exist
behind secure and defensible borders, don't people have the right
to believe that you're really doing a little double shuffle there?

MR. SAID: No, no, no, not at all. I mean, I think it's
very important, very, very important, to understand that all these
obligations and preconditions are laid upon Palestinians who are
the aggrieved party in this instance. We are not the people with
the army occupying the territories. We are the occupied. We are
the people whose houses are being blown up. We are the ones who
are called grasshoppers and insects by Israeli prime ministers.
Now it seems to me that you should note here that Israel has not
at all--has rejected 242; has been unwilling to come to any kind
of international conference; has been unwilling to recognize the
national rights of the Palestinians.

MR. DONALDSON: In the short time remaining--

MR. SAID: Yes.

MR. DONALDSON: --I'm sorry to interrupt, but I do want
to ask you about your meeting a couple of weeks ago with Secretary
Shultz. Israeli officials have objected to that meeting, saying
the United States has broken its word by saying in the past, we
would not talk to Palestinians until in fact they recognize Israel's
right to exist. Yet Shultz talked to you. How do you see it?

MR. SAID: Well, of course, I'm an American citizen.
And I think the secretary of state of the United States has a right
to speak with any American that he wishes. I think, by the way,
it's most unfortunate that this veto, which was put here by the
former secretary of state Mr. Kissinger, has prevented what is in
fact the only possible avenue for moving things off dead center,
that is to say, to deal with the Palestinians themselves. And I

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thought, as did my colleague, that it was a very fruitful and
important step forward taken by the secretary. I'm only sorry
that it hasn't been built upon. I mean, it needs to be, because,
as I say, there is no symmetry here. We are--there is an asymmetrical
relationship between Palestinians who are under occupation, who
are having horrible things done to them. I mean, this is something
that the world ought to cry out about, and here we're being asked
about formulas that attend not at all to the--to the oppression
that we're suffering.

MR. BRINKLEY: Professor Said, thank you. I'm sorry our
time is up, and I thank you for coming, for being with us.

MR. BRINKLEY: Pleasure to have you.

MR. SAID: Thank you.

MR. BRINKLEY: Coming next, Henry Kissinger, former
secretary of state. And, shortly, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has
just resigned as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. In a
moment.

(Announcements.)

MR. BRINKLEY: Mr. Kissinger, we're pleased to have you.
Thanks for coming in today.

MR. KISSINGER: Glad to be here.

MR. BRINKLEY: Good. Now, you heard Professor Said a
minute ago. He is of the Palestinian group. You heard him say
that during your administration as secretary of state, I think, we
made a deal with the Israelis that we would not talk to any Pale-
stinians until they recognized Israel's right to exist.

MR. KISSINGER: No. That isn't what the agreement said.

MR. BRINKLEY: Well, I'm about to ask you. Is that so?
And if not, what is so?

MR. KISSINGER: No. First of all, this agreement is
always presented as if it were something totally new that is
blocking us from something we otherwise ought to do. What that
statement says is, the United States affirms its existing policy,

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which had been carried out until then by three--two other administrations, of both parties, not to talk to the PLO until the PLO accepts Security Council Resolution 242, and the legitimacy of the state of Israel. The reverse of this means that were the PLO to do this, the United States would be free to talk to it. And there is no prohibition against talking to any other Palestinians. It does not seem to me an unreasonable proposition to say one will not talk to an institution or to a group whose basic program requires the extermination of your ally or of your close friend. And that's all that this statement requires, and it could easily be fixed by Arafat putting into the PLO program what he allegedly whispers to newsmen behind the back of his hand.

MR. BRINKLEY: Well, Professor Said was saying a minute ago, it is not his--their intention, or their hope or their wish, to exterminate Israel. Now, who--

MR. KISSINGER: Well, all they have to do is say so.

MR. BRINKLEY: Well, he just did.

MR. KISSINGER: All they have to do is put it in their program. Their program now requires the extermination of the state of Israel. And they have not accepted Resolution 242. There are so many groups within the PLO. A few years ago, two or three years ago, there was an attempt for Arafat to be represented by Jordan in a delegation which would include members approved or designated, in fact, by the PLO. He couldn't get that much past the PLO congress. So the only requirement that was made in the 1975 agreement is that we would not talk to a group that refuses to put into its program the legitimacy of the existence of the state of Israel. They don't even have to accept any particular frontiers.

MR. WILL: Mr. Kissinger, just to tidy this small point up, when Arafat says he accepts 242 in the context of other relevant UN resolutions, do not those relevant UN resolutions deny the legitimacy of the state of Israel?

MR. KISSINGER: Well, at a minimum, the other relevant

UN resolutions might be the 1947 borders, which would have the state of Israel within the '67 borders, which in turn are considered indefensible by most people who have studied the problem, yes. Arafat is using a sort of sophisticated doubletalk.

MR. WILL: One of the very few things that some people think happened that was very good in the last 20 years in the United States was Sadat's expulsion of the Soviets from his country, from Egypt, early in the 1970s. Is it wise for the United States now to be essentially bringing the Soviet Union, or trying to bring the Soviet Union, back into the center of Mideast diplomacy with this international conference?

MR. KISSINGER: I have always been extremely uneasy about it. In the diplomacy with which I was involved, as well as in the diplomacy of the succeeding administration, all the successes were achieved under American sponsorship, because the Soviet Union could not appear as the lawyer for the radical Arabs at an international forum. And when the Carter administration attempted to organize an international conference including the Soviets, it stampeded Sadat to Jerusalem. It was one of the major factors doing that. If the Soviet Union were to say that it favored a concept of defensible, secure borders for Israel, one might take another look at this. But under present circumstances, with the present known statements of all the potential participants, the United States would be either in the position of turning on Israel at a conference, or of being isolated together with Israel at the conference. And I don't see any point in that.

MR. DONALDSON: Dr. Kissinger, if the PLO doesn't accept 242, neither does the Israeli government of Yitzak Shamir. Secretary Shultz has just come back from a failed mission, and clearly, in his public statements, has put most of the blame on the majority of the blame, on Israel for being intransigent on that point. Do you agree?

MR. KISSINGER: I don't think it was a failed mission. I think that Secretary Shultz achieved as much as could be achieved

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within the context of that conference. It's a very difficult subject, and any time you try to get a negotiation started--

MR. DONALDSON: Well, can you point to any progress being made?

MR. KISSINGER: No, but I think that--

MR. DONALDSON: Well, what is the definition of failure, then, or success?

MR. KISSINGER: I happen to disagree with the objective of an international conference. But I think every progress toward negotiation requires a lot of preliminary negotiation. And I think one has to wait for the subsequent evolution to make a final judgment on whether it was a success. But does Shamir accept 242? One has to understand that the Israelis are right now in an election campaign. And I think the greatest contributions the Israelis could make in the peace process is to move up the date of their election and avoid this appalling situation where the prime minister of the state says one thing, the foreign minister says the opposite, and then America is asked whether it is a loyal ally to a country in which the prime minister and the foreign minister can't agree on basic premises.

MR. DONALDSON: But I'm asking you whether you think Israel ought not to agree that 242 and 338 are relevant?

MR. KISSINGER: Certainly Israel--I think Israel ought to agree that 242 is valid. I think that Israel should give up the Gaza strip and some of the territory on the West Bank. I think, however, Israel cannot go back to the '67 borders because it will then be indefensible. So the question is, what is a secure border, or a relatively secure border since there is no such thing as absolute security--

MR. DONALDSON: Dr. Kissinger--

MR. KISSINGER: --on the West Bank. That is the issue that needs to be negotiated.

MR. DONALDSON: All right. I'm sorry, I wanted--our time is running out, I wanted to change the subject just very

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briefly. President Nixon, as you may know, this weekend said that he thinks the biggest mistake he made in office was that in 1969 you didn't bomb Hanoi and mine the harbors of North Vietnam; you waited until '72. Do you agree? Should you have done it in '69?

MR. KISSINGER: I think we should have brought matters to a head in 1969, and gone to the Congress and said, in such a war you either win or lose, and this is what it takes to win. If we--and you vote us in or out. And if they had not done it, then we should have gotten out. If they had permitted it and it had failed, we should have gotten out. I think that would have been--I agree with President Nixon.

MR. BRINKLEY: Mr. Kissinger, thank you. Thanks very much for coming in today. Glad to have you with us.

MR. BRINKLEY: Coming next, Benjamin Netanyahu, who until recently was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. In a moment.

(Announcements.)

MR. BRINKLEY: Ambassador, even though you've resigned you're still going to be called that whether you like it or not. Thank you for coming to see us today. We're happy to have you.

MR. NETANYAHU: Thank you.

MR. BRINKLEY: Now, you've heard--you've heard Secretary Kissinger and you've heard Mr. Said. You're running for the Knesset. And what are you going to offer the Israeli people? What's going to be your platform?

MR. NETANYAHU: Well, I'm not going to be running on an independent platform. I'm going to be part of a party. But the question--

MR. BRINKLEY: But you have to make speeches, though, and you have to tell them something.

MR. NETANYAHU: Sure. But the question really is not a party issue. The question is the survival of Israel, and this is what we are discussing today. You've just had Mr. Said on this

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program saying that the PLO has accepted the state of Israel. That's not true. Yasser Arafat recently, just a few weeks ago, said that the aim is Jaffa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, everything. And that's really what we're discussing today. There is an attempt here through subterfuge, through doubletalk, to get Israel to make concessions, to go back to the '67 boundaries. And that is life threatening. We have to make sure that that doesn't happen.

MR. DONALDSON: Ambassador, if I may, Mr. Said also makes the point that if you concede everything that you say about the PLO, they're still an entity that you ought to deal with, even though they're your enemy, because you can't have peace unless you deal with your enemy. What about that?

MR. NETANYAHU: Sam, I believe that you do make peace with enemies. But not with every enemy. That is, an enemy that doesn't want peace, that doesn't want compromise, is not an enemy you can make peace with. You know, in World War II and before World War II, Churchill adamantly opposed making any sort of agreement with Hitler, because he said, any agreement I make with him will be used as a stepping stone for further aggression. Hitler didn't go as far as Arafat. He didn't say, Britain shouldn't exist. He didn't say, I'm going to destroy Britain. That's what Arafat says. He says it maybe not through Arab, or rather English speaking spokesmen like Edward Said, but he says it daily in the Arab Middle East. And I must tell you, we believe him.

MR. DONALDSON: Why do you object so harshly to Secretary Shultz having met with Mr. Said and another Palestinian?

MR. NETANYAHU: Well, you know, there is a peculiar situation here where the United States meets with the members of the governing body of the PLO. This body stipulates the PLO policy. It writes the PLO charter which, in Article 19, calls for the destruction of Israel. By meeting with Edward Said, who has not repudiated the charter, by meeting with any member of the PNC or any member of the PLO who has not repudiated the charter, what you're doing is lending legitimacy, however unwittingly, to the

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goal of destroying Israel, and in fact I think eroding this long
standing American commitment.

MR. DONALDSON: Well, Secretary Shultz has said quite
bluntly as you know that he has a right to meet with any American
citizen he wants to. What right do you have to tell him that he
can't meet with an American citizen?

MR. NETANYAHU: Sam, of course he can meet with anyone
he wants to. But I don't think this was a private meeting. This
was clearly a political meeting. And nobody objects to Mr. Said
for what he is, but for what he represents. He represents the
governing body of the PLO. I don't think Secretary Shultz would
meet with members of the governing body of the IRA, or the governing
body of the American Nazi Party. This is our objection. It's the
legitimizing of the PLO that comes from this type of meeting.

MR. WILL: Ambassador, when various Israelis talk about
the occupied territories, and particularly, the West Bank, Judea
and Samaria, religious as well as national security considerations
get tangled. Let's leave the religious considerations aside. You
said Israel would be life-threatening if it went back to the 1967
borders. Is there, in your judgment, a way of splitting the
difference between the borders as they now exist with the occupied
territories and 1967 borders?

MR. NETANYAHU: Well, first of all, George, we gave back
91 percent of the territory that we took in a war of self defense,
the entire Sinai peninsula. What we're talking about is the
remaining 9 percent of a territory that abuts Israel's major
cities. It sits right on top of us, and within rifle distance,
really spitting distance, of any one of our major cities.

MR. WILL: Now, that sounds like a no. It sounds as
though you're saying, for hard considerations of modern military
technology, you need the territories as they now are.

MR. NETANYAHU: I think that we need a solution that
gives Israel maximum security, and gives the Arab inhabitants
minimum interference in their daily lives. I think that's the

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kind of thing that we have to think about. We have a framework for achieving that. It's called Camp David. We made huge concessions for it. I would like to see the Arab leaders emerge that say, look, we're willing to negotiate with Israel, recognize Israel in any boundary. If they said that, if we got rid of this major obstacle, I believe we can have peace. I believe we can have peace faster than you think.

**MR. WILL:** There is another--talking about the military technologies that change so rapidly in the world and change the territorial considerations, now it seems that the Saudis have bought missiles from China with a range of 1,000 miles, capable of hitting Israel. How does this change Israeli security thinking? And specifically, address the following: When Israel felt threatened by an Iraqi reactor, it acted preemptively to destroy that reactor. Might Israel feel the need to act preemptively against these missiles?

**MR. NETANYAHU:** George, I really don't think that's something I should even discuss on a program such as this. But I want to say something else. You know, everybody says, well, in the age of missiles territory doesn't count. I flew to Israel a couple of weeks ago. The plane that I flew in would not be able to land if the PLO controlled that high ground of the West Bank that abuts Israel, the Judean-Samarian range. Today you have stinger-held missiles--forget about the missiles in Saudia Arabia--that can shoot down any of our airplanes, could neutralize our airfields. Our airforce is the life blood of our protection.

**MR. WILL:** But Ambassador, let's go back to what you just referred to, the Judea-Samarian ridge, is it possible to split the difference there, for Israel to say, we need that, because the high points are crucial. You can have the rest. I'm not saying the Jordanians would accept this, the Palestinians, anyone else. But as a security consideration, would that be sufficient?

**MR. NETANYAHU:** I think you're dealing with a tiny area where the strategic positions are interlaced with the population

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centers. It's very hard to disengage the two. But I really don't think this is the real issue. I think the issues of security, the issues of refugees, the issues of the status of the inhabitants, are real problems. I believe they can be solved if you got at the root problem. And the root problem is the persistent Arab refusal to come out and say, yes, we recognize the state of Israel.

MR. BRINKLEY: Well, Mr. Ambassador, over the last few years, a very small number of Arab leaders have been, shall I say, moderate in their views toward Israel, and then been assassinated. How could you hope for this to happen?

MR. NETANYAHU: I hope, because I think that there are Arab leaders who are moderate who would like to come forward and aer afraid to do so. They are afraid because of the PLO. If you want to--and other radicals like Syria. If you want to see a change, what you have to do is make sure that the power of the radicals and the terrorists diminishes. Once that happens the power of the moderates will rise. If you want to talk about the PLO changing, we've been at this now for half a century, half of it with the PLO, half of it with its predecessor. I think a real change would happen if five conditions were met. The first is an overt recognition on the part of the PLO by Israel. The second is shredding that PLO charter. The third is eliminating the PLO terrorist arm. The fourth is an actual cessation of terrorist attacks. And the fifth is to stop the inculcation, the indoctrination of youngsters, with this murderous fanatic hate. If that happened, and the PLO would disband, I think we'd see a moderation emerge.

MR. DONALDSON: Ambassador, Israel is properly concerned with the attitude of the U.S. government and its leaders. Now, you know there is an important primary in New York a week from Tuesday, and Mayor Koch has said that Jews in the United States would be crazy to vote for Jesse Jackson. Do you agree?

MR. NETANYAHU: You know I have enough on my hands with Israeli politics. You certainly don't want me to get involved in American--

MR. DONALDSON: It's up to you.

MR. BRINKLEY: Ambassador, our time is up. Ambassador, thank you. I will save you from that one. Thank you very much for coming in today. Pleased to have you.