Interview with Norman Podhoretz

INTERVIEW WITH NORMAN PODHORETZ. Norman Podhoretz was interviewed by Terence Wrong, editor of the SAIS Review, at the offices of Commentary magazine in New York City. Mr. Podhoretz is editor of Commentary and author, most recently, of Why We Were In Vietnam (1982) and The Present Danger (1980). He writes frequently for Commentary and numerous other publications. Q: In "Lebanon: The Casefor the War,"published in Commentary [October 1982], Robert Tucker has written that the plo L· dead not only as a quasi-conventional military force but abo as a significant diplomatic entity. He has emphasized that the paradox at the end ofthe war, where it appeared as though Arafat's diplomatic stature grew enormously even as hL· fighters were being dispersed among half a dozen Arab countries, was only an apparent paradox. Do you believe thL·? Is the plo really no longer to be reckoned with or are there not dozens, even hundreds ofyoung Arafats on the West Bank ready to take up the mantle of the plo? PODHORETZ: I agree entirely with Tucker, with one qualification, which I think he would accept also. The plo is dead, but it could conceivably be resurrected by American action in cooperation with European policy. Short of a determined effort to bring it back to life by the United States, though, the plo in my judgment is finished as a major force. Something called the plo might remain or might reappear, but it would not be the same organization that we have known under that name in the past. Q: Do you believe then thatfighting the plo in Lebanon and implementing policy on the West Bank are separate issues and that the original aims of the war in Lebanon were limited to securing peace for Galilee? After all, even Max Frankel observed on the editorial page ofthe New York Times that the war in Lebanon was intended to crush the nationals hopes ofPalestinians on the WestBank by eradicatingthepoliticomilitary organization of their brethren in Lebanon. PODHORETZ: My view is—again I agree with Tucker—that in going into Lebanon, the war aims of the Israelis were very likely limited and they were 29 30 SAIS REVIEW extended as the opportunity presented itself. Contrary to what the world told us, the plo did not mount much resistance in southern Lebanon, and its easy collapse gave the Israelis the chance to go further than they probably intended to go in the first place, or thought they could go without suffering too many casualties. I also think, however, that the war in Lebanon has to be understood as part of a two-sided strategy aimed at eliminating the plo as an effective force. The invasion of Lebanon was the military arm of that strategy, and the policy that's been followed on the West Bank since the appointment of Menahem Milson about fourteen months ago is the political arm of the strategy. Milson has resigned because of the delay in appointing a committee of investigation after the Beirut massacre. But his policies are still in force. They aim not only at the elimination of the political power of the plo on the West Bank but at the development of an alternative Palestinian leadership there. According to Milson, that policy has been succeeding. This means that, if you look at Israeli policy as a whole, you see a concerted politico-military effort to destroy the plo. Now, you can interpret the objectives or the intentions of that effort in any number of ways. My own view is that whatever Begin and Sharon may have been thinking in the privacy oftheir own minds, or in the secret recesses of their hearts, by eliminating the plo, they have created the precondition, the only precondition, for an Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank. In other words, they have removed the major reason for a continued Israeli military presence on the West Bank—the major reason given not so much to the United States or to the world as to the Israeli people themselves. In my judgment, and I have said this in print, so long as the plo is the only successor regime on the West Bank, no...