INTRODUCTION which almost a million o f us were made to leave Palestine and our society made nonexistent, justified even to save the remnant o f European Jews that had survived Nazism? B y what moral or political standard are we expected to lay aside our claims to our national existence, our land, our human rights? In what world is there no argument when an entire people is told that it is juridically absent, even as armies are led against it, campaigns conducted against even its name, history changed so as to “ prove” its nonexistence? For even though all the issues surrounding the Palestinians are com plex and involve G reat Power politics, regional disputes, class conflict, ideologi­ cal tension, the animating power o f the Palestinian movement is its awareness o f these simple, but enormously consequential, questions. The Palestinians are not alone, how ever, in being either misunderstood or ignored by the United States as it attempts to construct a foreign policy in Asia and A frica. Certainly the Iranian opposition which brought down the Shah in January 1979 is a case in point, but not for want o f information (despite President C arter's disingenuous accusations against the “ intel­ ligence comm unity” for its failure on Iran). If it is true of individuals that they prefer tidy, simple solutions to com plex, untidy realities, then it ought to be patently untrue of institutions and governments; but with regard to the Palesti­ nian problem , it is true o f the U .S . government. T he present Administration came to office proclaiming itself in favor o f a com prehensive Middle East peace, which was supposed to include a just solution o f the Palestinian problem “ in all its aspects,” yet since Cam p David, it has been powerless either to see the problem whole or in any way seriously to deal with it. W hy it supposes that four million people should be content with less (autonom y, so-called) than what every other national group has accepted, why it supposes that treaties can be signed in the absence o f the main party to a dispute, why it supposes that foreign policy can be conducted without ever coming face to face with the main actor in a region, why it supposes that powerful oppositional groups can simply be wished away, why it supposes that Palestinians, any more than any other