THE QUESTION Of- PALESTINE SI gent interest. A re the only alternatives to discussion of the Palestinians a threat o f what amounts to civil war between the Am erican Jewish community and the Adm inistration, and what has been frequently described in the press by Israeli and U .S. officials as a potential war o f annihilation waged by Israel against the A rabs? (See. for exam ple. Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post, O ctober 26, 1977.) W hat is the fearful thing provoking so violent a reaction and, more important, can it be made to disappear either by threats of war or war itself? T o speak o f the Palestinians rationally is, 1 think, to stop speaking about war or genocide and to start to deal seriously with political reality. There is a Palestinian people, there is an Israeli occupation o f Palestinian lands, there are Palestinians under Israeli military occupation, there are Palestinians— 650,000 of them— who arc Israeli citizens and who constitute 15 percent o f the population o f Israel, there is a large Palestinian population in exile: these are actualities which the United States and most of the world have directly or indirectly acknow ledged, which Israel too has acknow ledged, if only in the forms o f denial, rejection, threats o f war, and- punishment. The history of the past forty years has shown that Palestinians have grown politically, not shrunk, under the influence of every kind of repression and hardship; the history of the Jew's has shown too that time only increases attachment to the historically saturated land of Palestine. Short o f com plete obliteration, the Palestinians will continue to exist and they will continue to have their own ideas about who represents them, where they want to settle, what they want to do with their national and political future. T o criticize Zionism now, then, is to criticize not so much an idea or a theory but rather a wall of denials. It is to say firmly that you cannot expect millions o f A rab Palestinians to go aw ay, or to be content with occupation, or to acquiesce to an Israeli, or an Egyptian, or an A m erican, idea for their destiny, their "au ton om y," or their physical location. It is also to say that the time has come for Palestinians and Israeli Jews to sit down and discuss all the issues outstanding between them: rights of immigration, compensation for property lost, and so