“Guns and Olive Branches”
The first time Raymonda met her future son-in-law, Arafat, was just after he gave his “Guns and Olive Branches” speech in front of the UN General Assembly in October 1974. Over his military fatigues, he wore a badly fitting cream-colored blazer of thrift store quality and bright tennis shoes. Topping off the outfit was a long checkered white and black keffiyeh. His chin was shaved, more or less, leaving his signature handlebar mustache over his thick upper lip. Arafat slipped off his dark sunglasses and read, in his seductively musical Arabic, the greatest speech of his life. He spoke of the Palestinian yearning for “self-determination” and their desire to “pour all our resources into the mainstream of human civilization. Only then will our Jerusalem resume its historic role as a peaceful shrine for all religions.”
I appeal to you to enable our people to establish national, independent sovereignty over its own land. Today, I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.
In the West Bank on the day of the speech, students poured out from schools to celebrate. The state of Israel had started with a UN General Assembly vote in 1947; the Palestinians were now using the same forum to kick off their own political revolution. Dayan ordered his soldiers to break up demonstrations. When Raymonda’s daughter Diana waved a Palestinian flag, they knocked her down and dragged her by the hair.
Raymonda, back in the West Bank, was accompanying a New York Times correspondent to a demonstration when whipping around a corner came a military jeep. Soldiers pointing Uzis forced her into the back of the jeep. The military authorities didn’t want foreign journalists to see the hooping and dancing and general euphoria among Palestinians, or the tear gas canisters fired by soldiers in response. In custody, a Shin Bet interrogator let her know she was once again skating on thin ice. “You are singing the praises of that terrorist bastard at the UN, and now you’re telling The New York Times that Palestinians support him. Well, we’re not going to allow you to distort the truth.” But one of her admiring generals ordered her release.51
For Christmas 1974, Raymonda and her family headed to Beirut. Her first encounter with Arafat took place when one of his advisors, convinced that having a feminist on board might help improve Fatah’s public image as unshaven thugs, sent her a message inviting her to the organization’s underground headquarters, in the Fakhani district, largely inhabited by Palestinian refugees.
Dozens of men from Force 17, Arafat’s personal army of bodyguards, rushed her through the streets. It was well past midnight when they arrived at an unmarked building surrounded by a cinderblock wall with broken pieces of Fanta bottles and pickle jars on top. Arafat’s small office was stuffed to the rafters with papers and books and gifts still in their wrappers from supporters; leaning against one wall was a Kalashnikov.
A Fatah man introduced her as a “militant and a feminist.” Arafat nodded. Raymonda knew about his daredevilry, his skill at surviving assassins, his vision and ability to unify a fractious Palestinian people. What surprised her was the hypnotic charisma radiating from his half-smile and bulbous eyes. The man’s physical vitality was bursting out of his military surplus jacket. His warmth, the frenetic movements of his hands, the drum-roll of his words, conjured up the image of a selfless militant: from Nasser he picked up the knack of alternating between the buoyancy of street language, and the cadence of classical Arabic—one of Arafat’s favorite Koranic verses was “The mountain cannot be shaken by the wind.”
He seemed equally impressed with her. “You know, I know all about you,” he said while stirring honey into his glass of black tea. “You’re a daring militant. Ahlan wa Sahlan. Welcome.”