The Palestine Option: Nixon, the National Security Council, and the Search for a New Policy, 1970

Abstract

Were the Palestinians anything more than simply a refugee problem? Since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the USA had pretty much ignored this haunting question. However, as the Palestinian guerrillas’ wide-ranging armed struggle seemed to be approaching a climax in 1970, U.S. policy makers were forced to reassess whether they might also need to view the Palestinian issue as a political problem. In April to May of that year, U.S. State Department officials began to doubt whether the Jordanian regime would survive the civil war then brewing in that country. In response, a strategy paper examining the possibility of a joint Jordanian-Israeli-Palestinian settlement—a policy that would come to be known as the “Palestine” or “Palestinian option”—was developed within the U.S. State Department. Between October and December 1970, the National Security Council discussed various versions of this strategy paper. At the same time, members of the main Palestinian guerrilla organization, Fatah, sent messages to the Americans indicating that they might be willing to enter into negotiations. Why, then, did these efforts fail to bring about a change in U.S. policy toward the Palestinians?