The New York Times · 19 November 1984

CP-1984-043

For Arafat, Effort to Convene Palestinian Assembly Is a ‘Matter of Survival’

By JOHN KIFNER

Scan 1244 × 1092 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 18 — When the Palestine Liberation Organization guerrillas sailed from Israeli-besieged Beirut two years ago, firing their Kalashnikov rifles wildly into the air as if to convince themselves they had won a famous victory, their military power was battered but seemingly intact.

Now the P.L.O., once the critical focus of Middle East politics, is scattered, divided and facing a potentially critical organizational split.

With most of his troops under Syrian domination, Yasir Arafat, the P.L.O. chairman, is preparing to gamble all to keep his longtime leadership by calling a meeting here for Thursday of the Palestine National Council, the unofficial Palestinian parliament in exile. “For Arafat, it’s a matter of survival,” a Western diplomat in Amman said.

“Otherwise, he is finished.”

How this transcription was made

Transcribed from a scan of the printed page. The date and the newspaper are fixed from a printed credit line under the page's large information graphic, which reads 'The New York Times/Nov. 19, 1984'; that line is invisible at page scale and was located by scanning the image's ink density row by row before being read at twenty-six times magnification. It is corroborated by a dateline of 'AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 18' and by the Palestine National Council meeting called 'here for Thursday', the 17th PNC having opened in Amman on 22 November 1984. The credit 'Special to The New York Times' also appears under the byline. No page number is printed. The italic line in the second column, 'Second of three articles on the P.L.O. and its deepening political crisis', is a series tag set between rules inside the body text, not a deck. The scan also carries a separate short Reuters article at the foot of the right-hand column, which is not this record. No ordinary Palestinian is named anywhere on the page; the only quoted voice is an unnamed Western diplomat. Read from crops magnified to between fourteen and twenty-six times page scale.

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