Former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban revealed here that he met secretly with King Hussein of Jordan after the Six-Day War. Eban told an overflow crowd of some 2000 persons at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun Monday night that he could admit it publicly now since it has already been revealed by a high Israeli official. He did not say where the meeting occurred, nor the exact date.
Eban, who was appearing at the Conservative congregation’s “Dialogue ’74,” lecture series, made his remarks after Dr. William Berkowitz, the congregation’s rabbi, asked him about charges that Israel had dragged its feet in negotiations with Jordan, thus allowing Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat to replace Hussein as the leader of the Palestinians.
The former Foreign Minister said he knew better than anyone that this charge was untrue. He said that in discussions with Jordan, including the personal meeting he had with Hussein, the Jordanians had always insisted that Israel return all the territory taken in the Six-Day War including East Jerusalem, something which Israel will not agree, to. Eban said Hussein was the first Arab leader to intellectually accept the existence of Israel. The Israeli diplomat also expressed belief that Jordan would make peace within the context of negotiations that included other Arab countries such as the Geneva peace conference.
WELCOMES ANOTHER GENEVA MEETING
Eban said he would welcome another meeting of the Geneva peace conference on the Middle East since the conference was an American-Israeli creation and offers a better chance of achieving results than debates in the United Nations General Assembly. He said the Geneva conference limits the negotiations to the nations directly concerned and noted that this was the only possible way of achieving an agreement.
Calling this the “golden age of Israeli-American relations.” Eban said that between the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the end of November 1974 the United States had not done anything which had adversely affected Israel. He said he doubted the U.S. would change a foreign policy which so far has proven successful.
HIGH PRAISE FOR KISSINGER
Eban had high praise for Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and attacked those who claimed Kissinger had acted against Israel’s interest despite the denials of Israeli officials. He said he approved of Kissinger’s style of secret negotiations.
Throughout his remarks, Eban, now a Labor MK who is a visiting professor at Columbia University this fall, stressed that he disagreed with Woodrow Wilson’s idea of “open covenants openly arrived at.” He said only secret negotiations can succeed. Without them, Eban stated, the U.S. would still be engaged in fighting in Vietnam and Israeli soldiers would be dying needlessly on the Syrian and Egyptian fronts. Eban said the UN forum was useful only in explaining a country’s position to the world.
The UN itself died in 1974, in a moral sense, Eban said, because of the General Assembly’s “prostration” in front of Arafat and his PLO. He said the General Assembly has now made it “ten times more difficult” for peace to be achieved in the Mideast.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
