Dinitz Says There is No Greater Lie Than That Israel is Sitting by Without Creating Initiatives

Simcha Dinitz, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., declared today that “there is no greater lie than that Israel is sitting by without creating initiatives” for a peace settlement in the Middle East. Addressing 400 American Jewish leaders at a luncheon during the 17th annual conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israeli envoy said that “all is now in the Arab court.” He asserted that Israel has advanced two initiatives but the Arabs have not responded to either so far.

Israel’s first proposal, Dinitz said, was to reconvene the Geneva conference on the basis of its initial terms agreed to by the United States, the Soviet Union and the Secretary General of the United Nations. But now, he said. “some want” the Palestine Liberation Organization invited, an apparent allusion to the Soviet government’s statement last week calling for resumption of the Geneva parley with PLO participation at both its informal and formal stages.

Dinitz stressed that Israel’s refusal to permit the PLO to attend the Geneva conference is not a matter of protocol, but arises from the PLO’s charter which calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. “No power In the world can counsel us to do this.” Dinitz said, adding that the U.S. was not trying to change Israel’s position on the PLO.

He said the second initiative was to end the state of war in the Middle East and wait and see if normalization and lack of suspicion could materialize in time and lead to a “full and positive peace.” Dinitz pointed out “a basic difference” between “peace and movement.”

NOT MOVEMENT FOR MOVEMENT’S SAKE

The Middle East, he said, needs progress toward peace, not “movement for the sake of movement” because “that creates conditions where a country can consider itself pressured to make movement and not to make peace.” He said that movement should not be made “a matter of public relations.” Israel won’t move just to “have favorable editorials” in the New York Times and Washington Post, Dinitz declared.

The “task” in the Middle East, he said, is “more complicated, sophisticated and more difficult than in the past.” Dinitz said the Arab states would recognize Israel only when they recognized that it was indestructible. “The State of Israel and Israel’s greatest friend–the U.S.–must coordinate strategic aims if not tactical aims.” he said.

Dinitz called on Americans to translate Israel’s vital needs into basic strategic terms, “not by this or that administration but by the majority of the American people as the people have done up to this day.” In that connection he noted that in the three years since the Yom Kippur War. the U.S. has given Israel one-and-a-half times more aid than in the 25 preceding years. “Keeping Israel strong is vital to American interests in the region of the Middle East and for the cause of democracy everywhere,” Dinitz said.