Israel’s Ambassador Simcha Dinitz last night deplored unofficial meetings between American Jews and representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization as “well-meaning efforts by friends of Israel that lead to nowhere except to give credibility” to a terrorist movement.
Addressing the annual plenary of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), Dinitz contended that “such dialogues are misused” by the PLO which, he said, was struggling to regain prominence after having been weakened “physically and politically” in the Lebanon crisis.
The informal contacts, Dinitz said, are also “misinterpreted” by some official American quarters that the PLO’s new pose of moderation is being treated seriously within the American Jewish community. An NJCRAC statement on the issue, released at an earlier session by Rabbi Israel Miller, chairman of the Council’s Israel Task Force, strongly opposed Jewish contacts with the PLO, noting that the Arab group has “itself clearly disavowed interpretations of its posture as moderate or conciliatory.”
The statement, a consensus view of the nine national organizations and 101 local community relations councils affiliated with NJCRAC, warned “it is still the same PLO that was responsible for the terrorism from which the civilized world still recoils with horror–Munich, Khartoum, Maalot, Lod Airport, Lebanon and elsewhere.”
MIDEAST PEACE PROSPECTS
Analyzing Middle East peace prospects, Dinitz told the assembly that the emergence of Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia as a new Arab coalition “that combines elements of territory, money and oil” was a strengthening of Arab unity that could be conducive toward negotiations. But, he added, the new amalgam of Arab power also included “a danger of Arab over-confidence” that could lead to political, if not military, confrontations with Israel, such as “demands for preconditions” as a prerequisite to negotiations.
Dinitz anticipated that the new coalition will seek to test the Carter Administration in ways similar to Saudi Arabia’s recent carrot-and-stick approach of resisting the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries higher oil pricing in hopes of American pressures on Israel. “But the voices we have heard in the new administration should not encourage the Arabs to believe they can use oil as blackmail,” Dinitz declared.
In a Presidential statement, Jimmy Carter sent greetings to the 350 delegates, expressing confidence that “your deliberations will help push forward the goals you and my administration share: peace in the Middle East and throughout the world, the ordering of our national priorities to assure a better life for all and a system based on justice and equality.”
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.
