Britain’s Chief Rabbi Says He Does Not Rule out Possibility of a Palestinian State on West Bank, Gaz

British Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits said yesterday that he did not rule out the possibility of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and that he would even allow such a state to have its capital in East Jerusalem.

The Chief Rabbi made his remarks at a luncheon at his home for representatives of the Jewish press, including Israeli correspondents. Asked by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about his views on a Palestinian state, Jakobovits said that Israel should tell the Arabs that, if they entered peaceful and normal relations with her for a 10-year trial period, no options would be closed for a subsequent peace settlement. This included a Palestinian state, which could be governed from Jerusalem, he said. (Reactions in Israel, P. 3.)

The luncheon was arranged at the Chief Rabbi’s initiative. It followed his recent meeting here with members of the Israeli Peace Now movement. He claimed that “the silent majority” of British Jews shared his doveish views, adding, “I want the silent majority no longer to be silent.”

Stressing that these were entirely his personal opinions, Jakobovits, who has been Britain’s Chief Rabbi for the past 13 years, explained that he was advancing them for religious rather than political reasons. “If the Jewish people seems to be preventing peace for religious reasons, under the influence of a kind of Jewish ‘Khomeinism,’ that would be a major catastrophe for the Jewish religion and a perversion of religious values,” he said.

THE KEY TO PEACE

He conceded that the Gush Emunim had “perfectly good reasons” for their views about the territories and settlements. But, he added, Jewish tradition was also flexible enough to admit the opposite views. Although his own previous doveish utterances had been strongly criticized in rabbinic circles, some of the world’s leading Orthodox rabbis had also written to him privately agreeing with him but refusing to do so publicly, he said.

According to Jakobovits, the key to peace is not in Sinai but in Israel’s relations with the Palestinians. The fact that they had assumed a national identity, he said, was the fault of previous Israeli governments which had balked at a solution of the Arab refugee problem.

While expressing fear that “all that is negotiable has been lost,” he said it was still not too late to make a new pledge to the whole Arab world that if they lived in peace with Israel for 10 years no options would be closed, Asked by the JTA whether he would agree to the re-division of Jerusalem, he said there would have to be “amendments” in the pre-1967 borders.

He noted that there were strong religious precedents for yielding territories. Yohanan Ben Zakai, for example, negotiated giving up Jerusalem to the Romans “because he was worried over the millennia and not just the moment,” Jakobovits said. He added: “If I knew we could never attain peace with the Arab world, I would say ‘liquidate Israel now’.”