Six Israelis — three Jews and three Arabs — confirmed last night foreign press reports that they met with Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat in Tunis over the weekend. They could face prosecution for endangering national security. Rightwing members of the Knesset are already demanding that the two MKs in the group be stripped of their immunity and put on trial.
The delegation consisted of members of the Progressive list for Peace, a coalition of Jewish leftists and Israeli Arab nationalists which won two Knesset seats in last July’s elections. They are Gen (Res.) Matityahu Peled and Muhammed Miari, both Knesset members; former MK Uri Avneri; Dr. Yaacov Arnon; Kamel Kaher, a lawyer; and the Rev. Riah Abu-El-Asal.
The delegation said they met with Arafat at the headquarters he established in Tunis after he was forced to leave Beirut in 1982. They said Arafat promised to disclose details of Israeli prisoners and missing soldiers in return for permission by the Israeli authorities to allow the re-burial in Hebron of its deposed mayor, Fahd Kawasme.
Kawasme, who held a high position in the PLO executive ranks after the Israelis ousted him from the West Bank, was assassinated in Amman, Jordan in December. He was buried there.
The Defense Ministry said its position is that “only when missing Israel Defense Force soldiers are returned to Israel will permission be granted to bury Fahd Kawasme in Hebron.”
The delegation members complained that although they paid for use of the VIP lounge at Ben Gurion Airport for a press conference after their return from Tunis, the media was banned from that part of the terminal. As a consequence, they had to talk to reporters out of doors, surrounded by an angry crowd of hecklers who hurled insults and threats at them.
POLICE ASKED TO INVESTIGATE
Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir, meanwhile, has asked the police to investigate the delegation’s visit to Arafat to determine whether it endangered State security. If the police find it did, members of the delegation could be prosecuted.
No action was ever taken in the past against Avneri, and other prominent Israelis who met with Arafat or other PLO representatives abroad because those contacts were not found to be a breach of security.
The meeting was criticized today by Labor MKs and stridently denounced by Likud and Tehiya spokesmen who demanded that Peled and Miari be placed on trial. Peled said he knew the PLO was considered an “enemy” but observed that it was necessary to talk to one’s enemy in order to make peace.
Avneri said in a television interview today that the delegation proposed to Arafat convening an international conference on the Palestinian problem with the participation of Israel, the PLO, the U.S. and Soviet Union and other Arab states to search for a diplomatic solution. He stressed that this was their proposal, not an idea floated by the Israeli government. He said Arafat did not reject it out of hand and said he would discuss it with his colleagues.
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.
