Jesse Jackson, Bruno Kreisky to Sail with Palestinians, Says Greek Paper

Rev. Jesse Jackson and former Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky will be aboard a ship carrying 100 Palestinian deportees from Greece to Israel under the sponsorship of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a Greek newspaper reported Sunday.

There was no confirmation from any sources of the report in the afternoon daily Elefterotipia. A spokeswoman for Jackson, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in the United States, said in Iowa on Sunday that she was not aware that the candidate had any such plans.

Kreisky, a leader of Austria’s Socialist Party, is Jewish, though he has been bitterly at odds with Israeli policies for years.

Whether or not the Greek-owned Silver Paloma will actually sail with the deportees and several hundred sympathizers from various countries remains uncertain.

The Greek government informed Israel last week that inasmuch as the ship has met all safety and other requirements and its chatterers have not broken the law, Greece cannot prevent its departure from Piraeus, the port of Athens, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday.

But the owners of the Silver Paloma, the Afreossa Line, announced in Haifa last Thursday that the voyage has been canceled. A spokesman for the company in Athens told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week that the charter had not been signed.

The entire project appears to be a PLO attempt at an international propaganda coup to gain sympathy for the Palestinian cause and especially Palestinian activists deported from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to Greek media reports, it has the endorsement of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou.

Meanwhile, none of the deportees or the celebrities who ostensibly will sail with them is in Athens. A PLO spokesman here who identified himself only as Hassan, insisted that despite the Afreossa Line’s announcement in Haifa, the voyage will be made, in another vessel if necessary.

Hassan would not say when the ship would sail or what flag it would fly. He told JTA that a number of “progressive” Israelis, including Charlie Bitton, a Knesset member of the Hadash Communist Party, would join the deportees at Larnaka, Cyprus.