Both Premier Yitzhak Shamir and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres have received messages in the past few years from senior members of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a former member of Shamir’s Likud bloc said Thursday.
Moshe Amirav, now a member of the fledgling Center Party, said Wednesday that the messages, which were rejected by Shamir and Peres, expressed the PLO’s readiness to conduct peace negotiations with Israel on the basis of mutual recognition.
Amirav said non-Israeli figures had conveyed the messages to the two Israeli leaders. He mentioned Claude Cheysson, a European Community commissioner and former French foreign minister, as one of the emissaries.
Amirav resigned from Likud’s Central Committee after reports surfaced that he had met with representatives of the PLO.
He has since supported the notion that Israel must eventually negotiate with the terrorist organization — a position at odds with that of the Likud bloc, which officially rules out ever dealing with the PLO.
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.
