Shamir-bush Meetings a Success, Says Israeli Ambassador to U.S.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s meetings with the Bush administration were “very successful,” Moshe Arad, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, told local leaders of the Washington Jewish community on Friday.

“As we meet today on Friday, I am much happier than had we met on Tuesday,” Arad said at the sixth annual leadership award luncheon of the Washington Jewish Week.

Shamir, who arrived in Washington Wednesday for meetings with President Bush and other members of the administration, ended his official visit Friday after meetings with members of the House and Senate.

Arad broke away from a luncheon between Shamir and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to speak at the awards function.

The ambassador said that Shamir’s visit demonstrated “the continuing of the strong relationship between Israel and the United States in their joint search for peace.”

The visit “will help clarify to world public opinion that Israel is not interested in maintaining the status quo, to freeze the situation as it is,” Arad said.

After Shamir and Bush met at the White House Thursday, the president endorsed Shamir’s proposal for elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to allow Palestinians to choose their own representatives to negotiate with Israel for self-rule in the territories.

The challenge for the Palestinian now is to decide whether they want to seek a solution “by ballots and not by bullets,” Arad said.

The Jewish Week award went to Professor Eva Jospe, a translator, writer and teacher of modern Jewish thought at George Washington University.

Arad praised the selection because he said Jewish continuity depended on Jewish education.

“The strength and support for Israel in the American public opinion and the American Jewish community can be assured only if there is Jewish continuity,” he said.

This can be assured, he said, “only if the new generation grows up with a background of understanding of Jewish history, of Jewish roots and the continuous struggle and challenges that the Jewish people have conquered during our history.”