Leaders of organized American Jewry this week had their first official meeting ever with Faisal Husseini, the guiding force behind the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace talks, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has learned.
The meeting, which was private and off the record, began a little after 11 p.m. Sunday and concluded after midnight at Husseini’s headquarters, the New Orient House, in eastern Jerusalem.
According to a source who was present, Husseini, who is a senior adviser to the Palestinian negotiating delegation, though not an official member of it, gave a presentation to dozens of members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations, who were here for their annual fact-finding mission.
He explained to them the steadily declining support in the Palestinian street for the peace process, which hit a new low after the “shock of the deportations” carried out by the Israeli government.
But Husseini, who is said to be close to the moderate wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization, reportedly said he believed returning to the negotiating table is key.
“Even though he felt the issue of the 400 deportees was a clear violation of international law and continued to insist on Israel’s acceptance” of a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding the deportees’ return, “he was willing to accept commitments about the future of deportations in order to smooth the way to negotiations,” said the source.
In other words, “he reduced the problem of the 400 to the principle of deportations in the future,” the source said.
Husseini also reportedly criticized the current Israeli negotiating delegation’s position on an autonomy agreement in the territories as “reflecting too much of the previous formulation” under Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
The “emotional high point, however, was not about politics but the role of (Palestinian) children and the impact on children of the continuing violence,” the source said.
He said Husseini described the “life-changing impact” on his own son of an encounter with an Israeli soldier in a way “that will be remembered by all those present.”
This drove home, he said, the point that in the ongoing encounter between the Jewish and Palestinian communities, “the fundamental emotional issues are more powerful than the minutiae of political negotiations.”
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.
