Twenty-nine Israeli leftwing activists departed for Bucharest Wednesday morning for a two-day symposium with Palestinian intellectuals, including representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization. It is sponsored by the Rumanian Writers Association and ends Thursday night.
The group fell far short of the 100 who originally signed up for the trip. Most of the better-known activists dropped out, apparently having had second thoughts. There was dissension among the organizers and the threat of prosecution under a new law that prohibits Israelis from having contact with members of a terrorist organization.
The East for Peace movement, leftwing Sephardic doves, announced Tuesday that they were withdrawing. The Mapam Party, which was to have sent a delegation, bowed out Monday. But one of its leading intellectuals, Latif Dori, did go. He and writer-editor Yael Lotan are the most prominent members of the group that went to Bucharest.
The participants ran a gauntlet of jeers and abuse from demonstrators at Ben Gurion Airport who included relatives of terrorist victims. In the eyes of many Israelis the Bucharest meeting is nothing more than a PLO propaganda event.
The PLO announced it was sending a member of its Central Committee, Mohammed Milhem, a former West Bank Mayor. But rumors that PLO chief Yasir Arafat and other top leaders would attend turned out to be false.
‘A THEATER OF THE ABSURD’
Earlier this week, Premier Yitzhak Shamir urged the Rumanian government to withdraw its support from the meeting because it would involve Israeli citizens in an illegal act. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres characterized the event as “a theater of the absurd.”
Minister-Without-Portfolio Ezer Weizman, who works out of the Foreign Ministry, said Tuesday that he thought the Israeli group should stay home, not because meetings with the PLO are banned but because such unofficial contacts do nothing to advance the peace process. According to Weizman, the issues under discussion “are political matters of the first degree” which cannot be settled by unauthorized persons.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Committee of War Resisters International and the International Movement of Conscientious Objectors appealed to Peres to allow one of their people, Yeshayahu Toma-Shik, to go to Amman next week for an international conference on non-violence. It was organized by the Arab Thought Forum under the patronage of Crown Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein.
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