Abie Nathan Says He’ll Release Names of Others Who Talked to PLO Members

Abie Nathan, the Israeli peace advocate, said last week that if he is arrested and sent to jail again for meeting with Yasir Arafat, he would release the names of “dozens” of Likud party members, Laborites and religious party members who have also met with members of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Earlier this month, Nathan met twice with PLO chairman Arafat in Tunisia, the eighth direct contact between the two. But unlike their previous meetings, this one came after Nathan was jailed for four months for meeting the PLO leader, which is a crime under Israeli law.

Nathan may be arrested once again when he returns to Israel in the next few days.

When he first met Arafat in 1982, Nathan said, “His attitude wasn’t for peace. It was bitter.”

As a result, Nathan said he did not try to speak with Arafat for six years.

“But when a man tells me, any Arab leader, ‘I see that you have a right to live next to me as neighbors, to live in peace and prosperity, we want you to live in secure boundaries,’ I grab his hand and I embrace him,” Nathan said.

Nathan was in Washington to speak to the annual convention of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. For a keynote speech Friday, he received a $2,000 honorarium, which he planned to donate to both an Israeli hospital, Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv, and a Palestinian one in the Gaza Strip.

Nathan called it “absurd” for Jews to interpret the handful of raids into Israel by factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization as evidence that the group does not have peaceful intentions.

In Tel Aviv, 80,000 Palestinians work “in my backyard” every day, Nathan said, in an interview here in his hotel room in Arlington, Va.

“What has happened in the past 10 years in Tel Aviv? It’s an absurdity to say, ‘Oh, (the PLO is) doing that.’ These guys can do it every day of the week. Nowhere has an enemy behaved in such a manner that he comes into your territory, he works and goes home,” he said.