Aj Congress Hears Priest Call State Department’s Middle East Policy Inept

Father John Sheerin. editor of The Catholic World, told some 1,000 persons attending today an American Jewish Congress rally for the security of Israel that the current State Department’s Middle East policy is a “masterpiece of inept diplomacy” that had “evoked protests from practically all parties involved.”

The priest, who recently returned from a tour of the Middle East, declared that the various proposals for a peace settlement submitted recently by the United States “represent not only a turnabout in American policy but a tragic failure to face up to some of the chief obstacles to peace.”

Father Sheerin criticized Secretary of State William P. Rogers’ proposal to give Arab refugees of the 1948 war the option of repatriation to Israel or resettlement in an Arab country, “I believe the Secretary’s proposals will not bring about Arab recognition of the legal existence of Israel, nor will they assure security to Israel,” he said. The prospect appears to be an escalated campaign of more sustained and intensified guerrilla activity “on the part of the so-called Palestinians” who “vehemently affirm that they will settle for nothing short of total destruction of the state of Israel regardless of peace commitments by Arab leaders.”

OIL DIPLOMACY AND FOUR POWER TALKS ASSAILED

New York Senator Charles Goodell said U.S. foreign policy should try to create an atmosphere in which responsible Arab leaders can sit down with Israeli leaders and work out a just peace. He assailed Rogers’ policy as unrealistic and dangerous. “While purporting to be balanced it actually favors the Arabs,” Goodell added. The Senator declared that “oil diplomacy should not be the basis for our foreign policy” and urged abandoning Four Power talks because it is a “diversionary tactic.” He also criticized the French government for selling jets to Libya. Goodell noted that this country cannot afford to be so naive as to say “we can be neutral when one side says its purpose is to destroy and the other side expresses a will toward peace. How can we be neutral in such a situation?”

Representative Edward I. Koch told the rally he did not believe it is in the interest of the United States to change its policy toward Israel “so as to make it more acceptable to the Arab states.” He said he supported the policy Nixon expressed when he was running for office last year that would give Israel a technological military margin to more than offset her hostile neighbors’ numerical superiority. “Unfortunately, the campaign rhetoric has not been fulfilled,” Koch said, “and we have seen under the present administration a change in policy which euphemistically has been labeled ‘balanced policy’ Yes, the scales have been tipped, but tipped adversely to Israel and its security.”

RESOLUTION URGES ADMINISTRATION NOT TO IMPOSE CONDITIONS

A resolution calling on the Nixon Administration “not to draw maps, not to propose boundaries, and not to impose conditions” but to bring both sides in the Middle East conflict to the conference table was adopted by those attending the rally sponsored by the AJ Congress’ New York Metropolitan Council. America’s proper role, the resolution continued, “must be to bring the parties together. It is not necessary for America to chose between Israel and the Arab states. Peace can come to the Middle East only if the nations of the Middle East themselves make peace.” The resolution urged that Israel must “be given sufficient military power to deter attack” and warned that the current State Departments policy “plays into the hands of the USSR by offering concessions that advance Soviet designs in the Middle East.”