After being warmly greeted in Damascus, the head of a delegation of Israeli Arabs who paid a visit to Syrian President Hafez Assad received a decidedly cool reception on his return home.
The 57-man delegation’s four-day trip made history as the first Israeli mission to travel officially to Syria.
But Knesset member Abdel Wahab Darawshe of the Arab Democratic Party raised hackles back home in comments going far beyond expressing sympathy on the death of Assad’s son in a traffic accident a few weeks ago.
“Would that the position of Arabs in Israel resembled the position of the Jews in Syria,” Darawshe said to journalists in Damascus. He extolled Syria, under its “very popular and beloved leader,” Assad, as “a stronghold of liberty.”
And if Darawshe offended Israeli Jews, he did no better with other Israeli Arab political leaders. The council of heads of Arab municipalities was furious with him for claiming in Syria that he represented Palestinian Arabs, when, as they saw it, he and his fellow-travelers were self-appointed and represented only themselves in the trip to Syria.
An indirect telephone hook-up enabled members of the delegation and an Israel Radio journalist accompanying them to report on every stage of their visit. They were given the redcarpet treatment and allowed full freedom of movement.
One delegation member used the visit to be reunited with his brother from whom he has been separated since Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
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