The president of the American Jewish Congress predicted that President Carter will bring “the strongest possible pressure” on Israel to accept a White House peace plan and that he may gain “limited success” in winning American Jewish support for it. Howard M. Squadron, speaking at the 14th annual American-Israel dialogue here, said that he expects a Carter Administration proposal for settling the Arab-Israel conflict “quite soon” if the upcoming London conference produces no results.
Noting that the White House has already begun its campaign to bring the American Jewish community over to its point of view on the Mideast, Squadron said that the success of such a campaign would be due to “the surface plausibility of the Carter Administration’s three-point analysis of the Mideast issue and its proposal to solve it.”
The three points of such an analysis, Squadron told the AJCongress-sponsored symposium, are: “That the U.S. and the USSR are engaged in a global contest for strategic territorial dominance; that the movement of Egypt and Saudi Arabia toward the U.S. makes this the time to seal the hegemony of the U.S. in the Mideast; and that (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat is ready to meet Jerusalem’s security concerns and make a real, permanent peace with Israel.” The AJCongress leader added that “most American Jews would regard such a plan as an imposed peace by an unsophisticated President.”
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