Church, Dinitz Say Peace Talks Between Israel, Egypt Still Alive

Sen. Frank Church (D.ladho), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz told a national conference of 350 Jewish leaders here that the prospects for peace in the Middle East had not been irreparably damaged by the events of the past few days. Addressing the Plenary Session of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, which began yesterday, they both noted that the road ahead was going to be very challenging for all involved.

Church pointed out that an absolutely fundamental change had taken place in the whole context of Middle East affairs when President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem. This act had eliminated the single most fundamental obstacle to the peace-making process, implicitly recognizing Israel as a nation and a neighbor. Equally important, he said, was the fact that face-to-face negotiations had been acknowledged as the most viable means of achieving the desired end.

The current setback showed that it was “a race that must be called back to the starting line and commenced anew,” he said. He conceded that the differences between the two sides represented an enormous gap, “but the context in which they are offered, negotiations in good faith, offer great hope.”

Church vigorously reasserted that the U.S. and Israel are firmly in agreement on two points. Firstly, an independent Palestinian state at this stage would be a base for war against Israel, aligned with the Soviet Union and acting as a destabilizing agent of Soviet foreign policy. This would clearly be a danger to all regimes in the Middle East, and was unacceptable, he said. Secondly, the PLO had rightly been condemned by President Carter as a body with whom it was not possible to make peace.

The Senator drew applause for his views on the future status of Jerusalem, saying “it is my view that this city of beauty and peace must never again be divided.” He thought that if ways can be found for the other questions to be resolved, the status of Jerusalem would also be soluble.

Whatever happened, Church considered that the appropriate role of the United States was to support any kind of forum in which problems could be meaningfully discussed face-to-face. The major search must be for credible security measures, he said. Bilateral guarantees had failed the Israelis at crucial moments in the past. “In short, U.S. guarantees, however sincerely undertaken, cannot substitute for the real thing.”

Dinitz shared the puzzlement of the entire world at the abrupt decision of Sadat to suspend the talks of the political committee in Jerusalem last Wednesday. Speculating on the reason for the move, he thought it was a ploy to get U.S. leverage on Israel. “Nothing can come about through outside pressure. This cannot succeed. That is why we are sorry if this is the strategy,” he said.

Noting that a change in the Egyptian attitude had been forming at least 10 days before the meeting in Jerusalem, Dinitz cited a deterioration in the tone of the Egyptian press, then by spokesmen of the government, and then by Sadat himself. In this connection, he explained yesterday’s Israeli Cabinet decision not to participate in the military committee talks slated for Cairo. “The military talks cannot even move one inch unless there is a political understanding,” he said. “Even with our desire for peace, we have some sort of self-respect. When Sadat called us ‘little clever merchants’ and ‘Shylocks,’ why should we send people to Cairo to be thrown back again or insulted?”