Delegates at Leadership Conference Endorse Nixon’s Mideast Policy, Reject Criticism

More than 400 representatives of the established Jewish organizations, attending an Emergency Leadership Conference, rejected a challenge by the Concerned Jewish Students and passed a resolution in which they “vigorously endorse and support the Mideast policy enunciated by President Nixon.” The students did not want Nixon to be praised so highly, according to one conference participant. The majority of the delegates to the conference, held in Newton last weekend, urged adherence to Nixon’s program of “maintaining the balance of power and not imposing a settlement,” including “all pressures, however well-motivated, to impose pre-determined and futile plans on Israel and the Arab states.” The resolution also called on the Big Powers to “desist from those activities that cripple the process of free negotiations, which alone can bring the Middle East to the threshold of genuine peace.”

The conferees further urged that the Big Powers and the United Nations desist from activities and statements which undermine the delicate balance of UN Resolution 242. In an additional statement, the conferees elaborated that “The regrettable fact…is that the Great Powers and the UN Secretariat are obstructing any Israeli-Egyptian negotiations, direct or indirect” by turning “the so-called ‘talks under Dr. (Gunnar V.) Jarring’s auspices’ ” into “a mere cover for a Big Power dictate. The major powers, the statement continued, “wish to substitute for defensible borders, freely negotiated between the parties themselves, an international force under the auspices of the same UN which showed its moral bankruptcy in 1967.” The 27 organizations participating in the conference was coordinated by the Israel Task Force of the Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Boston.