Simcha Dinitz, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, declared here yesterday that whatever party governs Israel, Israel’s fundamental policy will always be to seek a peace settlement in the Middle East. “There will never be a government in Israel that does not give peace its highest priority and be wholly dedicated to that national goal,” Dinitz said.
The envoy addressed some 900 participants in the annual meeting of the National Conference of Jewish Communal Service at the Shoreham-Americana Hotel. Another speaker at the gathering, Howard M. Sacher, professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University, exhorted American Jews to exercise “restraint” in criticism of the new Israeli regime headed by Likud leader Menachem Begin and “in assuming the spokesman ship for Israel “in the current phase of the Middle East political process. Sacher also lashed out at “elements among our own people that have arrogated to themselves the right to criticize Israel publicly on its diplomatic stance.”
Dinitz emphasized the basic continuity of Israeli policy. He said that “every Israeli government will compromise for peace,” negotiate with the Arabs “without prior conditions” and make territorial concessions consistent with Israel’s security needs. But no Israeli government would agree to a new Palestinian state on the West Bank, Dinitz said, contending that such a PLO-dominated entity would be dedicated to the destruction of both Israel and Jordan.
Dinitz said he welcomed U.S. efforts to encourage peace negotiations but warned that “even with the best intentions” the U.S. could not “devise a formula” that would be a substitute for direct negotiations. “Negotiations not pressures are the component of peace,” he declared, warning that “creating conceptions” of American intentions can have “a cumulative effect in Arab minds that the U.S. will force Israel back to the 1967 lines.” He said that such perceptions can frustrate “the peace process.”
URGES SELF-RESTRAINT
Sacher claimed that “the current political upheaval in Israel is being seized upon not by the Arab governments alone but also by influential elements within the White House and the State Department who regard Begin’s election as the principal obstacle to peace.” He said that against that back-ground, American Jews “can perform the service of verbal restraint in criticism” of the Begin government. He said an “equivalent service we can perform for Israel and for ourselves as American Jews” was “the service of exercising restraint and discrimination in the techniques by which we express our support for Israel.”
Sacher said that “movement” in the “form of easy spectaculars, sensational demonstrations or pro-Israel advertisements in the secular American press” becomes “counter-productive.” He added, “We can understand the motivations behind these gestures–our frustration, our sense of helplessness, even our sense that we are living here and the Israelis are on the battle line there. But all too often these sentiments have led us into behavior that does not serve Israel’s long-term interests.”
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