France’s Jewish community is in an uproar over Yasir Arafat’s forthcoming visit to France. It is planning a campaign of posters, newspaper advertisements and demonstrations to protest President Francois Mitterrand’s plans to meet with the Palestine Liberation Organization leader.
No date has been fixed for that meeting, but diplomatic observers believe it will take place in Paris shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir concludes his trip to the United States on April 14.
Reports about a meeting between Mitterrand and Arafat had been circulating for several months, but Israeli diplomats and Jewish leaders had hoped that a face-to-face rendezvous could be averted.
Elysee Palace’s official announcement Tuesday that the meeting will take place in France, rather than some distant country like Tunisia or Egypt, has further angered the local Jewish community.
Theo Klein, president of CRIF, the umbrella organization of Jewish groups in France, has asked Mitterrand for an audience.
Klein, who plans to meet the president with a representative Jewish delegation, has issued a statement stressing that because Mitterrand is “a sincere and loyal friend of Israel,” an explanation for his decision is warranted.
Several other Jewish organizations and individuals have been more outspoken in their comments, calling on Mitterrand not to betray his former commitments and to cancel his meeting with the PLO leader.
Israeli Ambassador Ovadia Soffer met Wednesday night with Foreign Minister Roland Dumas to express the Israeli government’s disappointment with Mitterrand’s decision. He later issued a statement charging France with ignoring Israel’s security needs.
The envoy also expressed his regret that Mitterrand had not waited before inviting Arafat to France until Shamir had presented his views on the peace process to Washington.
The French press has already started to turn Arafat into a media star. The various television channels are vying for interviews with the PLO leader, and most TV and radio stations have dispatched messengers to Tunis for interviews.
Newspapers and magazines are cither following suit or planning to publish background stories, which, Jewish organizations fear, will have a Pro-Palestinian slant.
Arafat’s stay in Paris will be the occasion of a major Palestinian propaganda campaign in an effort to try to win over French public opinion.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
