Israel has lodged a formal protest with the Bush administration about the way it treated Housing Minister Ariel Sharon during his visit to Washington on Wednesday.
The protest was over White House and State Department intervention that kept U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp from officially receiving Sharon, a frequent critic of U.S. policy in the Middle East, at his HUD office.
They met instead on a private basis at the Israeli Embassy, at the invitation of the Israeli ambassador, Zalman Shoval.
A State Department spokesman confirmed that Secretary of State James Baker and the White House had intervened to cancel a previously scheduled official welcome for the Israeli housing minister at HUD.
The Israeli government apparently had intended to ignore the perceived snub. But its hand was forced, not only by Sharon but by general anger in the political community, including the opposition.
But the protest, when delivered, was mild, indicating Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir wanted to keep the incident as low-key as possible.
U.S. Ambassador William Brown was telephoned by Cabinet Secretary Elyakim Rubinstein, who informed him that the Israeli government took a dim view of Sharon’s treatment, which was “not how a friend and ally ought to behave.”
But the envoy was not summoned to the Foreign Ministry for an official tongue-lashing.
In fact, Shamir’s top aide, Yossi Ben-Aharon, said in a television interview only hours before that the treatment of Sharon was not necessarily a snub and that he had “not heard” that the prime minister intended to react.
‘INAPPROPRIATE’ TREATMENT
Sharon, who heads the Cabinet committee dealing with immigrant absorption, is a staunch advocate of Jewish settlement-building in the administered territories, which Washington considers an “obstacle to peace.”
He insists, however, that he is abiding by Israel’s promise to the United States not to direct Soviet Jewish immigrants to the territories.
Activists erected two new settlements in the West Bank last month while Baker was touring the Middle East in an effort to get the Arab states and Israel to agree to a peace conference.
Sharon, who was on a speaking tour of the United States, argued that he does not carry out settlement policy in a private capacity but as a member of Israel’s government.
Therefore, the slight was not to him but to the sovereign State of Israel, he said. He demanded a formal response.
Shamir reacted after consulting with Foreign Minister David Levy and Defense Minister Moshe Arens, who apparently felt a protest was warranted.
Shimon Peres, leader of the opposition Labor Party, said that while it was “stupid” to send Sharon to the United States at this time, he himself felt personally hurt when an Israeli Cabinet minister was snubbed.
In New York, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations issued a statement questioning the U.S. move to prevent Kemp from meeting Sharon in his office.
“This treatment of a minister from a friendly country was inappropriate,” it said. “Differences over policy should not and have not been the criteria for holding meetings with foreign officials.”
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