Jackson Says His Israel Trip Helped Push Mideast Peace Process

The Rev. Jesse Jackson told Jewish leaders here this week that he was responsible for getting Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres back to the peace table and for convincing Arafat to condemn the Arab bombing in the Israeli town of Hadera.

But Israel’s consul general in New York, Colette Avital, said that although Jackson was “very helpful” in convincing Arafat to condemn the terror attack, he was “overreaching” with respect to his role in the peace talks.

This week’s meeting in Bucharest, Romania, between Arafat and Peres was “decided before Jackson arrived” in Israel, Avital said. “We can’t say he was the one to get the negotiations back on track.”

She pointed out that the PLO said it would return to the conference table after Israel agreed to admit foreign observers and not seek to block a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the Feb. 25 slaughter in a Hebron mosque of 29 Palestinians by an Israeli settler.

But Avital stressed that Jackson was “instrumental” in convincing Arafat that a strong condemnation of Arab terrorist attacks was necessary.

“He was very helpful in terms of trying to get in touch with Arafat and speaking to him and telling him to be more forceful in condemning terrorism,” said Avital.

She was reacting to Jackson’s comments Tuesday to members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and later to reporters, that he traveled to Israel last week “as an African American putting those two forces together,” referring to Israel and the PLO.

Jackson told reporters after the meeting that he had urged the “primary parties to go back to the table and not let bureaucrats slow the process down.”

He emphasized that he had been invited to Israel by both the government of Israel and the PLO and said he believes the contribution he made while there was to “help stimulate the process of the PLO and Israel getting back to the table, to help speed up the peace process.”

Jackson maintained that the United States must become more of a player in the peace process. “We have been a bit too passive,” he said.

Jackson said the successful implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord will be a “bridge to the next state. All parties are looking at whether this will work out. Can the PLO Arabs be trusted? Can Israel be trusted? Once the bridges of trust are built, many things can cross over that bridge.”

Jackson noted that it is ironic that “the PLO is closer to an agreement with Israel than it is with those who want to sabotage the process. There is now a new creative center of Palestinians and Israelis, and saboteurs and cynics and skeptics on both sides are the burdens of the peace process.”

Regarding his talks with Arafat, Jackson said he talked to him about “sensitivities.” He indicated that Arafat was unaware of the impact on Israelis of the suicide bomber who killed seven Israelis in Afula on April 6. This attack was followed one week later by the one in Hadera, in which five Israelis were killed.

“I talked to him about why it is good and right to go on the moral offensive, to roundly condemn that which threatens the peace process, that which threatens his return to Jericho,” said Jackson. “He had everything to gain and nothing to lose in being aggressive on that.”

He said that just a day after speaking with Arafat, the suicide bomber in Hadera struck and Arafat “not only roundly condemned it quickly but called Prime Minister (Yitzhak) Rabin and wrote a letter to President Clinton, which he released to the public.”

Although Arafat did not publicly condemn those who planned the attack, he decried the fact that it was targeted at “innocent people.” And in his letter to Clinton and call to Rabin, Arafat strongly rejected such attacks.

Jackson denounced that Afula bombing, saying it was aimed at “people who were not at war with anybody. (They) were just blown away and burned up. In Hebron, people were on their knees praying when they were just blown away. Many of them died because they couldn’t get from Hebron to the hospital because of the roadblocks. So there’s enough pain to go around.”