The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Sunday that if he was elected president he would try to bring Israel and the Palestinians together, but would not “sit down” with Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
“We must not equate Arafat and PLO with a sovereign people,” Jackson said in an interview on the CBS-TV program “Face the Nation.”
“In the final analysis, it’s not Arafat versus Israel; it’s the Israelis versus the Palestinians.”
Jackson, campaigning in New York for the April 19 Democratic primary, has come under fire for what is considered to be his anti-Israel positions. Mayor Edward Koch has said that Jews would be “crazy” to vote for him.
Jackson has been under strong criticism from the American Jewish community since the fall of 1979, when he met twice with Arafat in Beirut and was photographed embracing the PLO leader. In between the two meetings with Arafat, Jackson went to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Another contender in the Democratic primary, Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee, in making a strong bid for the New York Jewish vote, has repeatedly criticized Jackson’s meetings with Arafat.
Both Gore, who has been attacked for pandering to Jewish voters, and Jackson sought to clarify their position on the CBS program Sunday.
Jackson maintained he met with Arafat after meeting with Sadat “for the sole purpose of challenging him to change his posture and move toward a mutual recognition policy with Israel as opposed to an elimination-of-Israel posture.”
He stressed that “our first obligation ought to be to assure Israel’s security,” which, he noted, includes “convincing the Palestinians to recognize their right to exist.”
MUTUAL RECOGNITION URGED
Jackson said that he wants to be part of a process to move Israel and the Palestinians “toward mutual recognition, as opposed to the present posture of mutual annihilation and daily killing.”
Gore called the charge of pandering to Jewish voters “outrageous,” noting that during his eight years in the House of Representatives he “compiled a 100 percent voting record in support of a strong Israel, a strong U.S.-Israel relationship,” while representing a rural farming district that was less than one-tenth of one percent Jewish.
“I’ve articulated the same position throughout this campaign, and indeed for 12 years,” Gore said, referring to his eight years in the House and the last four years in the Senate.
Gore also denied that he had endorsed Israeli Premier Yitzhak Shamir’s positions when he met with the Israeli leader in New York last month.
He noted that he supports the “land-for-peace formulation” advanced by Secretary of State George Shultz but rejected by Shamir, as well as United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for return of Arab lands and recognition of Israel’s right to secure borders.
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