Mapam Embroiled in Controversy over Leader’s Meeting with PLO Delegate

Mapam decided last night to support its political secretary Naphtali Feder in a bitter controversy over what Feder has described as an unplanned, casual meeting with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization in a Prague hotel restaurant last month. The meeting occurred while Feder was in Prague to attend an unofficial gathering of multi-national peace committees during which, he freely reported, he had met with and in fact was sought out by delegates from Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon.

His brief meeting with a PLO man, which he had failed to mention in his initial report, set off a political storm in Israel. Likud circles demanded that Feder be prosecuted for contact with an enemy agent. Likud filed a Knesset motion for an urgent debate on the matter, The motion was rejected, although the Knesset agreed to discuss the matter when it comes up in the normal course of debate.

But even some members of the Labor Alignment have been critical of Feder. Shoshana Almoslino charged at a Labor faction meeting that Feder’s contact with a PLO man was “a knife in the back of the nation,” Others claimed that Feder had weakened Israel’s resolute attitude to have no contact whatsoever with a terrorist organization.

FEDER’S VERSION OF INCIDENT

Feder gave his version of the incident on television last night. He said he was sitting at lunch with three other people when a fourth man approached, asked if he could Join the group and introduced himself as a PLO representative. “We exchanged some polite remarks and then a few words over our respective attitudes after which it became evident that there is no room for talks with the PLO,” Feder said.

He did not identify the PLO man by name, but said the man had asked him if he was not afraid of legal consequences when he returned to Israel as a result of their conversation. Feder said that he had replied that his was a democratic country where people can talk freely.

Mapam Secretary General Meir Talmi said today that the party stood solidly behind Feder. He did the right thing and violated no decision of the party, Talmi said. He charged that opposition circles were trying to inflate the incident to gain political capital for themselves. M, Ben Ze’ev, an attorney and former legal advisor to the government, pointed out last night that the law prohibiting contact with enemy agents had a qualifying clause which stated that the contact had to be made with intent to damage the State or have no acceptable explanation in order to Justify prosecution. He said these provisions could not be claimed in a chance meeting such as Feder described.