The governing board of the National Council of Churches (NCC) has completed the “first reading” of a proposed new policy statement on the Middle East which calls on the Arabs to recognize Israel “as a Jewish State” and on Israel to recognize the right of Palestinians to “national self-determination” including “a so verei###g state.”
The 26-page draft discussed at the board’s semi-annual meeting in Indianapolis, Indians last week, calls on all parties to end violence; urges Palestinians and Arab states to recognize Israel as a Jewish State with secure, defined and recognized borders; and urges Israel to withdraw from occupied territories and recognize Palestinian rights to “national self-determination” and “a Palestinian entity, including a sovereign state.”
It also calls for international guarantees of security for Israel and any Palestinian entity created by negotiations as well as solutions to the problems of displaced refugees.
An NCC spokesman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that the committee which drafted the resolution will now consider changes proposed by board members during the Indianapolis meeting and by any of the 32 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox church groups which are members of the NCC. The committee will then present the statement for a second and final reading at the board’s meeting in November.
ADL CRITICAL OF REPORT
Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith has criticized as “naive” a report on the Middle East also presented to the NCC’s governing board at the Indianapolis meeting.
While saying that the document contains “certain positive elements,” Nation Perlmutter, ADL national director, declared that “it strains credulity for a panel of the National Council of Churches, itself a religious body, to call for U.S. dialogue with the PLO terrorists and murderers who are dollied with the America-hating, fanatical Ayatollah Khomeini and with the Soviet Union, religion’s swam enemy.”
Perlmutter said that instead of charging that the Camp David agreement is “fundamentally flowed,” the report would have been for more constructive had it urged the rejectionist Arabs to join the Camp David peace process.
REPORT TERMED GUIDANCE, NOT POLICY
The report was made by the NCC’s Middle East Panel which earlier this year made a two-week fact-finding visit to Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. The NCC spokesman told the JTA that the report was not policy but given to the governing board for “guidance” in considering the proposed policy statement. He noted that the policy statement does not mention the PLO but speaks in more “general” terms only of Palestinians.
Perlmutter said that “we appreciate that the panelists call upon the PLO to renounce violence, change the PLO covenant and accept the legitimacy of Israel.” But, he added, “in spite of this, illogically, the report encourages the PLO In Its intransigence because it calls for open dialogue whether or not these changes are made. We also reject its call for Palestinian self-determination, a code phrase for a PLO state, and changes in UN (Security Council) Resolution 242 which scuttle the sense of the resolution.”
He said that in urging Palestinian self-determination, the NCC panel “is inviting the establishment of a state which, as a surrogate for the Soviet Union, would be allied against American interests.”
The NCC decided last November to draft a policy statement on the Middle East after it rejected a resolution by the Antiochian Christian Archdiocese of New York and All North America accusing Israel of violating human rights. The Antiochian Church group has repeatedly sought to get the NCC to adopt anti-Israel resolutions. The NCC spokesman said to day that once a policy statement is adopted, that will be the policy of the NCC for the next 10 years.
In making the decision last November to draft a policy statement, the NCC also voted to send a fact-finding panel to the Mideast. Prior to its trip, the committee held hearings in New York and Washington which were boycotted by Jewish organizations because they considered that the NCC had demonstrated a pro-Arab bias. However, Jewish groups met in late March with the NCC’s human rights committee to discuss the proposed policy statement.
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.
