Palestinian Leaders Deny They Have Met with Shamir

Several major Palestinian leaders in the administered territories have denied reports that they had met recently with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, the daily newspaper Ha’aretz disclosed Tuesday.

Aides to the Likud leader have reported that Shamir has been meeting recently with several prominent Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But almost all of the Palestinians mentioned in those reports have denied that any meetings took place.

Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij said Monday that he had last met with Shamir in December 1986. Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, a philosopher who lives in East Jerusalem, also vehemently denied reports that he had participated in such meetings.

Nusseibeh said he had spoken by phone with Faisal al-Husseini, who said that neither he nor colleague Hanna Siniora had met with Shamir. Husseini heads the Arab Studies Institute in East Jerusalem, and Siniora is editor of the East Jerusalem Arabic newspaper Al-Fajr. Both are abroad at present.

Gaza lawyer Fayez Abu Rahme, who is also out of the country, phoned Jerusalem and denied the reports, as well.

Ha’aretz notes that a leaflet issued last weekend by the leadership of the Palestinian uprising in the territories calls for residents not to meet with Israeli leaders, especially prior to Shamir’s departure for Washington.

The purpose of such a boycott is to refute the claims of Israeli leaders that they will be able to find partners for political negotiations among residents of the territories.

But a prisoner recently released from the Ketziot detention camp in the Negev told the left-wing newspaper Al Hamishmar that Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin has been meeting on a regular, monthly basis with members of the “popular committees” incarcerated there.

Rabin’s purpose, the ex-prisoner said, is to persuade them to form an alternative leadership to the Palestine Liberation Organization.