Peled Claims PLO is Ready to Accept Israel; Quaker Group at Which He Spoke Denounced by Jewish Group

Retired Israeli Maj. Gen. Matityahu (Matti) Peled, insisting that the Palestine Liberation Organization has made clear “without ambiguity” its readiness to accept Israel, called on the United States today to introduce a resolution in the UN Security Council to include the PLO as a participant in Middle East peace negotiations on the basis of Resolutions 242 and 338.

Peled was the featured speaker on the third day of a four-day conference on “The New Imperative for Israeli-Palestinian Peace” organized by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). One of the stated aims of the conference is to launch a campaign to change the attitude of the Carter Administration and the U.S. Congress toward the PLO.

Peled spoke to a receptive audience of some 400 persons inside the 4-H Center in Chevy Chase Md. while outside more than 300 members of Zionist organizations in Washington and Baltimore demonstrated. About 100 carried placards, some of which read, “What Arab Leader Is Ready for Peace?”; “Israel Cannot Deal With Murderers of Their Children”; and “Peled–Remember Maalot.”

Peled, a leader of the Council for Israel-Palestinian Peace, an organization that includes several other prominent Israelis, said “The expressions of recognition of Israel by the PLO have been made clearly, without ambiguity and I have no difficulty accepting these as de facto acceptance of Israel.” But he accused the Arab states and, also, by implication, the United States, of falling to encourage the PLO on that course.

He admitted that the PLO expressions of readiness to recognize “Israel as a Zionist state” have been made “in a somewhat indirect manner.” But, he said, under the circumstances” the PLO cannot go further” because “for the PLO to make a statement more explicit and (with) no indication such an explicit statement will bring a favorable expression from Israel” would be “an empty gesture.”

In connection with Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance’s trip to the Middle East, beginning tomorrow, Peled expressed hope that all parties to the conflict would resume talks at Geneva with the PLO participating “as an independent delegation.”

Although the AFSC conference was described by its organizers as “even-handed,” two long tables in the conference area were laden with pro-PLO, anti-Israel pamphlets, brochures and books, some labeled “free literature” and others for sale.

BASIS FOR DENUNCIATION OF QUAKER GROUP

Meanwhile, Jewish organizations denounced the AFSC for using the conference to pressure Israel to negotiate with the PLO. The Washington and Baltimore districts of the Zionist Organization of America organized a demonstration today opposite the meeting site. Rabbi Joseph Sternstein, president of ZOA, called the conference “a one-sided event staged to pressure the United States government into recognizing PLO claims to the land of Israel. It is designed to provide the terrorists with an acceptable public forum.”

At a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington Friday. Theodore Bikel, chairman of the National Governing Council of the American Jewish Congress, charged that the AFSC has been “misled by Arab propaganda” into allowing its good name and humanitarian reputation to be used to pressure Israel to negotiate with the PLO. “The Quakers would never have asked the NAACP to bargain with the Ku Klux Klan,” Bikel declared. “Yet they have no hesitancy in demanding that Israel sit down with a gang of murderers.”

Bernice S. Tannenbaum, president of Hadassah, in a response to a query from the AFSC why Jewish organizations see the AFSC as “anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, pro-Arab, pro-Palestinian and pro-PLO,” said the AFSC has limited its “focus to the needs of Palestinian Arabs while ignoring the Jews who had to flee Arab lands”; that it viewed the Mideast conflict as a territorial dispute when the question is whether Israel should be allowed to survive as a Jewish State; that the AFSC has accepted the PLO which refuses to renounce its objective to destroy Israel or to accept United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

RAPPED AS ANTI-JEWISH CONSPIRATORS

In a scheduled speech at the conference tonight, Dov Fisch, associate director of the Jewish Defense League, strongly denounced the participants of the conference as “anti-Jewish conspirators.” The JDL’s demand to speak at the conference was granted, but Fisch said this did not mean that it supported the purpose of the conference. He said that on every issue “the Quakers always find themselves on the side opposite” to the Jews, according to an advance text of his speech.

Fisch noted that the Quakers have appealed for the rights of Arabs in Israel. “We have seen such reports and appeals again and again despite the documented facts that Arabs living in the Jewish State enjoy the highest standard of living experienced by any Arab community in the entire Middle East,” he declared.

Fisch charged that the AFSC has done nothing “during all the years of Arab race-hate, religion-hate and especially Jew-hate.” He said the Quakers have never protested the Arab, treatment of minorities, such as the attempt to exterminate the Christians in Lebanon; the repression of four million Coptic Christians in Egypt; the extermination of Kurds in Syria and Iraq; the slaughter of Blacks in the Sudan; the policy of Black slavery in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Qatar and the Sudan; and the plight of Jews in Syria and other Arab countries.

VIRTUAL ‘MOUTHPIECE’ FOR PLO

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith charged that the AFSC is a “virtual U.S. mouthpiece” for the PLO’s propaganda line. Maxwell E. Greenberg, chairman of the ADL’s executive committee, said the conference this weekend launches the AFSC’s political and propaganda drive on the Carter Administration in support of the PLO and an imposed settlement in the Mideast on the terrorist group’s terms, Arnold Forster, ADL’s general counsel, said the AFSC has “promulgated for many years a one-sided pro-Arab, view” of Mideast issues.