Ariel Sharon took his opposition to the Israeli peace initiative to the United States this week, telling American Jewish audiences that the plan’s call for Palestinian elections could lead to a Palestinian state and “more terror and violence.”
Reaction to the minister of industry and trade, who is heading a rebellion within Likud ranks to scuttle the peace plan, was mixed.
On Thursday, a partisan audience at a Jerusalem Reclamation Project dinner gave Sharon a standing ovation when he said the elections plan would serve only to divide Jerusalem and “legitimize” radical Palestinians.
The organization, American supporters of the Ateret Cohanim organization in Israel, is dedicated to buying up Arab properties in East Jerusalem and settling Jews there.
On Friday, Sharon received a cooler reception from members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Sharon asked the conference to back the government of Israel, but in the next breath said its current peace initiative will lead only to more “terror and violence.”
Seymour Reich, chairman of the Conference of Presidents, reminded Sharon that the umbrella organization had “enthusiastically” welcomed and endorsed the peace initiative.
In a question and answer session, some members expressed distress that Sharon now came seeking their disapproval of the plan.
“Forgive me, but the thrust of your argument is to erode and undermine the positions of the present government,” said Phil Baum, associate executive director of the American Jewish Congress.
The American Jewish community “longed for some initiative” that would reverse Israel’s negative public relations image, continued Baum. “It would be deplorable if this accord were somehow to be lost.”
PUBLIC RELATIONS NOT PRIMARY
In response, Sharon said that public relations was important, “but that is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that the Jews will live in peace and security.”
The Israeli peace initiative, first proposed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and approved by the Cabinet and Knesset, calls for Palestinians to elect reprsentatives to negotiate with Israel toward an interim period of self-rule.
Sharon believes Palestinian leaders living in East Jerusalem should be ineligible either to vote or run in the elections.
“There is no difference between the Tunisian PLO or Jerusalem PLO,” he said, speaking of Palestine Liberation Organization leaders.
If the East Jerusalemites are elected, Sharon said, “all the world will be dancing around them” and “then we will not be able to take any steps against them in the future.”
Sharon outlined his own plan for peace by displaying a map of the administered territories.
The answer to a Palestinian state, he said, is “the deployment of more settlements, more military units” in order to sub-divide Palestinian areas with belts of Jewish settlement.
Sharon’s boost for more Jewish settlement, especially in Arab East Jerusalem, was the theme of his appearance Thursday at the Jerusalem Reclamation Project’s Jerusalem Day celebration.
Sharon is a hero to the organization because he moved into a heavily guarded home in the Old City of Jerusalem’s Moslem quarter, which the organization prefers to call the “Old Jewish Quarter.”
American Friends of Ateret Cohanim boasts of maintaining a yeshiva in the Moslem Quarter and buying and rehabilitating apartments there.
Above all, the organization claims to foster harmony between Jewish and Arab residents.
“We are not political,” said Jesse Maryles, president of the American Friends. “We are united in our love of Israel and its capital, Yerushalayim.”
Agreeing with Maryles was an audience of 800, who paid $500 a couple to attend the dinner at the New York Hilton.
The eclectic mix of revelers included secularists from the business world, right-wing rabbis and New York politicians, including Mayor Ed Koch.
The master of ceremonies was Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents, who explained he took part in a personal capacity.
“The organization acts legally and focuses only on establishing amiable relations with its Arab neighbors,” said Hoenlein in an interview.
Nevertheless, two left-wing members of the Jerusalem Municipal Council charge in a letter to this week’s New York Jewish Week that Ateret Cohanim “sees coexistence in terms of a rider and a horse.”
Among the accusations, “of which there are many, many more,” are the arbitrary eviction of a 90-year-old Arab woman and the illegal takeover of the apartment of a recently deceased Arab man, according to Ornan Yekutieli and Anat Hoffman, of the Citizens Rights Movement party.
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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.
