Members of the Va’ad, the umbrella body of Soviet Jewish institutions, took part this week in a roundtable discussion with a Palestinian delegation that included Nabil Amro, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Moscow representative and Palestinian leader Faisal Husscini.
The seminar, which took place Monday in Moscow, focused on Soviet Jewish immigration to Israel. It was hosted by Al-Hiyat, a London Arabic-language newspaper, and held at Moscow’s Hammer Center.
Va’ad leaders would not, however, attend a follow-up meeting with PLO members Thursday at the Soviet Foreign Ministry, because it was “inconsistent with the non-political character of the Va’ad to meet with a political PLO delegation,” Va’ad Co-President Mikhail Chlcnov told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Thursday, in a telephone interview from Moscow.
Chlenov said he felt Monday’s discussion was intellectual, rather than political, and that the Palestinians there “were not representing themselves as members of the PLO, rather as representatives of the Palestinian people.”
However, a PLO spokesman in New York said that Amro’s presence at the seminar “reflected the point of view of the PLO.”
Chlenov described the meeting as “useful.” He said the Va’ad members told of their worry over the growing anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and the lack of response from the government.
Chlenov pointed out that there was proof that Arab organizations had supported the anti-Semitic group Pamyat in a demonstration it staged in December at the site of the Jewish congress that met to form the Va’ad.
U.S. OFFICIALS PRESENT
“We laid out our interests and our concerns not just before the Palestinians, but before the wide public that attended the session,” Chlcnov said. “We wanted to be understood, because we feel we are badly understood by the outside world.”
The Va’ad representatives at the meeting Monday were Chlcnov; Alexander Shmukler, president of B’nai B’rith in Moscow; and Vladimir Schapira, head of the Jewish Scientific Center.
Some Soviet Jews did participate in the Thursday meeting, though not under the auspices of the Va’ad, according to Chlcnov. They included Tancred Galompolsky, editor of a Jewish newspaper, and Yuri Sokol, chairman of the Moscow Cultural Society.
Also present at Monday’s meeting were members of the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the Egyptian ambassador to the Soviet Union and a Soviet Foreign Ministry official.
It could not immediately be determined if the presence of U.S officials violated the Bush administration’s policy of limiting contact with the PLO to the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia.
The Va’ad agreed to participate in Monday’s discussion because the PLO delegation was in Moscow specifically to exert pressure on the Soviet government to curtail Jewish immigration to Israel, according to Daniel Mariaschin, director of international affairs for B’nai B’rith International in Washington, who spoke with Shmukler.
HUSSEINI URGES SOVIETS TO CUT ALIYAH
In the meeting, the Va’ad made clear its position that aliyah “is the national movement of the Soviet Jews, devoted to the repatriation of the Jewish people to their homeland,” Shmukler told Mariaschin.
Shmuklcr told Mariaschin that during the roundtable discussion Monday, Husscini demanded that the Soviet Union curtail emigration to Israel.
He quoted Husseini as saying that Soviet Jewish emigration is “a mass movement to Israel,” and that 700,000 Soviet Jews would arrive in the next four years.
Husscini also reportedly said that Soviet Jews have the right to emigrate, but not to Israel. He said they should go to the United States, Canada and Western Europe.
In Jerusalem, Simcha Dinitz, chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency Executives, was sharply critical of declarations Husseini made against aliyah.
“The truth is finally coming out that the opposition of the Arabs is not merely to the settlement of the olim in the territories, since the olim do not choose to settle there anyway, but rather to aliyah at large,” he told senior officials of the Jewish Agency on Thursday.
There have been calls to put Husscini on trial in Israel for his statements against aliyah. Attorney General Yosef Harish on Wednesday informed Knesset member Geula Cohen of the right-wing Tehiya party that he was reviewing Husscini’s statements for possible legal measures against him.
(JTA correspondent Gil Sedan in Jerusalem contributed to this report.)
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