An Israeli Arab labor leader and former member of the Knesset (Parliament) told a British audience yesterday that direct negotiations between Israel and the Arab states were the only possible solution for the Middle East problem. Yusuf Khamis, a member of the Mapam Party and of the Executive of Histadrut, Israel’s labor federation, spoke at a meeting arranged by Mapam in Britain. He is in charge of social welfare for West Bank Arabs.
He said there were deep-seated conflicts among the Arab states themselves and a social and economic abyss between the rich oil-producing countries and the poverty-stricken states of Egypt and Jordan. He said the problems of the Arabs would be solved as soon as general peace was established in the region. Arab guerrilla groups such as El Fatah could make no constructive contribution to peace, he said, so long as they adhered to terrorist tactics and the indiscriminate killing of civilians. He said an imposed solution by the Big Powers could not bring peace to the Middle East.
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.
