Yasir Arafat will visit Rome in the next few days to meet with Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti, according to diplomatic sources quoted in the Italian news media Tuesday.
The sources said the Palestine Liberation Organization chief will discuss possible initiatives to resolve the Palestinian situation, in light of the outcome of Israel’s parliamentary elections Tuesday and the American presidential elections Nov. 8.
Andreotti has long played a role in Middle East diplomacy. His expected meeting with Arafat in Tunisia on Oct. 23 did not materialize, because Arafat left suddenly for Aqaba, Jordan, for a meeting with Jordan’s King Hussein and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
Italy supports Palestinian calls for a homeland, but insists on Israel’s right to a secure existence. The Italian news media have given extensive coverage to the Israeli election campaign.
Commentators here have made no secret of their preference for Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’ Labor Party, which says it is willing to trade territory for peace, over the Likud bloc, headed by Premier Yitzhak Shamir, which vows not to give up land under any circumstances.
Arrigo Levy observed Tuesday in a frontpage editorial in Corriere della Sera that “40 years after its birth, the Promised Land of peace with its neighbors is still far off for Israel.
“But the promise to conserve land at any cost, which Shamir’s party has made to the Israeli people, is nothing more than a golden calf,” wrote Levy. It is “a false god which cannot placate the fears or satisfy the anxiety for security of the nation which, more than any other, has undergone tortures and afflictions throughout history.”
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.
