Despite serving two six-month terms in administrative detention within the last 13 months, Palestinian activist Faisal Husseini has become the favorite negotiating partner of the left-leaning wing of the Israeli political and military establishments.
Husseini attended meetings with key Israeli figures Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and still another meeting is scheduled for Thursday night.
Observers question whether these developments will condition Israelis to accept as “normal” a dialogue with an avowed supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or, as many fear, further aggravate the deep divisions in the country.
Vice Premier Shimon Peres, the Labor Party leader, told reporters Thursday that he approved wholeheartedly of the meetings.
Though he said he hadn’t known of them in advance, Peres said he thought them worthwhile. “Let them meet and talk, by all means,” Peres said.
But he distanced himself personally from the dialogue. “I myself am preoccupied with Treasury affairs,” said Peres, who is finance minister.
While Likud Knesset members were furious and the far right-wing Tehiya Party apoplectic, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir remained calm and seemed studiously bored by the events.
His aides dismissed the meetings as “a pathetic pilgrimage” that would “lead nowhere. No good can come of them.”
But others in Likud, including Binyamin Begin, son of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, warned that the meetings furthered the “legitimization of the PLO, especially abroad.”
They charged that the Labor Party as a whole was swinging to the left.
URGES PROSECUTION
Rabbi Eliezer Waldman of Tehiya demanded that the Knesset members who met with Husseini be stripped of their parliamentary immunity and prosecuted for violating the law banning contacts with the PLO.
Likud and the far right-wing are not alone in denouncing the private meetings key Labor and Mapam politicians and others had with Husseini this week.
They were reviled by rightist elements in the Labor Party as well.
Labor Knesset Member Micha Goldman argued that the meetings undermined the national consensus, setting back rather than advancing state efforts to engage in dialogue with the Palestinians.
Husseini, along with other prominent Palestinians, met for two hours Tuesday night with the Labor Party’s Knesset whip, Haim Ramon, Laborite Haim Zadok, a former justice minister, and two Mapam leaders, Knesset Member Yair Tsaban and former Knesset Member Elazar Granot.
Wednesday night, Husseini met with another group of influential Israelis associated with the leftist Shiluv circle of the Labor Party.
They included Deputy Finance Minister Yossi Beilin, a close associate of Peres, and Labor Knesset Member Avrum Burg.
Husseini was accompanied by Palestinian journalists Ziyyad Abu Ziyyad and Mamduh Alakat.
His Israeli political circle may expand further at a scheduled Thursday night meeting with Center-Shinui Party activists headed by Professor Amnon Rubinstein, Knesset Member Avraham Poraz and former Likud-Herut activist Moshe Amirav, who was drummed out of the party for advocating a dialogue with the PLO.
Two former Israel Defense Force chiefs of military intelligence, Gen. Aharon Yariv and Gen. Shlomo Gazit, are expected to join in the dialogue.
Detainees may be held for up to six months at a time without trial or charges.
The question has been raised why Husseini is now perceived by many high-ranking Israelis to be more a potential negotiating partner for peace than a security risk.
Burg, who participated in Wednesday night’s meeting with the 48-year-old Husseini, said the relationship began when the Palestinian was visited in prison by Shmuel Goren, coordinator of government affairs in the administered territories, shortly before his release.
Goren is said to have acted on behalf of Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Burg said the expanding dialogue with Husseini was partly intended to get Israelis used to the idea of talking with Palestinian activists and partly to counter the PLO’s peace offensive, which has been notably effective abroad.
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