After a meeting with the Rev. Jesse Jackson that kicked off his week-long visit to the United States, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Thursday that relations between Jews and African Americans showed “new promise, not just a new beginning.”
The discussion, Peres said afterward, “focused on the future, rather than the past. The main item was the growing understanding between African American and Jewish life.
“We hope to arrive at a fuller understanding,” he said.
Jackson said it was “a joy, really, to talk about a range of concerns.”
He praised Israel’s “rather aggressive policy of bridge-building,” including its aid programs to Africa and its decision this week to accept 100 Moslem refugees from Bosnia-Herzogovina.
Jackson has met previously with Peres, as well as with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Peres extended an invitation to Jackson to visit Israel.
Jackson accepted the invitation in principle, but said no time has been set for the trip, which would be his first to Israel since 1979.
Peres met later on Thursday with a group of 50 African American leaders, who expressed how pleased they were to be setting this precedent.
A ‘FIRST’ FOR PERES
“This is the first time for me too, meeting with Jesse Jackson in the morning and you instead of going first to UJA and (Israel) Bonds,” said Peres, who has already infuriated some American Jewish community activists by criticizing the fund-raising leadership.
The meeting with the African American leaders fit in well with the main purpose of the foreign minister’s trip, an address Sunday at the annual plenum of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.
NJCRAC, more than other umbrella organizations in Jewish life, is concerned with intergroup affairs. Black-Jewish relations is a topic high on the organization’s agenda.
Peres is also scheduled to meet next week with Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake.
Peres is the first top Israeli official to visit Washington since President Clinton’s inauguration, and his meetings are expected to focus on reviving the stalled peace talks.
But his trip may have been overshadowed by the presence this past week in Washington of the heads of the Israeli negotiating teams involved in the peace process. The negotiating teams for the bilateral talks report directly to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, bypassing the Foreign Ministry.
Speaking to reporters after meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on Thursday, Peres said that “deportation is not the policy of Israel, but the exception of its policies.”
He said as well that Israel considered its decision to accept the return of the deportees by the end of the year to be in accord with U.N. Security Council Resolution 799, which demanded the reversal of the deportations.
When asked about statements by Rabin apparently taking a more hard-line position, Peres said the prime minister was “misquoted.”
Peres said he also raised with Boutros-Ghali the fates of Israeli air force navigator Ron Arad and three other servicemen missing in Lebanon since 1982.
“The secretary-general said he will do whatever he can, openly and in a quiet way, to clarify their fate and enable the families to know exactly about their whereabouts.”
Peres also met on Thursday with Cyrus Vance, who is negotiating a U.N. settlement of the crisis in Bosnia, and with a group of leaders from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
On Friday he was to meet with Cardinal John O’Connor of New York, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright and the board of trustees of the American Jewish Congress.
The discussion with Jackson, which lasted about 45 minutes, revolved on “matters of the heart, not the mind,” said Peres.
Jackson downplayed his implicit disagreement with Israel over one of its most contentious issues the deportation of 415 Palestinians to southern Lebanon last December.
“There’s a basic concern about the deportees, and how that will be handled,” he said. “I expressed my concern about the humanitarian situation. “It’s a very touchy situation. Nonetheless, we discussed it. But we hope nothing will stop the peace process.”
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.
