Israeli Group Discloses Secret Arafat Talks

A delegation of Israeli Arabs and Jews, including two members of Parliament, returned to Israel on Sunday from what they said were seven hours of secret meetings with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat held during the previous four days.

The delegation, representing the Progressive List for Peace political party, said Arafat agreed to take up with the PLO Executive Committee its proposal for a “mutual cessation of violence” in return for U.S. and Israeli agreement to a United Nations-sponsored international conference on the Middle East.

State Department Mum

The Reagan Administration and the Israeli government have repeatedly said they would not take part in such a conference, arguing that peace will come to the Middle East only when Israel’s neighbors negotiate directly with it. In Washington on Sunday, the State Department had no comment on the delegation’s announcement.

The six-member group also said that Arafat promised, in the next few days, to provide information on four Israeli soldiers missing in action in Lebanon.

“We hope that within one week we shall submit this information to the government of Israel,” said Uri Avneri, one of the six. Avneri, a magazine publisher, is co-chairman of the Progressive List for Peace party.

Avneri said he has a letter from Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin promising that if information on the four missing Israelis is forthcoming, Israel will permit the body of PLO official Fahd Kawasmeh to be returned for burial to his former home in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River.

The delegation’s meetings with Arafat are expected to create a major political stir in Israel, which does not recognize the PLO leader or his organization as a legitimate negotiating partner. “Nobody is going to like it,” commented one source close to Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

Last November, a government crisis nearly occurred when an Arab member of the Knesset (Parliament) from Peres’ Labor alignment tried to attend a meeting of the Palestine National Council--the so-called Palestinian parliament in exile--in Amman. The crisis was averted when the Knesset member, Abdel Wahab Daroushe, failed to get a visa allowing him to enter Jordan.

While the six-member Progressive List for Peace delegation is believed to be the largest from Israel ever to meet with Arafat, meetings between Israeli officials and the PLO chieftain are not unprecedented. In previous instances, “there have never been any steps taken” against the Israelis involved, the source close to Peres recalled. Also, the source said, the question of Israel’s missing soldiers “is one topic that’s above national discussion.”

At the airport where members of the returning peace party delegation tried to hold a press conference, angry demonstrators shouted insults at them, and a group described by Israel radio as “10 to 15 toughs” roughed up at least one party supporter.

‘Fascist Storm Troopers’

Police refused to allow the group to meet reporters in the VIP lounge of Ben-Gurion Airport, where such press conferences usually take place, causing Avneri to accuse them of “aiding and abetting the Fascist storm troopers” who demonstrated against the delegation.

In addition to Avneri, the delegation included Knesset members Mohammed Miari and Mattityahu Peled, a retired major general; Yaacov Arnon, former director-general of the Finance Ministry; lawyer Kamel Daher, and Anglican clergyman Riah abu Lassal. All are members of the Executive Committee of the Progressive List for Peace, which won its first two parliamentary seats in elections last July.

The party, which gets most of its support from Israeli Arab voters, advocates creation of an independent Palestinian state. Avneri, Peled and Arnon, all Jews, have all met with Arafat on previous occasions but it was the first meeting with the PLO leader for the three Arab members of the delegation.

Avneri said in a telephone interview that the delegation had agreed not to reveal where the meetings took place, but United Press International quoted Palestinian sources in Paris as saying the site was the Tunisian capital of Tunis. Avneri said there were several meetings, lasting a total of about seven hours, during the four days that the delegation was out of the country. The group returned to Israel on a flight from Rome.

Avneri said their discussions ranged over the “whole Middle East scene,” and he stressed the proposal for what he termed an “armistice” in connection with an international peace conference.

Avneri called the meetings with Arafat “progress of a sort,” adding that the six delegation members “don’t negotiate for the Israeli government.” He conceded that “in a way, we are swimming against the stream.”