San Diego Foundation Cancels Arab-Israeli Meeting

Officials of a university foundation, reacting to Israel’s refusal to grant two Palestinian leaders travel permits to the United States, Wednesday canceled a meeting of prominent Israelis, Egyptians and Palestinians here to discuss Israel’s occupation of Arab territories.

Robert Ontell, executive director of the San Diego State University Foundation’s Fred J. Hansen Institute for World Peace, blamed “policy conflicts” in the government for the Israeli Defense Ministry’s refusal to approve travel permits for deposed Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natashe and Gaza lawyer Faiz Abu-Rahma to attend the meeting. A ministry spokesman said Saturday in Tel Aviv that Israeli officials feared that both men would meet with “hostile elements” while in San Diego. He did not elaborate. Travel permits were given to other Palestinian leaders, but they refused to attend the meeting unless Natashe and Abu-Rahma were also allowed to attend.

Residents of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip who want to travel abroad are required to obtain permission from Israeli military authorities.

Ontell, who worked almost eight months to arrange the meeting, said that Natashe, Abu-Rahma and “other moderate” Palestinians had agreed to meet with seven Israeli Parliament members and intellectuals and three Egyptian Parliament members to discuss solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The meeting was to include a team of U.S. observers that included Samuel W. Lewis, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, and Harold H. Saunders, a former assistant secretary of state for Mideast affairs.

The five-day symposium, which was to begin next week at Vacation Village, a Mission Bay hotel-resort, will be rescheduled, Ontell said.

The planned meeting was one of three gatherings between Egyptians and Israelis that have been quietly arranged by the foundation since 1981. According to Ontell, the meetings have been encouraged and funded partly by the State Department as a way to find a solution to the problem of establishing a Palestinian homeland.

He said the meetings have been held in secret for security reasons and to avoid embarrassing Egypt, which was ostracized by much of the Arab world after signing the peace treaty with Israel.