Envoy Says He Resigned as Shultz Protest : Israeli Deplores Secretary Seeing U.S. Palestinians

Benjamin Netanyahu said today he resigned as Israel’s U.N. ambassador to protest Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s meeting with two Arab-Americans linked to the PLO.

Netanyahu said the meeting Saturday in Washington endangered Israel’s security and “raises a larger question of the value of American commitments to us when we have made huge concessions to obtain these guarantees.”

“I could not speak freely (about this) as long as I was ambassador. So I had to make a choice,” he said.

Netanyahu, the son of a Cornell University professor, has lived in the United States most of his life. He attended high school in Philadelphia and studied business administration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Meeting U.S. Citizens

Shultz, in remarks on Israel radio, said it was unreasonable to suggest he could not meet American citizens.

But Netanyahu said Shultz’s talks with Edward Said and Ibrahim Abu Lughod violated a 1975 U.S. pledge not to meet with Palestine Liberation Organization members. The two are members of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s parliament-in-exile. U.S. officials said their membership on the PNC does not make them PLO officials.

In addition, Netanyahu said, the United States appeared to be clearing the way for PLO participation in Middle East peace talks and for “a PLO state right in the heart of Israel, threatening our very security, our very future.”

Netanyahu, who had served as U.N. ambassador since 1984, said he was planning to resign in several weeks anyway to begin campaigning for a seat as a Likud legislator in November’s elections.

“I decided to resign early because of the critical developments,” he said.