Israeli Coalition and Arafat
Jonathan Institute director David Bar-Illan’s column “What PLO Tells Faithful Not What It Says to U.S., Shows Folly of Recognition” (Op-Ed Page, Dec. 22) is a shocker.
He reveals that all Yasser Arafat’s top associates, in addressing the Arabs in Arabic “ . . . solemnly swore that the ultimate goal--replacing Israel with an Arabic state--remained intact.”
Did Secretary of State George Shultz really believe Arafat’s declaration in English at Geneva before worldwide television that the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist, within secure borders?
Why did he not reveal to the American people what Mr. Bar-Illan has just told us (which U.S. intelligence must surely have known)?
Will history eventually prove Shultz to be another Neville Chamberlain, who swallowed Adolph Hitler’s solemn assurance that if Czechoslovakia just opened its gates to the German armies it would be his “last territorial demand?”
World War II was necessary to unscramble that egg.
As Yogi Berra might put it--”Isn’t this deja vu all over again?”
JACK BLANKLEY
Los Angeles
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