Shultz Assails Arafat Over West Bank ‘Intimidation’

Secretary of State George P. Shultz denounced Thursday as “intimidation that falls more into the terrorist category” PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s broadcast suggestion that Palestinians who advocate a West Bank truce with Israel may be assassinated.

Talking to reporters on his way to Paris for a conference on chemical weapons, Shultz said Arafat’s interview earlier this week on Radio Monte Carlo has added “a real problem” to the new U.S. dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Arafat said that Palestinians who advocate accommodation with Israel might “face the bullets of their own people.” It was an apparent reference to Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij’s call Dec. 23 for a year-long cease-fire in the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Freij immediately withdrew his plan.

In Bethlehem, Freij denied Thursday that he has been forced into hiding because of the implied threat. In a telephone interview with the Associated Press, he said that various news reports are groundless and that he has taken no extra security precautions.

“I was in my office all day yesterday,” Freij said. “Now, I’m still in the office. . . . Everything is normal.”

According to AP, Israeli soldiers rounded up youths and some shopkeepers and ordered them to paint over slogans threatening Freij. The slogans, signed by a radical PLO faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said “Shame on All the Traitors” and “The Fate of Freij Will Not Be Better Than That of Zafer Masri.” Masri was the pro-Jordanian mayor of Nablus. He was slain March 2, 1986, after indications that he might play a role in the peace process with Israel. The PFLP claimed responsibility for his death.

Shultz made it clear that he does not agree with Israeli assertions that the uprising, by itself, is a manifestation of terrorism.

“There is a difference between the uprising and terrorism,” he said. “On the other hand, threats against people who attempt to move in a constructive or more peaceful manner are acts of intimidation that fall into the terrorist category.”

Arafat last month renounced terrorism in all forms, accepted two key U.N. resolutions on the Middle East and recognized Israel’s right to exist. Those were conditions without which successive U.S. administrations would not speak with the PLO. Once a series of statements by Arafat in Geneva and Stockholm satisfied the Reagan Administration, it reversed U.S. policy of the last 13 years and agreed to hold talks with the Palestinian organization.

Shultz said it is unlikely that there will be another U.S.-PLO meeting before the Reagan Administration leaves office Jan. 20. Therefore, he said, it will be up to President-elect Bush to decide if the dialogue will continue.