Recall Your Guerrilla Past, Key Briton Urges Israel Leaders

British Foreign Office Minister William Waldegrave urged Israel on Saturday to recall the guerrilla past of many of its founding fathers and accept that Palestinian militants could also abandon violence.

Waldegrave told British Broadcasting Corp. radio a day after talks in Tunisia with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat that Israel should adapt to the PLO’s proclaimed moves towards peace.

“The world is changing around them, and if they do not change they will be left behind,” he said.

“I think the point I would like to make to the Israeli government is that, just as many of the founding fathers of Israel--including indeed the present prime minister of Israel--were in their time involved in what we at the time described as terrorism, but . . . (took) the move away from the gun and toward the institutions of peace, so they should have confidence that there are people on the Palestinian side who can take the same courageous step,” he said in a telephone interview.

Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, have rejected Arafat’s recognition of Israel and rejection of “all forms of terrorism” as a deception aimed at destroying the Jewish state.

But London welcomed the move, which opened the way to Friday’s first-ever talks between Arafat and a British minister.

Shamir was born in Poland but moved to Palestine where he became leader of a small militant guerrilla group known as the Stern Gang, which was dedicated to fighting British rule and establishing a Jewish state.