Israelis Step Up Talks With Arabs Tied to PLO

Contacts between Israeli politicians and Arabs linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization are on the increase. What once was taboo is now becoming commonplace.

Twice this week, parliamentary members from the Labor Party, one of Israel’s two main political forces, met with Faisal Husseini, a Palestinian activist considered to be a leading PLO operative in the occupied West Bank. Late Thursday, members of the centrist Shinui Party, a small opposition group, were scheduled to talk to Husseini and other Palestinians who sympathize with the PLO.

The meetings were harshly criticized by members of the rightist Likud Party, which publicly opposes contact with the PLO. Likud, headed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, is the senior partner in the ruling coalition with Labor.

“The members of Parliament, when they talk to these Palestinians, are actually talking to the PLO,” said Yosef Ben-Aharon, a top aide of Shamir. “It suggests we are willing to talk to the PLO.”

Helping the Enemy

Uzi Landau, a Likud member of Parliament, commented: “When Zionist Israelis, even with the best of intentions, meet Palestinians like Faisal Husseini in order to help Israel, the outcome is they take part in advancing the objectives of Israel’s enemies.”

Israeli participants in the talks emphasized a need to break the psychological ice with the Palestinians.

“We know that both sides, the Palestinians and Israelis, have many, many fears. We both suffer from an ongoing process of demonization of the enemy. We’re afraid of them and they’re afraid of us,” said Labor member Avraham Burg. “We have to make these meetings, this dialogue, the most banal thing in the world.”

Burg and other politicians who met with Husseini belong to a dovish faction of the Labor Party. All of them are close to Finance Minister Shimon Peres, who favors holding an international conference to resolve the Middle East conflict.

Good for Peace Process

“Meetings like these will continue and I think that this will be for the good of the peace process,” said Deputy Finance Minister Yossi Beilin, who spoke to Husseini on Tuesday.

The meetings took place at the Notre Dame Hotel, a way station between Jewish West Jerusalem and the Arab-dominated east side.

Sources in the Labor Party said that the contacts are designed to ease the way to future talks between higher-ranking Labor officials and the Palestinians. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a top Labor official, has been actively promoting talks with local Palestinians as a way of avoiding direct contact with PLO officials abroad.

By offering a peace alternative based on giving up occupied land in return for peace, the meetings are also a means of pressuring Shamir to relent on his claim that all the West Bank and Gaza Strip should forever be Israel’s, the sources said.

Israel has been under pressure to come up with new peace formulas to meet a diplomatic offensive launched last year by the PLO and aimed at getting talks under way with Israel. The United States, Israel’s closest ally, is talking with the PLO, raising concern in government circles that Israel might be boxed in by solutions not of its own making.

Traditional sticking points between the Israelis and the Arabs are being discussed in the meetings, participants indicated.

One was the Palestinian demand that refugees be permitted to return to their original homes in Israel, a request flatly rejected by Israeli officials. Husseini and other Arabs at the meetings are saying that monetary compensation could be negotiated instead of a physical return.

Another issue is the future of Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its indivisible capital. Palestinians, who also claim the city as theirs, are hinting at an arrangement in which largely Arab sections of the city could be under U.N. control, even if, technically, the land remained under Israeli sovereignty.

Husseini, who was let out of jail less than three weeks ago, was cautious about the goals of the new contacts. “We spoke generally about the situation. We reached no agreements, we just had a talk. I believe such meetings are helping the peace process,” he said.

He suggested that the PLO approved the contacts. “I believe the PLO would like us to go on in such meetings and to develop these meetings toward more understanding from Israeli society toward the Palestinian problem and toward the PLO,” Husseini said.

Next week, Husseini will appear at a public discussion with several Israeli politicians in Jerusalem. All of the Israelis are from the left side of the political spectrum. So far, no member of Likud has agreed to join in.

It was Defense Minister Rabin who initiated the spate of contacts by sending an aide to talk to Husseini when he was still in jail. The aide, Shmuel Goren, tried to interest Husseini in Rabin’s plan for elections among Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

According to the plan, the vote would let Palestinians choose delegates for peace talks. Husseini, while not rejecting the proposal outright, said that it must be approved by the PLO. Any vote, he added, must be preceded by an Israeli pullout from the West Bank and Gaza.

Some Took the Risk

In the past, the rare contacts between Israelis and Palestinians took place abroad. Although it is illegal for Israelis to meet with the PLO, some adventuresome Israelis defied the ban, risking a jail sentence and charges of betrayal. Legislators are immune from the prohibition.

Recently, a group of Israelis met with PLO officials during a conference in Amsterdam. Among the Israelis present was Abba Eban, formerly Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations and a well-known diplomat.

His meeting with PLO members angered hard-liners in the government, notably in the Foreign Ministry, which is headed by Likud official Moshe Arens. Arens’ deputy, Binyamin Netanyahu, ordered Israel’s ambassador in Amsterdam to refuse to host a dinner for Eban while he was in the Netherlands. A spokesman said the snub was ordered because Eban ignored the ministry’s advice not to meet with the Palestinians.