Israelis and Palestinians

Eban’s thoughtful and rational thoughts concerning yet-to-begin Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are a welcome contrast to the stubbornness, intransigence and distasteful cockiness which led to Yitzhak Shamir’s downfall. If Israel had hired a public relations firm in the first place, Shamir would long ago be back at his old job as a terrorist while Eban would be prime minister.

Eban’s moderate and level-headed pronouncements on this sensitive issue have elicited a “sit down and keep quiet” order from his contemporaries in recent years. In retrospect, they should have kept him at the head of his class. Eban’s concluding sentence told it all: “Only in a context of institutionalized regional cooperation can the three harassed peoples--Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians--find their mutual salvation.”

NORMAN JACOBSON

Los Angeles