Israel Drops Threat to Arrest Key Palestinians

Israel backed down Sunday from its threat to arrest key Palestinians involved in a hug-and-kiss session with PLO chief Yasser Arafat.

Officials said they will only be questioned on their return from Amman, the Jordanian capital. The group does not expect to return before the Israeli general election Tuesday.

“They won’t be arrested. They’ll be investigated,” police spokeswoman Tami Paul-Cohen said, leaving open the option that police might take legal steps later.

Police Minister Ronnie Milo had said Friday that the Palestinians would be detained “the moment they return” under a law prohibiting contact with terrorist groups. Israel includes the Palestine Liberation Organization in that category.

Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi said she hopes the softening of Israel’s arrest threat means it is reconsidering its ban on contacts with the PLO.

She spoke in Amman, where she and other Palestinian leaders met Arafat on Thursday and she was photographed laying her head on Arafat’s chest.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the United States has urged Israel to respond with restraint so as not to torpedo Arab-Israeli peace talks launched last October.

The Amman meeting created a dilemma for Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, whose hard-line Likud Party is in a neck-and-neck race with Yitzhak Rabin’s more dovish Labor Party going into the election.

Labor strategists said that film of Palestinians hugging and kissing Arafat proved to the world that Likud, despite its denials, was negotiating with people who talked to the PLO.