Jesse Jackson Hails Israel-PLO Accords as a Crucial Step

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson on Tuesday hailed the agreements between the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization as a crucial step toward long-term peace in the Middle East.

“If the Israeli-PLO matter is resolved, Israel early on would have Arabs not only as neighbors but customers and business partners,” Jackson said in a meeting with Times editors and reporters.

He said one of the next steps that the United States should take is to officially recognize the PLO.

“The significance of Israel and the PLO recognizing each other removes any reasoning we could have for not recognizing both,” he said. “And by recognizing both, we could then be an honest broker and negotiator for both.”

Jackson, who was criticized in the past for meeting with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat--at a time when neither the United States nor Israel would give Arafat that much recognition--indicated that he views the agreement as a sort of personal vindication.

“We had to take a lot of pain and rebuff because at the height of this no-talk policy, to say, ‘Let’s talk’ was to be painted as anti-Semitic, which is not true. It was just simply a way to break the cycle,” he said.