Speakers Urge Expedited Aid for Gaza Strip : Mideast: Rep. Berman and founder of Southland Islamic center agree quick assistance is vital, but disagree on the future of Jerusalem.

Continuing a dialogue between Los Angeles’ Jews and Palestinians, a leading congressional supporter of Israel and a founder of the Islamic Center of Southern California agreed Friday that quick financial aid to the Palestinians in the newly autonomous Gaza Strip is an essential next step in the Middle East peace process.

However, in their pointed but cordial 80-minute discussion before a largely Muslim professional group at the Westin Bonaventure hotel, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles) and Sabri El Farra, a Palestinian-born adviser to Arab American groups, disagreed over some issues, including the future of Jerusalem.

Berman said the Jewish community in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States joins with Israel in being unwilling to accept anything but “an undivided Jerusalem, under Israeli sovereignty.”

But he added, “there are many ways to skin a cat” and perhaps arrangements could eventually be agreed upon, within that context, that are acceptable to both sides.

When El Farra responded by speaking of an open city of Jerusalem, and quipped that in the land of King Solomon, perhaps ways of division could be found, Berman held to his position.

Berman was more conciliatory when the moderator, Murad Siam, said the congressman seemed to be demanding changes in anti-Israeli covenants of the Palestine Liberation Organization and steps toward more PLO democracy before he would give economically deprived Palestinians food to eat.

“No,” Berman said. “I support a change in the covenants and democratization in Gaza and Jericho. But there is no doubt in my mind that conditions in Gaza must be improved dramatically, without any waiting.”

This seemed to put him closer to El Farra, who said that changes in anti-Israeli covenants of the PLO would require a two-thirds vote of PLO leaders, which could not realistically be obtained now, and that a promised $2.4 billion in economic aid should come first.

The program’s host, the Southern California Professional Group, attempts, in Siam’s words, to attract people born in Muslim countries or Christians and Jews with business ties to the Mideast.

It is only one of several groups in the Los Angeles area that have been organizing dialogues in recent years to try to bridge differences between what were described Friday as “the diasporas of the Jewish and Arab communities.”

A year ago this week, when the initial Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement was signed at the White House, representatives of several of the Los Angeles groups participating in the dialogue celebrated by watching the ceremonies together on TV

Friday’s Berman-El Farra presentation was billed as a discussion of the situation one year later.

“This debate is different,” El Farra said. “We used to come here and get angry at one another. Now we are coming here to share views about how to bring lives together in the Middle East.”

The problem, he said, is that in the newly autonomous areas, unemployment is running 50% to 60%, garbage is not getting collected, policemen are not being paid and promises of the $2.4 billion in outside aid have not been kept. Berman acknowledged that there are problems but said: “What we’ve seen is nothing short of a miracle, a flowering on both sides of human aspirations for peace. Before, there was a deep and abiding pessimism. . . . Now life is becoming normalized, and Israelis and Palestinians are increasingly viewing each other as neighbors.”