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Israel, Hardly the Monaco of the Middle East - The New York Times [1]

['Abba Eban']

Date: 1989-01-02

The recent definitions of Palestinian attitudes will not ''solve'' the Middle Eastern crisis or bring a negotiation with Israel into early view. But all attempts in Israel and the United States to portray them as worthless or fraudulent have incurred total failure. Moreover, it is absurd to suggest, as many of Israel's friends have, that the American decision to talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization theatens Israel's very survival.

The evolution in Palestinian thinking toward ''realistic and pragmatic positions on the key issues,'' as President Reagan has said, is either real or illusory. If it is real it would be reckless not to probe it in its full scope and depth. If it is all a hoax and a fraud, it is important to expose it. In either case, it was absolutely right for Secretary of State George P. Shultz to inaugurate an exploratory dialogue.

The reasons for believing that the Palestine leadership is on a new course are too strong for out-of-hand rejection. First, there is the impressive unanimity of belief among all the statesmen who have ever shown respect for Israel's rights. It would be absurd for Israelis to assume that Reagan, Thatcher, Mitterrand, American Jewish leaders and Israel's other supporters in Europe, Latin America and the rest of the world are gullible dupes.

Perhaps more sensational even than this consensus was a recent survey revealing that 55 percent of Israel's Jewish population now supports negotiations with the P. L. O. if the promises of its chairman, Yasir Arafat, are kept.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/02/opinion/israel-hardly-the-monaco-of-the-middle-east.html

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