Not exactly a pilgrimage:

...But let me begin at the beginning...

...But he came across as a moderate-minded man, one with whom it would be possible to negotiate...

...A word of caution is probably in order here on the term "PLO spokesman...

...That is Israel's dilemma...

...we talked to PLO representatives, but for a particular group and a limited constituency...

...Dinitz is persuaded that it would be a mistake for King Hussein to wait for Arafat...

...Dinitz said: the population has become not so much rightist in the usual sense as it has become hawkish...

...As for the Reagan proposal of a Palestinian state on the West Bank federated with Jordan, Mr...

...if this had continued, it would have meant a virtual shutdown of all the universities on the West Bank...

...support for the quest for peace is ur-gently needed...

...There had been some talk that the anti-PLO pledge requirement would be extended to Christian clergymen in the occupied territories...

...He seemed to have no fears on this score, saying he saw no reason why people should assume such a state would necessarily be radical...

...I asked Prince Hassan what would be the single most helpful thing the U.S...

...In his opinion the West Bank area that would be returned to the Palestinians would have to be demilitarized...

...The figure I heard most commonly was over two thousand...

...As for the Arabs in general, "We want compromise, but the other side does not want compromise...

...Talking to Begin hard-liners and to extremists in the ranks of the PLO is equally discouraging...

...Last time I was in Jordan I saw King Hussein, who comes across as calm, collected, and competent...

...recognize and talk to the PLO, he wanted to know...

...Peter's fish, Bethlehem, Nazareth, the spot where Jesus mul-tiplied the loaves and fishes, the Mount where Jesus enun-ciated the Beatitudes...

...nearby was a burned-out tank on the edge of the road, a silent reminder of the 1967 war which had rolled over this area...

...Bourg stuck to the Begin line: "We were not happy with the Reagan plan, and we are not happy now...

...That fear must be dealt with...

...In general the Crown Prince is hopeful, perhaps profession-ally so, but he fears that unless substantial progress toward peace is made soon, moderation will give way to extremism of right or left...

...If Israel had persisted on the oath, a shutdown of the West Bank universities would probably have fit in with Israeli occu-pation plans well enough...

...Most foreign professors teaching on the West Bank take a similar position on an oath which Secretary of State Shultz denounced as "an abridgment of academic freedom" and "totally unnecessary" for Israel's security...

...Failure by the King to act now would mean that in two or three years there will be little room for compromise...

...As Labor sees it, the Palestinian question cannot be solved independently of Jordan for at least two reasons: Jordan is part of Palestine and, more importantly, the demographic fact: the majority of present-day Jordanians are Palestinians, and the majority of West Bank Palestinians are themselves Jordanian citizens...

...Incidentally, Christians amount to about six percent of Jordan's population, and Hussein seems very popu-lar with them...

...Dinitz is convinced that a major-ity of the Palestinians would not support Arafat if there were any alternative on the scene...

...ALL OF THIS from Ambassador Dinitz sounded somewhat encouraging, but it would take more than that to persuade President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt...

...In a conversation with the prince after his interview I probed to see if he had any fear that a Palestinian state federated with Jordan would ultimately mean the overthrow of the Hashe-mite, non-Palestinian dynasty...

...Somehow a double balance must be found...

...Ambassador Dinitz emphasized the small size of the area we were discussing and the fact that Israel must constantly think of its capacity to defend itself...

...This will have to start with a tough stance on the settlement issue if the Arabs are to take us seriously...

...Flags of Islamic governments could be flown over their holy places, but the city should not be divided politically or geog-raphically...

...Arab papers are censored by Israeli authorities, often even being prevented from printing articles that had already appeared in Jewish papers in Israel proper...

...Jordan's position is a delicate one," he said, noting that his country's role is necessarily linked to some kind of Arab consensus...

...could do at this point...

...Egypt's role is to encourage moderates, among the Arabs and among the Palestinians," said Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr...

...On the other side, a joint Arab peace initiative is essen-tial, and one way or the other a homeland must be created for the Palestinians, soon...

...attitude toward the PLO...

...What puzzled him, though, was the U.S...

...On the subject of Jewish violence against the British before the state of Israel was born, that was completely different from PLO violence, he said, having been aimed at liberating the country while the PLO wants to destroy it...

...Q.E.D...

...Dinitz sounded neutral - far from it...

...Did any great truths emerge from our trip...

...The Israelis seem intent on driving such leaders out, and the ranks of the deported from the West Bank grow larger almost every day...

...among Arabs in general, and it is important that the U.S...

...He was convinced that there is a strong peae constituency behind the Reagan plan for the Middle East, and he sees some change of heart in the U.S...

...combined with thriving Jordan, however, there would be a geographical and sociolog-ical state with truly viable components...

...Indeed, Mr...

...The day we visited Bethlehem University, founded by the Holy See in 1973, the Israeli government expelled from the country a British instructor...

...What is needed, he said, is not a solution imposed from the outside, but serious bargaining, in which Israel under the Labor party would insist on retaining certain strategic areas for security purposes...

...take some concrete steps that will demonstrate its determina-tion...

...He was deeply disappointed that Israel was announcing new settlements on the West Bank at this crucial time, a move that he feels will only help those who do not want a comprehensive settlement...

...He is an Israeli through and through...

...His wife's five brothers were murdered by Arabs, he informed us...

...He was very clear on that: "Jordan has no intention of provoking Israel into military action...

...one quick tank thrust could cut the country in two at its narrowest point...

...promises...

...He and every other Arab I talked to see these settlements as being built with American money - indeed almost without exception the Arabs I talked to think the U.S...

...If the Israelis annex without granting the occupied population citizenship, they destroy the moral and democratic character of their state...

...But with Arafat included, Israeli public opinion would be strongly opposed to negotiations...

...One or two, anyway...

...In the same Time poll, more than 98 percent of the Palestinians on the West Bank favored an independent state, and their leaders reflect this view...

...The division in the Knesset is paper-thin and Labor's present hope is that one or more of coalition partners will defect, perhaps as a result of the findings of the inquiry into the massacre in the Beirut refugee camps, an inquiry that was under way while we were there...

...There is, he conceded, a great disproportion between the material strength of the PLO and that of Israel, but he sees the struggle as primarily a matter of will power, and the Palestinians will never give up, he said...

...CROSSING THE JORDAN river to the West Bank and to Israel, one soon is surrounded by all the familiar Gospel places - the Sea of Galilee, where restaurants specialize in St...

...These are highly subsidized by the government, and they are being snapped up by non-ideological Jews who simply want a good, less expensive place to live...

...Now Mr...

...He had refused on principle to sign an anti-PLO statement, and expulsion was the price he paid...

...Be-gin, he charged, was planting settlements for population pur-poses rather than security reasons...

...Convinced that King Hussein will be making a tremendous mistake if he does not seize the initiative to enter into negotia-tions, Mr...

...Clashes between Israeli troops and Arab demonstrators on the West Bank are frequent, and deaths resulting from such clashes are a common occurrence...

...will have to play a continuing and vigorous role...

...Second, that the rejec-tionists on each side have a symbiotic relationship, strengthen-ing each other with every act or word of extremism...

...The reason is plain enough and somewhat analogous to the situation of Ronald Reagan and the Republican party in the U.S.: Menachem Begin is far more popular than his party or his policies, and an election today would probably return him to power more decisively than last time...

...We had urged on the PLO spokesmen the necessity of officially recognizing the state of Israel, but it may have been a pointless exercise...

...Here it is not hard to see Israel's problem - the Golan Heights loom threateningly over Jewish towns, and the distances are incredibly short...

...Parents are hostages to their children...

...others supported it pretty much without exception...

...I visited the Middle East with a group of editors, organized through the Catholic Press Association and sponsored by the Catholic Near East Welfare Association and Our Sunday Visitor...

...Said the Brigadier: "We want to return to our land and coexist with everyone...

...The oath question resulted in the expulsion of twenty-two foreign teachers in the last six months...

...if the trend continues and gets worse, the church in the Holy Land will become only a museum...

...He is under great pressure from his Arab neighbors, and in the wake of Lebanon ties between his country and Israel are at their most strained since Sadat made his historic trip to Jerusalem...

...Reagan's peace plan is very constructive and feels that the autonomy talks could be re-sumed in the light of it, with both Jordan and the PLO repre-sented...

...After the massacre in the camps in Lebanon, why should Arafat trust U.S...

...As the Palestinians see it, all this settlement is being carried out with American consent and with American money...

...Indeed, there is a crisis of confidence about the U.S...

...public opinion in Israel is now divided fifty-fifty on the Begin plan for the occupied ter-ritories, and he thinks a Hussein initiative would tilt public opinion against Begin...

...Nonetheless he stated, "Since we started the peace process, we are committed to it...

...Jewish settlers of the de-termined Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) carry out vig-ilante actions against the Palestinians on their own, apparently with almost complete immunity...

...it does not, of course, include the thousands of refugees who fled in the 1948 and the 1967 wars...

...But what if the PLO changed its position...

...We began in Jordan, where over half the population consists of Palestinian refugees who fled the '48 and '67 wars...

...Nonetheless, Israelis do feel threatened in a sea of millions of Arabs...

...One spot we noted was that near where Jesus cured the ten lepers, only one of whom returned to give thanks, and he a Samaritan...

...On the other hand, a com-pletely independent Palestinian state on the West Bank without ties to Jordan would be, as he saw it, irredentist in character, constantly aiming at the annexation of both Jordan and Israel...

...There are the occupiers and the occupied, now as then...

...Other PLO spokesmen might well have pursued a different line...

...Labor, he said, would place an immediate freeze on all settlements if peace negotiations got under way...

...In such a state there would be no room for more Palestinians to come in and no outlet to the sea...

...However, there is a great lack of public confidence in the new relationship with Israel, and that is a problem...

...But there is no alternative to peace...

...See that there is a freeze on the Jewish settlements on the West Bank," he said...

...Israel, he reminded us, is roughly the size of New Jersey...

...Modest, because the person who is unduly optimistic about the situation in the Middle East simply does not under-stand the problem.dle East simply does not under-stand the problem...

...is also blamed...

...When would the U.S...

...The Labor party, Mr...

...And asked about Israel's close rela-tions with countries like South Africa, he struck an often recurring note: "Everybody does the same, but Israel is ac-cused...

...They are not the ones who are harassing us," and he showed me a made-in-the-U.S...

...The Labor party has always wanted some kind of Jordanian solution on the West Bank, but King Hussein never felt able to make Jordan the first Arab country to make peace with Israel...

...There had to be a "cleaning up" in Lebanon, he said, to safeguard lives in Israel...

...As he saw it, a PLO state would get its support from countries like Libya and the USSR and would be a constant threat to Israel...

...Israeli bulldoz-ers destroy the houses of people whose children are caught in stone-throwing episodes...

...Jordan is a bustling country, where even the one-third of the refugees who still live in camps have little trouble getting work...

...Dinitz reiterated, is opposed to Be-gin's plan to annex the West Bank and favors instead a territo-rial compromise...

...only "a few left-wing diehards" opposed the war...

...Small wonder if Ameri-cans are not overly popular on the West Bank - a feeling intensified by the war in Lebanon for which the U.S...

...tear gas bomb that had been used against his students...

...and even in the Israeli Knesset...

...What has been called a shift to the right in Israel in recent times is not exactly that, Mr...

...Sephardic or Oriental Jews who were immigrants from the Islamic countries now outnumber the Ashkenazi or Westernized European Jews...

...it would inevitably mean a sharp increase in the number of young Arabs leaving the West Bank for educational opportunities, never to return...

...SEEMINGLY UNTROUBLED by all this was Begin cabinet member Yousef Bourg, Minister of the Interior, Police, and Religious Affairs...

...But all agreed on one point: "Who else can speak for the Palestinian people...

...There must be an alternative to the PLO, he reasons, and Jordan offers that hope...

...It might even be argued that a parallel of sorts exists with the situation as it was when Jesus was born...

...Jerusalem, he felt, must be a holy city and maybe that fact should be made part of an internationally ratified agreement...

...So far there are over one hundred Jewish settlements on the West Bank, with over 25,000 Jewish settlers, and Prime Minister Begin plans to quadruple the number of Jews there by 1985...

...There are rejectionists on both sides but Egypt's effort is to persuade others to the bargaining table...

...as one taken at the expense of Palestinian children...

...Supporting his point is the fact that after the ouster of the PLO from Jordan in Bloody September of 1970, the Palestinians who make up more than half of the population did not riot or rise up against King Hussein...

...why should someone from the USSR or wher-ever replace him...

...As a result they give Begin and his hard line enthusiastic support...

...the Jews are the Romans, some willingly and some unwillingly, and the Palestinians on the West Bank fill the role of the Jews in Jesus's time...

...On the subject of Israeli-U.S...

...The PLO is asked to recognize Israel's right to exist, he said in response to our questions, but who is occupying whose land...

...AFTER HEARING Begin-like views from Yousef Bourg and Eliahu Ben-Alisar, it was a pleasure to turn to the Labor Alignment's Simcha Dinitz, Ambassador to the U.S...

...Asked how he would react to a PLO official recognition of Israel's right to exist, Mr...

...Some thought it had made serious mistakes...

...With Israel the fourth most powerful military nation in the world (after the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China) it may seem ridiculous to talk of its need for secure borders...

...As far as they are concerned, the U.S...

...The same kind of rigidity on the PLO that is widespread among Israelis was demonstrated by Eliahu Ben-Alisar, a member of Mr...

...This time we interviewed his brother and ap-pointed successor, Crown Prince Hassan, and he made a similarly good impression on all of us...

...Although the Brigadier refused to condemn past PLO tactics, he did say each phase had its own tactics and the emphasis after Lebanon would probably be on politics...

...A solution will come, perhaps a partial one, but a solution nonetheless...

...Begin's Likud party, originally from Ger-many, and chairman of the Knesset Committee for Defense and Foreign Affairs...

...President Mubarak thinks Mr...

...The importance of the Reagan plan is that it maintains the momentum for peace, but the problem is to implement it before the approach of the American presidential election puts everything on hold...

...But U.S...

...Dinitz noted that a failure by Hussein to move would also have disastrous political consequences inside Is-rael, by depriving Israeli citizens of an alternative to the Begin plan for annexation...

...They want everything...

...Without their participation, he pointed out, "I cannot give any more concessions on something I do not possess," i.e., the West Bank and Gaza...

...Not that Mr...

...As for terrorism, he said: "People refer to Arab terrorism constantly, but look at the conduct of the Jewish settlers on the West Bank...

...But if President Reagan stays the course, if he is willing to push hard for his peace plan, and if the Arab governments also move - three big ifs - there is room for modest op-timism...

...from 1973 to the end of 1978...

...if this threat had been carried out, the consequences could have been disastrous...

...the Arab states are the size of the rest of the United States...

...Then, he said, it would no longer be the PLO...

...The big danger is that this country will lose patience with the agonizing details and frustrations in the Middle East and will turn its attention elsewhere to other pressing prob-lems...

...When it came down to the political nitty-gritty, it became clear that many in Labor do not really want an early election...

...On the PLO he used what I found to be a common Catch 22: under no circumstances would Israel negotiate with the PLO...

...approves every Israeli action in advance and could stop them if only it wanted to...

...Even the moderate Mayor of Bethlehem, Elias M. Freij, summed up the problem simply: "The Israelis are hungry for land.'' His family has lived in Bethlehem for over five hundred years, he said...

...We will never deviate from it...

...If Arafat is to give up vio-lence, he must have tangible acts from the U.S...

...others said the figure would be much higher if less prominent Palestinians were included...

...The World Zionist Organization has even more ambiti-ous dreams...

...Although many settlements were established on the West Bank while Labor was in power, Ambassador Dinitz was critical of Prime Minister Begin for his settlement policy...

...WHILE IN JORDAN we talked to assorted representatives of the PLO, including a Brigadier in its service, various deported mayors from the West Bank, and other prominent expelled West Bank Palestinians, as well as members of the Palestinian National Council...

...Among Palestinians I talked to, on and off campus, attitudes toward the PLO differed...

...That will take some doing, and the U.S...

...relations, he was passion-ate, describing the stance of the U.S...

...If they take over and grant full citizen-ship, the demographic facts of life are such that in less than twenty years Arabs would outnumber Jews, and that would mean the end of a Jewish state...

...Waiting for it to be resolved one way or the other, Israel is behaving like many another occupa-tion power in history...

...Together they contain 1.3 million Palestinians, and the classic Israeli dilemma there has often been stated...

...Begin and reject the Reagan Middle East initiative...

...This attitude seems to be one widely held by Palestinians: a Time magazine poll on the West Bank in May found only 1.6 percent citing America as the country they admired most, while 72.1 percent named the Soviet Union...

...The massacre in the refugee camps came as a complete surprise to the government...

...It was quite clear that there are spokes-men and spokesmen...

...Happily, the protests and pressure abroad and at home seem to have paid off, and the government has canceled demands for the teachers' pledge, although the exact implications of the work permit substituted for the pledge are not yet clear...

...Which sounds fine, but then he went on to explain: "We believe in coexis-tence but not in confessional states," which would seem to put a potential period to Israel's continued existence...

...taxpayer paid for every shell fired in Lebanon...

...THE UNIVERSITIES on the West Bank are considered poli-tical centers by the Israelis, and they are frequent targets for shutdowns and suspensions...

...PLO members refused to accept the characterization "ex-tremists" for any element in the organization, instead em-phasizing what they saw only as a democratic variety of opinions...

...First, that as Jewish nationalism has flourished and grown strong, it has nourished a Palestinian nationalism at least as significant...

...Queried as to whether he did not have some fear of the PLO, one university faculty member said, "Why should I fear the PLO...

...In the case of the Christian residents, the shape of the future would then be quite clear: the Christian population is already shrinking dramat-ically under Israeli occupation, not because the Israelis are anti-Christian but because they are anti-Arab...

...a spokesman said Israel would push ahead with a plan to settle 400,000 Jews on the West Bank in five years and 1.4 million Jews in the area in thirty years...

...But today there is a switch, the argu-ment would go...

...This figure covers only recent political expellees...

...He too employed Israeli Catch 22 - if Arafat and his organization changed that would no longer be the PLO...

...Botros Ghali...

...SO THERE you have it...

...Dinitz thinks there is a great opportunity for such a solution, and that is why the Labor party did not follow Mr...

...Prime Minister Menachem Begin has made no secret of his intention to annex the West Bank, what he calls Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip...

...Jordan believes in self-determination, he said, but emphasized that unless we hurry, there will be nothing left to self-determine...

...he obviously saw things in a differ-ent light...

...Such a defection would enable Labor to form a government without a new election, and it could mean an entirely new political climate in Israel, an Israel without Begin as Prime Minister and Sharon as Defense Minister...

...The people of Egypt are not totally disenchanted because they at least regained the Sinai...

...Not being eager for an early election, however, does not mean that Labor sees itself exiled in the political desert indefi-nitely...

...to help...

...Ben-Alisar flatly said that he would not believe it, and on this he clearly spoke for many other Israelis...

...They have bitter memories of their former Islamic masters, and they also resent the superior social, economic, and educational status of the Western Jews...

...From reading the newspapers, everyone know about the West Bank settlements carried out by Jewish religious zealots, but much of what the Israelis are now building on the West Bank are not primarily such settlements but banks of high-rise, fortress-like apartment buildings and comfortable villas, handy for commuting to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv...

...We asked if Jordan was going to tolerate a PLO military presence in his country after Lebanon...