Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 19, 1982, Page 5
Lobby Activities
For Arabs:
The National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) is continuing to lobby Congress to hold investigative hearings into the violence on the West Bank that has resulted in Palestinians being killed by Israeli troops. But it is meeting strong resistance on Capitol Hill.
Senator Charles Percy (Republican, Illinois), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has told NAAA through staff aides that it is the wrong time to hold such hearings, because they might anger an already sensitive Israel and jeopardize the return of the Sinai to Egypt.
NAAA is nonetheless trying to bring pressure to bear on Senator Percy from congressional colleagues. It has been contacting its members in California to have them impress upon Senator S.I. Hayakawa (Republican, California), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, their concern over the West Bank killings.
Congressman Don Bonker (Democrat, Washington), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, also urged by NAAA to hold hearings, has replied that his Subcommittee does not, as a rule, hold hearings on possible human rights abuses on a specific country basis. However, he did say that he has requested from the State Department a report on the West Bank killings and that he intends to question Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams on the Administration's reaction to the violence when Mr. Abrams appears before the Subcommittee later in April.
For Israel:
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is trying to downplay the significance of the recent violence on the West Bank while also suggesting that it is made worse by PLO manipulation of the Western media.
"There is no reason," according to a recent Near East Report editorial, "that the sporadic violence and tension on the West Bank should draw such intense, concentrated attention from the press and the mass media." It goes on to say that daily incidents of violence which occur in other disputed territories around the world go unreported—the Western Sahara for example—while on the West Bank "every incident is examined by the media in morbidly microscopic detail." Near East Report is published weekly by AIPAC and sent on a complimentary basis to all members of Congress.
AIPAC is also taking note of possible moves in the United Nations to expel Israel from the U.N. General Assembly for its annexation of Golan and its West Bank actions, and has recorded in its newsletter that 34 Senators and 64 Representatives from both parties have now signed identical resolutions calling on the U.S. to suspend its participation in the U.N. and to withhold its contributions "if any democratic state is illegally expelled, suspended, denied its credentials, or in any other manner denied its rights and privileges in the General Assembly."
Meanwhile, AIPAC got some hoped-for Presidential support from President Reagan, when he told the National Conference of Christians and Jews that the U.S. commitment to Israel remains "unshakable." President Reagan's supporters in the Jewish community have been urging him since last fall to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Israel before a large audience.
