Jackson, Arafat Meet in Lebanon

By Stephen Hindy, Associated Press

Transcribed from the clipping

“BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Rev. Jesse Jackson met with Palestinian guerrilla leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday, seven hours after being released from a hospital where he was treated for a stomach ailment. Leftist sources said said Arafat met with the Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee before going into the session with the American black activist.

The report could not be confirmed immediately. Jackson, Arafat and his aides were rushed into a small conference room bedecked with photographs of the guerrilla leader and one of the Iranian revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Arafat and Jackson posed for photographers but made no comments.

Jackson was expected to seek a ‘document’ from Arafat, outlining basic PLO objectives. He wants the PLO to renounce terrorism and repudiate clauses in its charter calling for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a secular democratic state.

The civil rights activist and his 17-member delegation had planned to leave Beirut for the United States on Thursday, but on Wednesday, Jackson, suffering from what he said was a case of food poisoning, was hospitalized, forcing him to cancel a meeting with Arafat. But Arafat came to the hospital and the two chatted.

Jackson advocates American and Israeli contacts with the PLO and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan has hinted Israel might talk with the PLO to find a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. But Dayan has attached conditions to the proposal that are unacceptable to Arafat.

PLO sources say the Jackson meeting with Arafat is not likely to result in any major changes in PLO policy because revisions could not be made without the approval of the 390-member Palestine National Council.

But the meetings and Arafat’s pledge to consider Jackson’s calls for non-violence and diplomacy are seen as goodwill gestures that enhance the PLO leader’s image as he seeks recognition among Western European nations and in America.

Jackson arrived here Wednesday from Damascus where he met Syrian President Hafez Assad, and brought him a message of reconciliation from Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, whom he met earlier this week.

The official Syrian news agency said Assad reiterated Sadat had ‘deviated from Arab ranks and that the Camp David accords and the subsequent Egyptian-Israeli treaty of surrender … create an obstacle to peace.’”

Context added by this archive

Nine days after Nablus, the meeting itself, with a photograph of the embrace above the headline. The copy notes that Arafat came to the hospital when Jackson was too ill to come to him. The word the paper uses for Jackson throughout is the American black activist and the civil rights activist; the word for Arafat is Palestinian guerrilla leader.

Cite this item

"Jackson, Arafat Meet in Lebanon," The Lexington Herald, 5 October 1979. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1979-012. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1979-012