Jews of Rome Stage Strike to Protest Red Carpet Treatment Given to Arafat During Visit

The Jews of Rome went on strike today. They shut down their many shops in the heart of the city to protest the red carpet treatment given to PLO chief Yasir Arafat who had a private audience with Pope John Paul II yesterday, was cordially received by President Sandro Pertini at lunch and met at some length with Foreign Minister Emilio Colombo yesterday.

The Jewish community demonstrated outside the main synagogue. Italy’s Chief Rabbi, Elio Toaff, sent a telegram to the Pope saying he was “profoundly disturbed by the audience conceded Arafat, a non-repentant persecutor of Christians in Lebanon, chief of an organization sullied with the horrible crimes of killing women and children; who aims at the destruction of the State of Israel. I fervidly protest against this grave act which hurts and disorients the religious sentiments of the faithful.”

ITALY APPROVES REAGAN, FEZ PLANS

Colombo presented a summary of his talk with Arafat at this morning’s session of the 69th Inter-parliamentary Union meeting here. He spoke of Italy’s position in the Middle East conflict, approving both President Reagan’s new peace initiative and the results of the Arab League summit conference in Fez, Morocco last week. He maintained that both could lead to reciprocal recognition between Israel and the Arab states.

Colombo said “The Italian government will undertake, in harmony with all the other countries of the European Community, every opportune initiative to make a negotiated and peaceful solution to the Middle East possible; negotiations which will lead to the recognition of Israel’s right to exist within secure and guaranteed boundaries, respecting United Nations resolutions, and which is in line with the document recently formulated in the seat of the European Community and with prospects for official Italian recognition of the PLO as representatives of the Palestinian people.”

Colombo was referring to the 1980 Venice declaration on the Middle East, recently reaffirmed by the European Economic Community (EEC). It calls for, among other things, the “association” of the PLO in the Middle East peace process.

The Italian Foreign Minister stressed that Italy “will favor the reciprocal, unequivocal and simultaneous recognition between the PLO and the State of Israel.”

While Italy appears to be leaning toward official recognition of the PLO, it will not move in advance of the EEC. The members of parliaments attending the meeting are not all in agreement on this, even on the extent of de facto recognition Italy has already bestowed on the PLO and on the extremely cordial reception given Arafat in Rome.

There are also sharp differences within the Italian government and Parliament. Significantly, Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini, a major political personality, flatly refused to see Arafat. President Pertini, on the other hand, gave the PLO chief a warm welcome. He also delivered a scathing attack on Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in a speech before the Inter-parliamentary Union.

There was no immediate reply from the Israeli delegation. But its chairman, Labor MK Moshe Shahal, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency yesterday that he considered it improper for the President of the host country to single out Israel for criticism when there are many more dangerous conflicts in the world.

Shahal said he thought the President’s remarks were very one-sided and took no account of the history of PLO terrorism against Israel and its responsibility for the deaths of 10,000 Christians in Lebanon.

The Israeli delegation issued a press release detailing PLO crimes, among them the massacre of Israel’s Olympic team in Munich in 1972, the hijacking of an El Al plane to Entebbe, Uganda in 1976, and the documented ties between the PLO other international terrorist groups, including Italy’s Red Brigade.