Arab, Israeli Speakers Criticize Other's Uncompromising Attitude

Two official spokesmen from Israel and Yemen reiterated old charges in a forum last night and deplored the other side's unwillingness to compromise.

Sponsored by the Radcliffe Graduate Chapter, Esther Herlitz, consul of Israel in New York, and Fayez Sayegh, deputy director of the Arab States Delegation to the U.N., spoke to a packed audience in the Alumnae Lecture Room at Radcliffe.

Sayegh opened the forum by giving his conception of the "Palestine Problem" as that of an area where one small section has been completely and artificially transformed in religion, culture, language and economy in too short a time. One can not solve or negotiate the problem unless one treats it within this historical background, he said.

Miss Herlitz replied that the greatest stumbling block to successful negotiation is the Arab nations' refusal to "accept Israel as a fact." She treated Sayegh's statement as evidence that the Arabs continually wish to return to a state of affairs which no longer exists.

She characterized the conflict as a "sterile" one between governments and not between peoples, and called on the Arabs and Israelis to address themselves "toward the betterment of their peoples through mutual cooperation and respect." She repeated the words of an Arab spokesman saying that the real enemy in the Middle East is "poverty and social backwardness."

The two speakers went into great detail on the refugee problem, continual truce violations, and Zionist proposals for expansion. Miss Herlitz asserted that Israel was satisfied with her present territory and would never try to expand. She asked the Arabs to "take the chip off their shoulder" and approach negotiation with a more positive attitude. Sayegh responded that his country could not accept happenings as "accomplished facts regardless of their method of accomplishment."