Latest PLO Proposal Reportedly Reaches Israel Via Soviet Envoy

JERUSALEM —  Even as the government here bans any reception of reports from its longtime enemy, Israel is being bombarded with feelers from the Palestine Liberation Organization indicating that, under certain conditions, the PLO would accept Israel’s plan for elections on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The latest communication surfaced Wednesday from an unusual source: a Soviet diplomat who gave it to an Israeli government official in Paris last week. The envoy, Gennady Terrasov, reportedly handed Nimrod Novick, an aide to Finance Minster Shimon Peres, a list of 10 conditions under which the PLO would authorize its followers to participate in elections.

Among them was the demand that Israel withdraw its forces from major population centers during the election and keep them out after the vote, that international supervision be allowed and that eventual talks lead to Israel giving up the occupied land.

The latter condition appears to be a softening of the PLO’s demand for an independent state as a condition for acquiescing to the Israeli peace plan.

Under Israel’s plan, an elected Palestinian delegation would only negotiate terms of self-rule, with the final status of the land to be determined three to five years later.

Israeli Foreign Ministry officials said they had not seen the Terrasov document. It was originally reported in Israeli newspapers that the conditions were contained in a memo from the United States passed to PLO officials in Tunis, where the group is based. Terrasov met with the PLO July 20.

Novick and his boss, Peres, favor Israel giving up land in exchange for peace with the Arabs. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his supporters claim that the land belongs to Israel.

Novick could not be reached for comment on his meeting with Terrasov.

The conditions proposed by the PLO match exactly a list handed Israel several weeks ago by Egypt. Foreign Ministry officials here said that Israel had not responded to those conditions, which they assumed were formulated by the PLO.

Officials from Shamir’s Likud Party reported today that they had received notice that the PLO was demanding the participation of Palestinians who live outside the West Bank and Gaza in future talks. Participation of outsiders would be designed to ensure a voice for Palestinian refugees who live in neighboring countries in the final settlement.

All this communication flies in the face of an explicit government ban on input from the PLO. Israel’s policy is to refuse to have contact with the organization, which it views as wedded to terror. But with even countries friendly to Israel, notably the United States, having contact with the organization, it has been impossible for Israel to shut its ears to PLO counterproposals for elections.

“We talk to the U.S. and they tell us that ‘some Palestinians’ are proposing one condition or another. We know that they mean the PLO, but we can’t respond,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official.

As recently as three days ago, the Foreign Ministry ordered its diplomats to refuse any report originating, even indirectly, from the PLO.