For Arabs

After months of research, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is putting the finishing touches on a comprehensive report which details alleged Israeli violations of human rights during 1982 in the Israeli occupied territories, including southern Lebanon.

ADC's research director, Dr. Eric Hoogland, who heads the project, told The Washington Report that the study is modeled in many respects after the Department of State's annual report to Congress on global rights violations. He said that Israeli abuses in the West Bank, Gaza, the Syrian Golan Heights and southern Lebanon were detailed under three separate categories: violations of "personal integrity," such as the rounding-up and torturing of Palestinians suspected of crimes and the deportation of others; "political rights," including extensive censoring of Palestinian newspapers and the Israeli government's refusal to reveal the names of Palestinian prisoners from last summer's war in Lebanon; and abuses of "economic and social well being," which Dr. Hoogland said included the Israeli government's closure of Palestinian businesses and its failure to provide adequate health care facilities and services. He added that as many as five researchers have worked on the project during the past year.

ADC is planning to send the bound report to all members of Congress and to State Department officials, and hopes to have it available to the public by the end of March.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Arab-Americans (NAAA) has been urging members of Congress not to increase the grant portion in the $2.5 billion of total assistance to Israel proposed by President Reagan for 1984. In testimony before House and Senate authorizing and appropriating subcommittees, NAAA's executive director, David Sadd, advocated an increase in military grant aid to Egypt, and proposed that assistance to Jordan be provided in the same proportion of grants and loans as Israel is scheduled to receive. Mr. Sadd also suggested that aid to the West Bank and Gaza be increased to $15 million—$8 million above the President's proposed amount—and that Congress approve Mr. Reagan's request of $251 million for Lebanon in his supplemental aid bill for 1983.

For Israel:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is taking the lead among pro-Israel groups in an accelerated drive to reverse what AIPAC sees as a "seriously strained" U.S.-Israel relationship. Whether in speeches before AIPAC gatherings or at appearances on Capitol Hill, AIPAC's message is loud and clear: the Administration is largely responsible for weakening U.S.-Israel ties at a time when, in AIPAC's view, the U.S. stands to gain much from closer cooperation.

Thomas Dine, the executive director of AIPAC, fired a big salvo in this new campaign with a tough speech he gave recently in Atlanta. Mr. Dine, who met in Israel with Prime Minister Begin, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, the then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and others earlier this year, told a group attending an AIPAC workshop that because the Administration had failed to improve strategic cooperation with Israel "an increasing number of Israelis believe that, since the U.S. cannot be trusted, they must end their dependence on U.S. support...But Israel will not be able to meet the Arab military buildup if it loses U.S. aid, so it may under such circumstances be forced to consider sweeping measures to eliminate the threat while the IDF is still comparatively strong." Dine described the Administration's senior Middle East policymakers as "a curious mixture of Arabists and amateurs" and said that the Administration has followed a policy of "systematically excluding Israel from U.S. defense planning for the region while fawningly courting certain Arab states whose conduct contradicts and conflicts with U.S. foreign policy."

Strategic Benefits

Mr. Dine has also hit hard during testimony at Congressional hearings on President Reagan's foreign aid bill, saying at one point that the Administration was pursuing a policy that was "obsessed with conflict with Israel." But his main theme at the hearings has been the strategic benefit he says Israel has to offer the U.S. and that the $2.5 billion proposed for Israel next fiscal year was "easily justifiable." At one session in early March he provided Senators with a small 33-page booklet which focused on what it described as Israel's potential contributions to the U.S. Air Force.

Other pro-Israel groups are also trying to bring pressure on the Administration to improve relations with Israel through greater cooperation on defense planning. Over 100 retired U.S. generals and admirals put their names to a letter to President Reagan urging increased consultation with Israel on strategic matters. The letter—drafted by Joseph Churba, Director of the Center for International Security in Washington, D.C.—was reproduced in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times in late February. Similarly, the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington said it was "distressed" that the memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation suspended by the Administration in late 1981 had not been reinstated and that the agreement on the exchange of military information gleaned from Israel's war in Lebanon had not been approved.