For Arabs:

The National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) contacted some 40 members of Congress last month in a successful effort to help win approval of $150 million in emergency grant economic aid to Lebanon. This sum had already been authorized, but remained to be appropriated. Its passage by a House-Senate conference July 20 received scant coverage by the media, however, in part because it was included in a much larger omnibus spending bill—approved by Congress July 29—for a wide range of government expenditures, including food stamps and a Senate pay raise.

NAAA spokesman told The Washington Report that their lobbyists either called or wrote letters to all members of the conference, which was called to iron out differences between the House- and Senate-passed versions of a supplemental foreign aid bill. NAAA urged them to approve the Lebanon money entirely as a grant—i.e., a gift—as had been proposed by President Reagan and already approved by the full Senate in mid-June. The House bill had approved the aid in the form of two-thirds loan, and only one-third grant.

To help head off acceptance of the less generous House version—which NAAA officials said was being vigorously supported by Clarence Long (D-Md.)—NAAA polled eight conferees who it thought were pivotal, and found that of the eight only Mr. Long favored the loan-grant mix. NAAA made known Mr. Long's minority view to the 40 conferees in the hope of "isolating" his position.

The NAAA officials said they were pleased when the conference voted in favor of the all-grant version, as well as for $101 million in military assistance for Lebanon. But they were surprised, they said—as the Administration was reported to be—when the conference also voted to delete $35 million in foreign military sales credits to Jordan. NAAA believes that King Hussein's decision last April not to join U.S.-sponsored peace talks was the probable reason for the conference's refusal to provide the additional money. Debate on the Jordan aid was minimal and described by some in attendance as "casual."

For Israel:

Educators with the Middle East outreach program at the University of Arizona thought that after a panel of scholars had met in late July to arbitrate their two-year-old dispute over the content of their curriculum with the Tucson Jewish Community Council, the matter would be closed. But that was before the Council denied publicly in mid-July that it had agreed to allow the scholars to act as final arbiters. Since then, university president Dr. Henry Koffler has apparently gone back on his original decision to accept the conclusions of the panel as binding.

The panel of distinguished scholars—composed of L. Carl Brown of Princeton University; William Brinner, formerly of the University of California at Berkeley; Richard Frye of Harvard University and Nahum Glatzer of Boston University—were appointed last May by Dr. Koffler to discuss the issue with the Jewish Community Council and educators at the University and to make a decision that would be binding. At least two of the scholars had the impression that the panel would in fact be the deciding body in the dispute, according to sources who spoke with them. Virtually the entire faculty in the university's Mideast department had a similar understanding of the panel's expected duties. And correspondence between the president of the Jewish Council and Dr. Koffler, dated July 1, indicated the Council also understood at one point that the scholars' finding on a series of complaints raised by the Jewish group would be the final word. In addition, press accounts in a major Tucson newspaper referred to the panel as an "arbitration committee."

However, on July 19—only four days after the Jewish Council publicly denied that it had agreed to the arbitration arrangement, and less than two weeks before the scholars were scheduled to meet—Dr. Koffler issued a joint statement with Saul Tobin, president of the Jewish Community Council, which said the scholars' investigation would only be "part of" the university's inquiry into the matter. Similarly, a spokesman for the university said recently that the investigation by the scholars was only intended to be "the first step" in Dr. Koffler's latest "review." Thus, by the time the scholars did finally convene July 30, Dr. Koffler had made it clear that they did not have a mandate as an arbitrative body.

Dr. Koffler was given a report by the scholars August 2 and was expected to make a decision whether to accept its findings and recommendations or to take additional steps, according to university officials.

The dispute began in 1981 when the Jewish Council alleged to university officials that the outreach program of the Near Eastern Studies Center was using "propagandistic materials" in courses for elementary and secondary school teachers and that the instructors of the courses displayed an "anti-Israel" bias.