Seeking Peace amid the Rubble

Civil rights leaders on a "divinely mandated"mission

It was a scene so implausible that reporters waiting outside the heavily guarded room nearly broke through the door to get a glimpse. In a Beirut building last week, eleven veterans of the American civil rights movement linked arms with Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and joined in a hearty rendering of the old freedom anthem We Shall Overcome.

The 3 1/2-hour meeting with Arafat was the climax of a four-day "fact-finding tour" of the Middle East by leaders of the late Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C.). In the course of what the organization's president, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, called a "divinely mandated" attempt to spread the gospel of nonviolence in the area, the S.C.L.C. leaders picked through the rubble of bombed-out villages in southern Lebanon, prayed for peace with Lebanon's President Elias Sarkis, and urged both Arafat and Israel to accept a moratorium on violent attacks. The civil rights leaders clearly learned a lot about the complex politics of the area. But inevitably, their visit also enhanced the status of the P.L.O. And by arguing that the P.L.O. should be invited to join the peace talks, they undoubtedly have added to the tension between Jews and blacks in the U.S. that has existed since the resignation of Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young.

Shortly after Young's firing, Arafat invited Lowery and his principal aides to come to Lebanon. A similar invitation was extended to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, president of People United to Save Humanity (PUSH), who expects to visit the area this week. The wily guerrilla leader clearly expected that the P.L.O. cause would benefit from the S.C.L.C. delegation's support for the creation of a Palestinian homeland and from its visits to villages and refugee camps in southern Lebanon that Israel had destroyed in retaliation for terrorist attacks.

Moreover, Arafat hoped to demonstrate that the U.S. was in part responsible for the deaths of many Lebanese and Palestinian civilians killed in the Israeli counterattacks. Thus the P.L.O. guides who escorted the civil rights leaders on a daylong inspection of camps and towns near the Israeli border repeatedly stressed that the widespread devastation had been wrought with weapons "paid for with U.S. tax dollars." Seeing the American equipment, said the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, an S.C.L.C. official who is also the District of Columbia's nonvoting representative in Congress, was "shocking and disturbing. We just hope that on our return the American people will be moved to limit the instruments of war that will be provided to the nation of Israel."

At times the group displayed a startling naivete. After meeting with the military commanders of the Lebanese Muslims and their P.L.O. allies, Fauntroy declared that they "considered themselves men of peace. We have no reason to think they are opposed to nonviolence." That must have come as a surprise to most Lebanese, who have witnessed the Muslims and their Israeli-supported Christian foes slaughter each other by the thousands.

Capping the tour was the group's session with Arafat. After hugging and kissing members of the delegation, Arafat denounced Israel's "scorched earth policy" and vowed that the Palestinians were not red Indians" who could be annihilated by Israeli attacks. He promised to discuss the moratorium on new attacks with his executive council.

Lowery had hoped to take the group on to Israel after meeting with the Palestinians. But he canceled that part of the tour after Premier Menachem Begin decided to snub the visiting civil rights leaders. The Premier not only refused to set up a meeting with the S.C.L.C. group but also prohibited Israeli officials from meeting with Jackson when he visits the country. "We don't really think it would be helpful if any additional parties--whether the European Community or the American black community or any other party--would try to mediate between us and the Arabs," Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan explained. Some Israeli officials privately thought the rebuff of the touring blacks was ill advised. Said a foreign ministry aide: "It will only help Jackson to make the point that Israelis don't talk to anybody, meaning the P.L.O., and that Israelis won't talk to him because he is black, which is a lot of nonsense Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek announced that he would be happy to receive the globe-trotting "country preacher."

In pledging their support for a Palestinian homeland, the S.C.L.C. leaders were careful to add that they also supported the existence of Israel as a homeland for Jews. That qualifier is unlikely to allay whatever doubts American Jewish leaders may have about the civil rights leaders' impartiality. In Beirut, Lowery announced that the S.C.L.C. would hold a series of seminars in ten American cities on problems in the Middle East and Africa. Arafat, he added, would be invited to address the first meeting, which will probably be held in New York City.

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