Middle East Peace Possible

A separate Palestinian state is in reach as part of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Palestinian deportee told 80 people at a speech in Jefferson Hall last night.

Dr. Taysir Aruri, former lecturer in physics at Birzeit University in the West Bank, said residents in Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Middle East as a whole favor a two-state peace resolution.

"In Israel there is a generation that is fed up with war, especially the generation that went through many wars," Aruri said. He added that for the first time in Israel's history, "we have all the Arab countries and most of the influential Palestinian organizations and the highest majority of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories for a two-state solution."

The Palestinian uprising known as the intifada, which began in December 1987, has changed the attitudes of both Palestinians and Israelis toward a separate Palestine.

"[The intifada] is deepening its roots in the society," said Aruri. "The intifada is a way of life for all of the people in the Occupied Territories."

Aruri said the guerrilla movement has also transformed the once profitable Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into a major economic burden and created real borders between Israel and the territories.

But under a successful peace settlement, the independent Palestinian state would retain economic, political and diplomatic ties with Israel, Aruri said.

"The most crucial factors for an enduring peace are those that have to do with interlocking economic and other interests of both people," he said.

Both parties, Aruri said, would benefit from the continued employment of 110,000 Palestinian workers in Israel and the joint management of scarce water supplies.

Aruri was deported from the West Bank by Israeli authorities in August, 1989, and is in the United States on a tour sponsored by the human rights organization Amnesty International.

The Progressive Jewish Alliance and Harvard's Society of Arab Students sponsored last night's talk.