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Be Southern Israelite ] VOL. LIU ■ The Weekly Newspaper For Southern Jewry Our 54th I OTU0 * n^uuTpaujo ’ - anu^AV uoiiTTo Atlanta, Georgia, FHday,, T o 0 UOTun N0 . n J .. w# will not know" Vance cautious about Mideast by David Ettlnger WASHINGTON, (JTA) — Secretary of State Cyrus Vance left Sunday on an 11-day visit to the Middle East with proposals the United States hopes will lay the groundwork for reconvening the Geneva Middle East peace conference. Prior to leaving, the Secretary held a news con ference and met with a top Soviet diplomat at the State LATE NEWS! Prime Minister Menachem Begin rejected criticism by the United States State Depart ment of the legalization of three West Bank settlements. Begin reiterated his claim that the Judaea and Samaria regions were not occupied territory but rightfully part at Israel. Department but the substance of bis talks with the Soviet of ficial and the proposals he is tak ing with him qgjgained for the most part under wraps. Speaking at a news conference at die State Department on Fri day, Vance conceded that at the conclusion of his trip “it is still possible ... we will not know” whether a Geneva conference will be reconvened. “If that is the case we would plan to have further meetings,” possibly at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly in September when Arab and Israeli diplomats will be in New York for the ses sion. He voiced optimism, however, that as a result of the trip “we will have a clearer idea of the ability to which we have been able to narrow the differences that have existed between the parties.” President Carter was more openly optimistic that the Geneva talks could be reconven ed. During his press conference on July 28, the President said he was optimistic because all the Mideast leaders with whom he has met “want to go to Geneva”. He noted that even though the three Jewish settlements on the West Bank which Israel legalis ed a day earlier made moves toward an ultimate peace more difficult it is “not an insurmoun table problem”. He reiterated this view again last Friday in an interview with a group of American editors here. “We still have a lot of <fif- Acuities to overcome,” Carter was quoted as saying. “My own belief is that they can be over come.” The President also repeated in his interview, the text of which was released by the White House, that the legalisation of Jewish settlements on the West Bank “are illegal and contravene the Geneva conference.” Neither in his press conference nor in his See VANCE, Page 18 M fOOGAj (JTA) — J xiox synagogue i: CHATTAN small Orthodox synagogue in Chattanooga, Tenn., was com' pletely demolished Friday night, July 29, by what Jewish leaders there bmeve was a bomb explo sion. Steven Drysdale, executive director of the Chattanooga Jewish Welfare Federation, said in a phone interview Monday it ths explosion was “ap parently premeditated” as wires were found leading from the synagogue to a motel 100 yards away. Commissioner of Police Gene Roberts said that local police and federal agents are conduc ting laboratory tests to ascertain the cause of the explosion. Asked if the explosion could have possibly been caused by a gas leak, he said it was very unlike ly, but declined to confirm that a bomb caused it. There are currently no leads, he said. The explosion, which was “heard all ova- town,” according to Drysdale, destroyed a con- See BOMBING, Page 18 pat at a meeting in the White House during his recent visit. Also at the Lipehutz, an ahsuaed President Carter, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Bmezinski and Israel’s Am bass *