September 13, 1982

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said last night that the Middle East was at ''a moment of unprecedented opportunity'' for peace. He appealed to Israelis, moderate Arab leaders and Palestinians to agree to the American call for new negotiations. In a speech in New York to the na- Excerpts from speech, page A8. tional leadership of the United Jewish Appeal, Mr. Shultz strongly defended President Reagan's recent Middle East proposals and said the parties had to sit down together to overcome the significant differences among the Arab, Israeli and American stances.

As a weeklong series of school openings continues today, many suburban school districts in the New York metropolitan area are cutting back special programs in the face of the decline in Federal funds for them that totals $300 million nationally. Few districts are ending the programs. But to maintain them, many districts plan to serve fewer students with fewer teachers and less equipment, and either to raise local taxes or to shift existing funds at the expense of other programs. In Montclair, N.J., for example, a system of so-called magnet schools established to aid in desegregation lost its entire $896,000 Federal aid package, said Mary Lee Fitzgerald, the superintendent of schools. The school district saved the program by dismissing 52 of 653 district employees, she said.

Stephen I. D'Agostino, chief executive officer of the D'Agostino Supermarkets chain and chairman of the Food Marketing Institute, the industrywide trade organization, will leave the supermarket field on Oct. 23 after 27 years in the business. The 48-year-old executive, long considered one of the retail food industry's top managers, will become president of the J.T.L. Corporation, Chattanooga, Tenn., the nation's largest independent Coca-Cola bottling company. He will also resign his post in the supermarket trade association on the same day. The career change may surprise many in the supermarket field for whom Mr. D'Agostino has been a dynamic spokesman. Evidence of an industry stature that exceeded the relatively small size of the company he headed came in May 1981, when he was elected chairman of the 1,200-corporate-member Food Marketing Institute in Washington.

Mao Zedong's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng, was dropped from the Chinese leadership today. Most of the older Communist Party veterans remained in their posts. There had been expectations among Chinese officials as well as foreign diplomats here that Ye Jianying, now 85 years old, and his elderly colleagues on the Politburo would have been encouraged to retire. The fact that they did not was seen by some diplomats here as evidence that Deng Xiaoping, China's dominant leader, had failed to push through a planned rejuvenation of the party's leadership to make way for younger, more moderate talent.

Occupied West Bank, Sept. 12 - From the narrow streets that wind among the stone houses of this West Bank Arab village, the Jewish settlement of Shiloh can be seen spreading down from a hilltop a few miles away. Between them lies a road, a valley and a gulf of silence. The children of Sinjil do not play with the children of Shiloh. The men of Sinjil do not sit and talk over sweet tea and bitter coffee with the men of Shiloh. They do not speak to each other about their dreams for the land they both love, of the peace they both desire. ''There are some settlers who have stores, and they come and buy vegetables from us,'' says Azad Shehad, one of the four mukhtars, or elders, of Sinjil. ''Otherwise, I think that there is no contact at all.''