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Special Article
Palestinian parliamentary speaker Ahmed Qorei has “Eight years of an interim period, of suffering for the Palestinian people, I think it’s enough, it’s too much, and 13 months of closure, of collective punishments is enough,” he said, referring to Israel’s military blockade of Palestinian territories. The eight years Qorei mentioned were a reference to the 1993 Oslo peace accords, which led to partial Palestinian autonomy and envisioned a final settlement of the conflict with Israel. Qorei also called for a “flexible mechanism” to air all issues to be discussed in political negotiations, which both sides want to return to once they have arranged an end to hostilities. Mr. Qureia said the state should claim all Palestinian-claimed areas that Israel occupied in the 1967 war: the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. About 3 million Palestinians live in these areas – but so do some 400,000 Israelis – about evenly divided between West Bank settlements and Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, with another 7,000 living in the Gaza Strip. As a result of the 1990s interim accords, the Palestinian Authority currently have full or partial control in two-thirds of Gaza and less than half the West Bank. Israel’s previous government offered the Palestinians a state in all of Gaza and more than 90 per cent of the West Bank, and a foothold in Jerusalem. But the talks broke down, in part because the Palestinians also insisted on a “right of return” for all refugees from the 1948-49 war that followed Israel’s creation, and their descendants, about 4 million people. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has said he will not declare an independent Palestinian state. When asked during an interview with the London-based Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC) if he would make such an announcement, Mr. Arafat said: “No, the state has been declared in 1988 in Algiers. Are we going to declare it twice?” “I was elected a president in the Algiers conference in 1988 and 128 countries have recognised that state,” he added. His remarks confirmed an earlier statement by Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. “The Palestinian leadership shall not take dramatic steps such as the unilateral declaration of a state. We shall not surprise anyone,” Mr. Abed Rabbo said. Meanwhile Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has urged British Prime Minister Tony Blair to make a ground-breaking ‘historic promise’ for a Palestinian state. If concrete steps follow, Blair’s anticipated move would bolster Arafat at a time when he has lost ground to militants amid popular anger over Israeli strikes on self-rule areas in the Palestinian territories. Ahmed Abdel Rahman, the Palestinian cabinet’s secretary general, told AFP that Arafat hopes Blair will soon make a ‘historic declaration, historic promise to put the Palestinians and Israelis on equal footing.” A promise of statehood from Blair would ‘correct the historic mistake of the British empire’ if it is followed by concrete steps ensuring the Palestinian ‘right to have a state, our self determination and independence,’ Abdel Rahman said. The Palestinians have never forgotten the Balfour declaration on November 2, 1917 which paved the way for Israel’s creation three decades later and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Then British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote a letter to Jewish leader Lord Rothschild saying his government viewed ‘with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.’ Abdel Rahman said the West had to find a solution to the Palestinian problem to bolster Arab support for the war on terror following the suicide plane attacks in New York and Washington on September 11. In the forefront with US President George W. Bush in the campaign against terror, Blair called for the creation of a ‘viable’ Palestinian state, that would not undermine Israel, when he met Arafat in London in October last. Abdel Rahman said Arafat hopes Blair would take a stronger stand on the Palestine issue and accompany it with a ‘mechanism’ for achieving statehood that would be arbitrated by the international community. He said a first step would be to implement the international community’s call for sending third-party observers to monitor a truce in the Palestinian territories, a move Israel has rejected until now. In another development the Arab first ladies denounced the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and demanded the right of Afghans to live in peace, during the opening of an extraordinary summit of Arab women on November 11. “It is women who pay the price of violence and terrorism,” said Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in a keynote speech to the gathering in Cairo. Arab first ladies from north Africa to the Gulf applauded Mrs. Mubarak when she urged Arab women to speak out for “an independent Palestinian state” and an end to violence in the occupied territories. “Egyptian women are standing beside their Palestinian sisters in the legitimate struggle to recover their country,” Mrs. Mubarak said. Queen Rania of Jordan warned that “Arabs and Muslims face a campaign denigrating Islam and Arab and Arab civilisation,” by extremists who act in Islam’s name and ignorant people who react to them by lashing out at all Muslims.
The wife of Kuwait’s Crown Prince, Shaikha Latifa Al Sabah, urged
Arab women not to distance themselves from the “suffering of their
Palestinian sisters”. The summit concluded on November 12, with the
creation of the Arab Women’s Organisation (AWO), which will be under
the umbrella of the Cairo-based Arab League. Twenty Arab countries have
approved the creation of the AWO, an organisation open to the Arab League
member states as well as non-governmental organisations. Many Israelis
have expressed apprehension about the support that President George W.
Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell recently declared their support
for a Palestinian state. The declaration was described at the time as
part of a new peace initiative that the US intended to launch. |