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Why Ehud Barak Did Not Visit the Etzion Settlements On Thursday, May 13, 1999, Ehud Barak had scheduled to the Etzion communities, south of Bethlehem, a settlement area that had once been thought to lie within Israel's national consensus. However, on Sunday, May 9th, Barak met with a delegation of the Israeli Communist and Arab Nationalist political parties, both of whom favor the forceable expulsion of ALL Jews from ALL areas taken by Israel in 1967. At his meeting, Barak requested and received the endorsement of the Israeli Communist and Arab Nationalist political parties. On May 10th, Barak announced that Labor, Meretz, and Israeli Communist and the Arab Nationalist political parties would formally organize "joint" May 17th election day campaign committee to bring out the vote. Meretz platform also calls for withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and for the dismantling of their Jewish communities. As a first gesture to his new political coalition, Barak announced the cancellation of his planned visit to the Etzion bloc of settlements. The Israel Broadasting Authority reported that the reason for Barak's cancellation of his visit was due to threats to "explode his visit". I checked with every Israeli reporter. None had heard of any such "threats". "Threats" were not the reason for the cancellation of Barak's visit. Ten people carrying signs would never deter an Israeli politician from going anywhere, and there is no evidence any threat issued from the Etzion residents at any time against Barak. It should be noted that former Deputy Foreign Minister Yose Beillin, now running alongside Barak, declared in a taped briefing at the Israel Foreign Ministry on December 8, 1993 that all residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza who decided to remain within their settlements would be forced to live under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. That tape remains on my desk. If there was ever a doubt as to Barak's policy and attitude to the Jewish communities of Judea, Samaria and Katif, that doubt was removed yesterday.
The Revival of UN Resolution #181 Resolution 181's Revival In the May 9, 1999, edition of Al-Ayyam, Journalist Tawfiq Abu Bakr reported on the Palestinian Central Council meetings that discussed Palestinian measures on May 4th 1999: "Minister Nabil Sha'ath [Palestinian Minister for Planning and International Cooperation] said . . . that the President of Finland told the Palestinian delegation [that accompanied Arafat in his recent international tour] about his experience in South Africa, which had the Mandate over Namibia. The Finnish President was the head of the international team that received the land from South Africa and then transferred it to the State of Namibia. He said he was ready to fill a similar role in Palestine, despite the relatively different details and circumstances. Finland will [take its turn as] President of the EU on July 1st, 1999. Their [the EU's] demand for a consolidation of the sovereignty will break through and escalate after the Israeli elections and after there is a new government in Israel. [Sha'ath further stated] that throughout the Palestinian international diplomatic campaign, it was emphasized that the declaration of a state was a natural right of the Palestinian people, on the basis of UN General Assembly [UNGA] Resolution 181, the Partition Resolution [of 1947], which recognized the existence of two states in Palestine. The Jewish state was established in reality, while the Palestinian state was not. The condition for the existence of the Jewish state was [and still is internationally and in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy] related to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Many [at the Central Council] talked about the possibility of reviving the international talks about Resolution 181, which was mentioned three times in the council's final statement_ The mere reference to the Resolution terrifies the Israelis, and especially when it comes from European countries, which threw the first political bomb in their letter to Israel regarding Jerusalem. In this letter, they announced that they still do not recognize the new situation in Jerusalem, both east and west, since Resolution 181 is still the legitimate basis for Jerusalem. Israeli diplomacy faced great confusion when they bluntly declared that they did not recognize the 1947 UNGA Resolution 181, claiming that the other side, the 'Arab side,' did not recognize this Resolution back then and that the circumstances have changed since. Palestinian and Arab diplomacy's task is to take advantage of this provocation regarding the Resolutions of international legitimacy that can only be canceled by the UNGA itself and by a two thirds majority. That was the case with the decision to cancel the UNGA 1975 Resolution that deemed Zionism a racist movement. This Resolution was canceled in 1991, as an Israeli precondition before going to the Madrid Conference. However, in this case the cancellation was done by the same institution that accepted the Resolution in the first place and by a two-thirds majority, organized by Washington. In those days, the US managed to do so, of course. The moderate Palestinians are optimists, maybe out of their historical perspective, and because they trust that intelligence and realism, supported by the acceptance and development of international positions, may turn the Israeli government into [the ones] who stubbornly reject the international legitimacy and challenge the international decisions. In this respect, it may constitute one way or another, a repetition of the Kosovo experience, whose lessons those brothers [the moderate Palestinians] called to examine carefully. The EU accepted the Resolution in favor of military intervention in Kosovo the same day it affirmed the letter known in Palestinian circles as the 'Berlin Declaration . . .' These brothers believe that there is a new international trend, whose foundations were molded in Kosovo, of military intervention in order to solve international problems, with no connection to the UN and its frameworks. [They add that] this inclination will not be in Israel's favor for both the medium and long terms. Nobody speaks of military intervention against Israel in the foreseeable future, since it is still a strategic ally of the US, but such an intervention can be multifaceted. In addition, the international changes continue and nothing is constant in the world except for the fact that it is constantly changing. What seemed to be inconceivable a decade ago, became reality today; what seems inconceivable today and is referred to as 'thinking the unthinkable' may become reality in the future . . . The Jewish state, although armed to the teeth with all kinds of [weapons of] destruction - its people are afraid of the future and its political parties harvest votes all the time by creating fear of tomorrow. The limited concessions they presented are not the result of the balance of power, since the Israelis, due to their military superiority, are capable of not withdrawing from a single inch of land. However, they, or at least some of them, want to protect themselves from the fears and surprises of 'tomorrow' using 'the concessions of the today . . .' These are the main characteristics of the position of the 'moderate Palestinians,' a position that won at the end . . ."
Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI)
MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations.
I am not a creature from another planet, as you seem to believe. I am a Jerusalemite - like yourselves, a man of flesh and blood. I am a citizen of my city, an integral part of my people. I have a few things to get off my chest. Because I am not a diplomat, I do not have to mince words. I do not have to please you, or even persuade you. I owe you nothing. You did not build this city; you did not live in it; you did not defend it when they came to destroy it. And we will be damned if we will let you take it away. There was a Jerusalem before there was a New York. When Berlin, Moscow, London, and Paris were miasmal forest and swamp, there was a thriving Jewish community here. It gave something to the world which you nations have rejected ever since you established yourselves-a humane moral code. Here the prophets walked, their words flashing like forked lightning. Here a people who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, fought off waves of heathen would-be conquerors, bled and died on the battlements, hurled themselves into the flames of their burning Temple rather than surrender, and when finally overwhelmed by sheer numbers and led away into captivity, swore that before they forgot Jerusalem, they would see their tongues cleave to their palates, their right arms wither. For two pain-filled millennia, while we were your unwelcome guests, we prayed daily to return to this city. Three times a day we petitioned the Almighty: Gather us from the four corners of the world, bring us upright to our land; return in mercy to Jerusalem, Thy city, and dwell in it as Thou promised." On every Yom Kippur and Passover, we fervently voiced the hope that next year would find us in Jerusalem. Your inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, the ghettos into which you jammed us, your forced baptisms, your quota systems, your genteel anti-Semitism, and the final unspeakable horror, the holocaust (and worse, your terrifying disinterest in it)- all these have not broken us. They may have sapped what little moral strength you still possessed, but they forged us into steel. Do you think that you can break us now after all we have been through? Do you really believe that after Dachau and Auschwitz we are frightened by your threats of blockades and sanctions? We have been to Hell and back- a Hell of your making. What more could you possibly have in your arsenal that could scare us? I have watched this city bombarded twice by nations calling themselves civilized. In 1948, while you looked on apathetically, I saw women and children blown to smithereens, after we agreed to your request to inter- nationalize the city. It was a deadly combination that did the job. British officers, Arab gunners, and American made cannons. And then the savage sacking of the Old City the willful slaughter, the wanton destruction of every synagogue and religious school; the desecration of Jewish cemeteries; the sale by a ghoulish government of tombstones for building materials, for poultry runs, army camps- even latrines. And you never said a word. You never breathed the slightest protest when the Jordanians shut off the holiest of our places, the Western Wall, in violation of the pledges they had made after the war- a war they waged, incidentally, against the decision of the UN. Not a murmur came from you whenever the legionnaires in their spiked helmets casually opened fire upon our citizens from behind the walls. Your hearts bled when Berlin came under siege. You rushed your airlift "to save the gallant Berliners". But you did not send one ounce of food when Jews starved in besieged Jerusalem. You thundered against the wall which the East Germans ran through the middle of the German capital- but not one peep out of you about that other wall, the one that tore through the heart of Jerusalem. And when that same thing happened 20 years later, and the Arabs unleashed a savage, unprovoked bombardment of the Holy City again, did any of you do anything? The only time you came to life was when the city was at last reunited. Then you wrung your hands and spoke loftily of "justice" and need for the "Christian" quality of turning the other cheek. The truth is-and you know it deep inside your gut- you would prefer the city to be destroyed rather than have it governed by Jews. No matter how diplomatically you phrase it, the age old prejudices seep out of every word. If our return to the city has tied your theology in knots, perhaps you had better reexamine your catechisms. After what we have been through, we are not passively going to accommodate ourselves to the twisted idea that we are to suffer eternal homelessness until we accept your savior. For the first time since the year 70 there is now complete religious freedom for all in Jerusalem. For the first time since the Romans put a torch to the Temple everyone has equal rights. (You prefer to have some more equal than others.) We loathe the sword - but it was you who forced us to take it up. We crave peace - but we are not going back to the peace of 1948 as you would like us to. We are home. It has a lovely sound for a nation you have willed to wander over the face of the globe. We are not leaving. We are redeeming the pledge made by our forefathers: Jerusalem is being rebuilt. "Next year" and the year after, and after, and after, until the end of time- "in Jerusalem!" Arafat-appointed Cleric Delivers a Sermon at Al Aksa Mosque ". . . What interests us as Moslems is the Moslem religious edict concerning the Palestinian problem. Our position is firm and will not change. All of Moslem Palestine remains one indivisible unit that cannot be partitioned. There is no difference between Haifa and Nablus, between Lod and Ramallah or between Jerusalem and Nazareth, since the land of Palestine is holy land that is the exclusive property of all Moslems from the East and from the West. No one has the right to relinquish it nor to divide it. The liberation of Palestine is the obligation of all the nations of Islam and not only incumbent upon the Palestinian nation alone . . . Allah must give a victory to our fighters for Jihad (Holy War)." Yosuf Abu Snenah, Arafat-appointed cleric delivered these words at Al Aksa Mosque, in Jerusalem, to thousands of Moslem worshippers on Friday, April 30, 1999. Film taken by a Palestinian TV crew, with transcription provided by Palestinian Media Watch. Official Fatah Website: Clinton Letter Not Balfour Declaration - 181 & 194 Basis The following editoral from the official Fatah website www.fateh.org/e_editor/99/300499.htm has several important statements: 1. The Clinton letter is not a 'Balfour Declaration'. 2. Rather than 242 and 338, the PLO will base future demands on 181 (the partition line that puts Beersheva and many other areas in a Palestinian state) and 194 (return of the 1948 refugees to within Israel) Complete unedited text: Extending the Central Council Session: Preparing for the Declaration of Statehood President Clintons letter to President Arafat played an important role in lessening Palestinian determination to declare a state on May 4. Although only the parts of the letter which had been published in newspapers were read to members of the Central Council, still the Council members saw in Clintons words a certain significance. As Israeli prime ministerial candidate Ehud Barak commented, the letter amounts to a Palestinian counterpart of the Balfour Declaration, issued on November 2, 1917, under the name of then British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, and promising a national home for the Jews in Palestine. Balfours declaration -- in essence a promise to deliver land by someone who did not own the land, thereby ousting from it an entire people who had lived there for generations -- was followed by material support from the British during the Mandate years. However, it is a mistake to liken Clintons letter to the Balfour Declaration, for in his letter, Clinton ignores the Palestinians right to self-determination, and refers instead vaguely to the right of Palestinians to live freely on their land. In fact, Clintons letter leaves the future of the Palestinian people right smack in the hands of the Zionists who have been occupying it militarily, who themselves offer no more than an even more amorphous autonomy in the land of Greater Israel. In no respect does the letter add to the words Clinton spoke in Gaza, where, in his eyes, presumably, the Palestinian people are already living freely on their land -- locked up day and night, unable to leave even the overcrowded portions of Gaza left to them, packed for more than 50 years, now, into refugee camps, cut off from other parts of Palestine, without work or the means to go find work. If this is what President Clinton means by living freely on their land, then we want no part of his promise to us. We fear that in calling for a one-year extension of the Oslo negotiations, Clinton is deceiving himself. For certain, he is not deceiving us. It is true that Clinton stood by the Palestinian team during the Wye River negotiations, an enterprise which led to eventual imposition on the Palestinian side of an agreement which, even if it had been implemented, was hardly fair to us. But of course the Wye Memorandum was not implemented: it did not find favor with the fundamentalist Zionist ideology which Netenyahus government represents. The Wye Memorandum included a mechanism for implementing UN Resolutions 242 and 383, both so vital to Palestinian rights and interests; therefore, it was not implemented, even though Clinton was considered the chief guarantor of the agreement. Meanwhile, ironically, Netenyahu tries to insult Clinton by labeling him a supporter of Palestinian rights. Speculation that the coming Israeli elections may bring down Netenyahus government may be off the mark. Furthermore, the one-year extension Clinton calls for cannot achieve the necessary results. Its possible that Netenyahu has succeeded in convincing the Israeli public that he is the man to vote for, that he is a man who does not cave in under US pressure. Not only this, but the Israeli public may believe Netenyahu when he boasts that the Clinton letter was written in coordination with Israeli staff members, betting on the notion that a year from now, Clinton will be too weak to handle the Palestinian issue, even if he wants to. Justice for the Palestinian people is not expected to figure large on the agenda of the Democratic Party in the next presidential election. Rather, at that time, Democrats will have their hands full simply trying to make sure that Al Gore becomes the next US president. And as is well known, Al Gore is more sympathetic to Israelis than to Palestinians. In some of his actions, including in coming to Gaza, Clinton has shown some understanding of our cause, it is true. He is besieged, however, by Congress and by his own administration, both of which have proved to be fully committed to the right-wing grab-every-hilltop settler mentality which holds sway in Israel. The US government, sadly, is showing itself to be far closer to the Likud than to any peace-loving Israelis who long for long-term stability, achieved by means of a just peace, in the Middle East. In the light of all that has been said, the Central Councils decision obviously represents but a temporary way out of a problem what will remain, regardless of who wins the Israeli elections. If Netenyahu wins the elections, the result will be a direct confrontation between Palestinians and the Israeli state. The Central Council will have to set into motion the committees it has established. The committees need to demonstrate that Palestinians are serious when we speak of independence. One of these, the National Unity Committee, is especially important. It is composed of all political affiliations, national and Islamic, and given the attendance of both Hamas and Jihad at the Central Councils meeting in which the decision was taken not to declare a state on May 4, its work takes on a special significance. The state we are building is, after all, a state for all the Palestinian people, where political plurality and the sovereignty of law are enjoyed by all citizens. Our state, which is now in the process of being constructed, requires collective work by all of us, to liberate the rest of our land and to ensure full sovereignty over it.The arrogant policies of Netenyahu, who aims to impose his hegemony on Palestinians, cannot be confronted without solid national unity. Meanwhile, the Central Council appreciated greatly the Berlin Statement of support issued simultaneously with the Clinton letter by the European Economic Community, because the EEC document unequivocably emphasized the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Although the statement urged that actual statehood be postponed for one year to give negotiators the chance to overcome current difficulties, establishment of the state is not conceived as contingent on the settlement of these difficulties. The Berlin Statement, rather, accords to Palestinians the right of statehood within a years time, subject to veto by no other state. The statement, we realize, was the result of consensus among parties which had different positions on statehood. Some countries, for instance, already deal with Palestine as a state; others assure us they are ready to recognize Palestine as a state at any time statehood is declare. Consensus was also evident in the action of the Central Council when it voted to postpone the declaration of statehood until after the Israeli elections. Unanimity exists among all Palestinians on the goal of statehood. There was, however, some difference of opinion among Central Council members on the wisdom of postponing the declaration. However, all parties emphasized the importance of continuing the internal dialogue and of participating in the committees set up by the Central Council. In its deliberations, the Central Council expresses the thinking of the PLOs National Council and the Executive Committee, which represents the central government of the Palestinian people. Although the statement of the Central Council reflects Palestinian willingness to continue the process of negotiating for peace, all decisions have been made within revised terms of reference. It is on the basis of these that progress can be made in two directions: first, toward true Palestinian independence and the actualization of full Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza; and second, toward resolution of the remaining interim issues. UN Resolutions 181 and 194, which predate the Oslo Agreements, now form the frame of reference within which all Palestinian parties will make future decisions. Palestinians will now act on the basis of these and all UN resolutions relating to the Palestinian issue. The parties which are able to act on the basis of these resolutions are the PLO Central Council and the PLO Executive Committee, which must be activated full-time to supervise the work of the ministries and other institutions. The one-year extension which was required of the Central Council by both Europe and the United States has led to a continuation of the Council sessions, as a method of postponing the vote on the declaration of statehood, in line with the Arabic proverb which says that avoiding danger can be sometimes better than reaching for advantage. Any future benefits for Palestinians should be studied well, so that the Palestinian people understand their value and work for them wholeheartedly. For the Central Council to meet the peoples expectations, it must use each hour of this month to ensure that the committees set up by the Council are engaged in taking practical steps toward independence and sovereignty rather than in discussing theoretical considerations. The legal basis for statehood has been strengthened by these recent developments, but it requires further work in the political, economic, diplomatic realms. It requires also securing the daily needs of our citizens to show the people the benefits of statehood, and to promote a climate of equality, justice and the sovereignty of law, so that every citizen will have for him or herself a glimpse of the reality to come. Revolution until victory!
Palestinian Reflections on the Kosovo Crisis As a Palestinian who was born a quarter of a century after and spared the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 that galvanized Palestine and sent most of our Palestinian people then fleeing to nearby later-hostile Arab countries, I have often wondered what it must have been like to be there and witness it all. Surely, I have read numerous books about Palestinian history, heard the endless recitals of refugee stories by many including some of my relatives, and witnessed the rare video footage that showed Palestinians boarded unto trucks and sent away to be, or at least as the Zionists then erroneously hoped, forgotten. I was often told stories by my father, who himself escaped when he was five years old with his family from their ancestral Lod, about how they escaped on foot and had to survive on UN rations for a while until they, as a fortunate few, where able to settle outside the refugee camps. Today, I do not have to tax my imagination trying to reconstruct the scenes in my mind, or the horrors and sense of loss the Palestinians went through then. Mass Media has provided us all with similar images from the ongoing Kosovo crisis. And I emphasize images here since some of the real motives behind the US led NATO shelling of Yugoslavia and the fact that the evacuation of ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo was pre-determined and expected by the NATO Allies and the Clinton administration are hidden from us. A number of seasoned journalists, intellectuals, and observers have pointed to European, mainly German, territorial expansion plans for the area of former Yugoslavia, and to certainly the fateful mistake of trying to settle deep historical problems by force. The pictures of and stories about Kosovar Albanians being terrorized to leave their homes - by means of fire, force, murder, and rape - are not different at all form the account about Zionist gangs that evacuated three quarter of a million Palestinians within a year from their homes. Incidentally, one of the who did this was General-turned -"Peace-Maker" Yitzhak Rabin who was personally responsible for driving out 40,000 Palestinians from Lod and Ramla in 1948. Also, they too are losing everything they ever owned as they run for their lives, again as the Palestinians did 51 years ago. The Kosovo Albanians are demographically similar to the Palestinians refugees then as mainly rural, traditional Muslims. They are, as the Palestinians then and now, without real leadership and institutions. There are legitimate comparisons that can be made between Kosovo crisis today and Palestine of 1948. The Serbs' religious and historic claim to Kosovo is similar to modern-day Israel's religious and historical to the historical land of Palestine, but certainly no excuse or reason, in my opinion, for cleansing another people that has been there for hundreds of years. The real sick motive behind it of course is to create an ethnically-homogenous society. Another impressive similarity is, as the Kosovars will soon discover, the number of parties and the countries that are involved in this crisis and are promising help to the refugees which, I believe, will never go in their efforts far beyond giving food, refugee camps, and maybe for the lucky ones, resettlement in other friendly countries. One could safely assume, given the evidence of the Serbian pre-determined mindset to evacuate the Albanians out of Kosovo, the NATO's awareness of that and its preparations to receive refugees at the borders a while before the bombing began and the talk about partition of Kosovo and resettlement of ousted Krajina Serbian refugees in their, hint at a future not-too-pleasant for the Albanians. Does not that sound sadly similar to the 1930's and 40's Zionist plan "Dalt" to evacuate Arabs out of Palestine? What about the UN Partition Plan of 1947 which aimed at dividing Palestine into Arab and Jewish states? What about Britain's and the UN's utter failure to remedy the situation in Palestine peacefully and its looking-the-other-way when it came to Zionist armament? What about the resettlement of European Jews, who escaped the horrors of anti-Semitism and Hitler, in their place? And finally, what about Israel's insistence first that there are no Palestinians and its till today continual main-stream deferment ideologically and politically of discussing the problem of the Palestinian refugees' and their descendants' just and fair claim to recognition, compensation, and apology? How ironic that Israel have admitted to date 104 Albanian refugees while still stubbornly refuses to deal with and discuss the refugee problem it has created of 4 million Palestinians who have lost everything to become wanderers or persona non grata, referred to by Israel's revisionist historians as Israel's original sin. Perhaps that is why Israel's Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon at first decided to oppose NATO's bombing campaign of Yugoslavia for fear of applying the same criteria on Israel in the future. It could be a manifestation of his own insecurity as a long-time proponent of the transfer solution, which calls for driving out the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan to establish a state there. It is unfortunate that after a century of war and destruction the "civilized world" as the NATO/West loves to call itself, has failed to bring about a civilized resolution of a potentially explosive crisis in an area that witnessed the start of both World War I & II. The solution for NATO leaders seems to be bomb, bomb, and bomb. The Kosovo crisis has so far caused the ire of other countries and threatens to drag on longer. Already there is talk about calling 33, 000 more US troops an NATO plans to continue bombing for months to come, in the meantime certain segments in the Russian society are expressing their anger against the US and pressuring their government for action. Perhaps this crisis will be settled temporarily with the partition of Kosovo and resettlement of some of the Albanian refugees in neighboring countries. That, again, is a temporary solution since partition and displacement of original inhabitants has never been a fair and just solution as we can derive from post-1948 Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arab-Israeli wars, and the continuous sham of the "peace process". To quote the words of the journalist Christopher Hitchens writing recently in The Nation Magazine (4/17/99- 5/3/99): "Somewhere at the back of NATO's mind there is a project for the partition and amputation of Kosovo, and nobody who has studied the partitions of Ireland, India, Cyprus, Palestine and Bosnia can believe for an instant that partition can be accomplished without ethnic cleansing_ Of course, all partitions lead to further wars and further partitions." No one can safely predict what the outcome of this crisis will be. But for now at least, the Kosovo Albanians, although receiving exceptional media coverage, have joined the list of the twentieth century's most dispossessed and displaced peoples: the Jews, the Armenians, the Kurds and the Palestinians. Omar Qourah, a Palestinian, is a graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at Omar@MiddleEast.Org.
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