----- Original Message ----- From: SolidNet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 9:11 PM Subject: CP of Bohemia and Moravia, The Israeli-Palestinian conflict(Postmark Prague No. 328) SolidNet The purpose of the Solid Net ( Solidarity Network ) is to inform on the activities as well as the ideological and political views of different Communist and Workers� Parties on National and International issues. All articles in the SolidNet are the responsibility of the authors and in no way commit this Web Site. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.solidnet.org ================================================================ CP of Bohemia and Moravia, The Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Postmark Prague No. 328) ------------------------------------------------------------- From: Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, 15/01/01 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ====================================================== Postmark Prague No.328: >From KEN BIGGS, 15/01/01 Feature Sunday 14 January 2001 The following article by HASSAN CHARFO, head of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia�s international department, originally appeared in the Czech daily Halo noviny on December 22 last year. It is a concise but comprehensive account of the background to the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Length: approx. 1650 words) PALESTINE KEY HISTORICAL EVENTS After the first world war Britain won a mandate to govern Palestine. In 1917 the British government had promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine in its so-called Balfour Declaration. The mandate system devised by the League of Nations was intended to prepare local populations for independence, but in the case of Palestine it failed. In 1917 90 per cent of the original population were Arabs, who conducted an unsuccessful campaign against British domination, while instability in the territory increased in proportion to the rise in the number of Jewish immigrants. Because of tension between the Arab and Jewish populations, on 29 Nov.1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations Organisation adopted Resolution No. 181, which divided Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem and Bethlehem each given a special status (corpus separatum) and administered by a special international regime. The United Nations promised the Jews 56 per cent of the territory of Palestine at a time when they owned less than 7 per cent of it and accounted for only one-third of the population. On 14 May 1948 the state of Israel was proclaimed and this led to the outbreak of the first Arab-Israeli war. When it ended, Israel controlled 77.4 per cent of the territory of Palestine, including most of the land allocated to the Arab state. Jewish military activities, massacres and expulsions led to the depopulation of 418 Palestinian villages and the departure of 750,000 people 60 per cent of the Palestinian population. The Palestinians thus became a nation of refugees. On 11 December 1948 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution No.194, which confirmed the right of the Palestinian refugees to return. Today the number of refugees who have been denied this right of return is close to 4 million. Israel has always refused to implement the UN resolution. Aggression by Israel on 5 June 1967 created a new wave of refugees, after it occupied the rest of Palestine, the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and the Golan Heights in Syria. The Israeli government annexed East Jerusalem, which became part of Israel. The heavy defeat suffered by the Arab states in the 1967 war increased the popularity of the Palestinian resistance groups which had been organised in the camps for Palestinian refugees. These groups took control of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), formed in 1964 by the Arab states. Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Fatah movement, became Chairman of the PLO. The PLO went on to become the leading body in the national struggle for independence, and it was soon transformed into the central force of the Palestinian diaspora. In October 1974 the summit of Arab heads of states held in Rabat recognised the PLO as the sole legal representative of the Palestinian people. The UN General Assembly confirmed this status by inviting Arafat to address it on 13 November 1974. It also granted the PLO observer status at the United Nations and in all UN bodies. The present phase in Palestinian-Israeli relations began in 1987 with the start of the intifada. This was an uprising by unarmed civilians living on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Led by illegal political organisations and mobilising all social classes and groups of Palestinians, the intifida convinced Israel and its main ally, the USA, that the Palestinian- Israel conflict could only be solved at the political level. During the intifada at least 1,600 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers and around another 100,000 of them were wounded 40 per cent of them suffering permanent injuries. Before the outbreak of the Gulf crisis in 1990, Arab, European and American leaders made many proposals aimed at enabling a general agreement to be concluded by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders as part of a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Although none of these got very far, many were used as the basis for convening a Middle East Peace Conference on 30 October 1991 in Madrid. At the end of this conference the delegates from Israel, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon and the allied Palestinian-Jordanian delegation agreed to hold bilateral and multilateral negotiations, which began at the end of November and in December 1991. Secret Palestinian-Israel talks were also opened on 20 January 1993 in Norway. On September 9/10 Chairman Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin exchanged letters on mutual recognition. On September 13 in Washington the two leaders signed an Israeli-Palestinian declaration on the principles of a peace settlement. This declaration resulted in major changes in the control of the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The two sides agreed that the Israeli army would withdraw from certain Palestinian territories, which were put under Palestinian (rather than PLO) administration. These agreements should have lasted for a five-year interim period, during which the two sides were to have negotiated and implemented a standing agreement for a permanent legal settlement. Still disputed were issues relating to borders, security measures, water, Jerusalem, refugees, cooperation with neighbouring countries and the fate of the Jewish settlements. The first Israeli military withdrawals began in April 1994. Control of the city of Jericho on the West Bank and close to two-thirds of the Gaza Strip passed to the Palestinian leadership. On the basis of the Palestinian-Israeli phased agreement of 28 September 1995, the Israel army withdrew from all Palestinian cities on the West Bank (apart from Hebron) and also from smaller towns and villages. The interim agreement also led to the creation of three territorial categories on the West Bank: · Category A territory, where a Palestinian administration took over responsibility for the Palestinian population and internal security · Category B territory, where the Palestinian leadership took over responsibility for the administration, while Israel was responsible for internal security · Category C territory, where Israel remained in sole control. It had full control of the borders, external security, Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements. According to this phased (interim) agreement, Israeli military forces should have carried out three further withdrawals from the whole of the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements. These should have taken place by July 1997, but by January 2000 they had still not been completed. When the Israelis opened a tunnel under Haram al-Sharif, the most sacred Muslim holy place in Palestine, there were demonstrations and clashes for four days, during which 62 Palestinians and 14 Israelis died and 1,600 Palestinians and 50 Israelis were injured. Despite the tense state of relations, which peaked under the government of Benyamin Netanjahu, the two sides initialled the Hebron Protocol of 15 January 1997, which committed Israel to withdrawing its troops from 80 per cent of Hebron while retaining control of the places where the Jewish settlers live. Palestinian-Israeli relations were also adversely affected by Israel�s forcible expansion through illegal Israel settlers into Palestinian-occupied territories, which took place despite Palestinian and international condemnation. In 1997 Israeli prime Minister Benyamin Netanjahu announced that he intended to establish a Jewish settlement at Jabal Abu Ghneim, to the south of Jerusalem. The settlement, reinforced by the circle of Jewish settlers around East Jerusalem, accelerated the bitter confrontation between Palestinian protesters and Israeli military units on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, and contributed to the angry reaction of the Palestinian leadership and the breaking off of peace negotiations for several months. This interruption in the talks came to an end with the signing of the Wye River Memorandum on 23 October 1998, which helped implementation of the second phase of further military withdrawals from the West Bank and the strengthening of security, to which the Palestinian leadership had committed itself. The Netanjahu government, which had signed the Wye River Memorandum very reluctantly, soon gave in to internal political pressure and announced Israel�s refusal to implement the memorandum, plunging Palestinian-Israeli relations into a new crisis. Netanjahu�s defeat at the May 1999 Israeli elections led to an improvement in relations between the PLO and Israel. They signed the Sharm El-Sheik Memorandum of 4 September 1999, which set deadlines for implementing outstanding commitments under the Palestinian-Israeli agreements, including further withdrawals of Israeli military forces, the freeing of Palestinian prisoners, the building of a port in Gaza and the opening of a security corridor for travellers between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Negotiations on a permanent agreement formally began in May 1996, although substantive negotiations were opened only in early November 1999. By January 2000 no concrete progress had been made, and in the meantime a great many contentious issues preoccupied the two sides: for example, the continuing activities of the Israeli settlers, the presence of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails and the Israeli policy of Judaization in Jerusalem. On 3 March 2000, as part of the third round of the second stage of Israeli military withdrawals, the Israeli army withdrew from 6.1 per cent of the West Bank. This withdrawal was in line with the newly-opened Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in Washington, which were aimed at achieving a constructive agreement so that a permanent agreement could be reached by the middle of May. At the end of the third phase of the withdrawal it is estimated that 40 per cent of all territory on the West Bank will be under full or partial control of the Palestinians. On 9 December 2000, at their meeting in Cyprus, communist and workers� parties from all over the world condemned the expansionist and aggressive policy of Israel, the USA�s main ally in the Middle East, and demanded implementation of UN Resolutions 194, 242 and 338 on the withdrawal of Israeli occupation troops from the Arab lands and the return of Palestinian refugees. At the same time they pledged full support for the struggle of the Palestinian people for their legitimate rights. *End*
