The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, October 17th, 2000. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** US-Israeli policies face dead end The meeting taking place in Cairo which is said to have the aim of bringing about a cease-fire in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, has much more to do with continuing the fake "peace process" which is responsible for the present situation. Those attending include UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, President Mubarak of Egypt, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, PLO leader Yasser Arafat and US President Clinton. However only days before this meeting was arranged the US had vetoed a Palestinian request for the UN Security Council to meet. The Palestinian observer at the UN had requested the meeting saying that Israel had "taken military action tantamount to declaring an overall war against the entire Palestinian people". In vetoing the meeting, US ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke said that it was "hard to conceive of any action the Security Council could take which would be anything other than negative to an explosive situation." It is the responsibility of the UN Security Council to consider and settle conflicts and the US veto is yet another example of the US ignoring the UN when it chooses and implementing its own objectives. By having the meeting convened in Egypt and limiting attendance to those mentioned above, the US has succeeded for a time in asserting its dominance over the situation. Yet US leaders are incapable of negotiating any acceptable settlement. The real objective of the US President is about forcing the Palestinians to accept a deal that would effectively subjugate the Palestinian people to Israeli occupation and colonisation. A "peace" under these circumstances could not be a just peace. It would be a "peace" imposed on an enslaved people. The possibility for the creation of an independent Palestinian state would be excluded for decades into the future, if ever. The Israeli Government does not recognise the Palestinian negotiators as equals. There is a weak side and an enormously stronger one, oppressor and oppressed. There is a country possessing the strongest military force in the Middle East, tanks and helicopter gunships and a full arsenal of nuclear weapons, and there is a people whose armament consists of stones and a few handguns. There is a country that has been sovereign for 52 years, rich and prosperous with the full support of the industrialised West. On the other side is a poor Third World people who are being systematically dispossessed of their lands and their villages. They have been savagely oppressed. It is this side which is struggling with enormous courage to bring an end to this oppression and dispossession. Same policies Successive Israeli Governments have continued the same policy, whether formed by the so-called Labor Party or by the right-wing Likud Party. Palestinian territory has been deliberately and systematically pockmarked with the Jewish settlements. Strategic roads have been built between the settlements to ensure the rapid transport of Israeli troops. In recent years 200,000 extra Israeli citizens have been added to the population of Jerusalem and 200,000 more in the West Bank and Gaza which are supposed to be Palestinian territory. It is the Israeli policy of colonisation and the fraudulent "peace process" that is blown apart by the anger of the Palestinian people that is now boiling over with the mass rejection of this manipulation which has brought nothing to the Palestinian people. It was never intended to bring them anything except continued subjugation. Even if some cease-fire is cobbled together in Cairo it will not fulfill the demand for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. Nor will it result in the release of Palestinian prisoners still being held in Israeli jails or see Palestinian refugees, now scattered around the world, exercise their right to return to their homeland. A cease-fire will be meaningless unless it brings an immediate halt to Israeli massacres of the Palestinian people and the withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Palestinian territory. The meeting must also establish an international commission to investigate the ugly massacres and bring those responsible to justice. UN failure For decades the United Nations has failed to insist on the implementation of its own resolutions (242, 338 and 194) which call upon Israel to withdraw its occupation forces to those that were in place before the Israeli aggression of 1967. The implementation of these resolutions has been prevented by the outright US support of Israel. Even now, Kofi Annan is neglecting to mention these UN resolutions which it is his responsibility in the first place to demand be implemented. Furthermore, instead of conniving with the US, he should insist on a full role being played by the Security Council that would bring a number of other world powers into negotiations. The present situation is a direct consequence of the US-Israeli policies. The blood being spilled is on their hands. Those who are shedding their blood are the courageous Palestinians who in a truly David and Goliath contest have lost more than 100 killed and several thousand wounded. Israeli casualties are minimal by comparison. We accuse In a statement on the situation, the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) blames the Israeli Government for the deterioration in the situation "which threatens to cause a fateful explosion that might engulf the entire region. "It was the government's duty to guarantee the continuation of negotiations with the Palestinian leadership and to prevent the provocative visit by Likud leader Ariel Sharon to the Al-Aqsa compound. "We accuse the Barak government of capitulating to Sharon's dictate and supporting his provocation by providing thousands of police and border guards [to protect him during this visit.] "We warn the Barak government of the illusion that an iron fist policy, massacring civilians, aggression and trampling the rights of the Palestinian people will defeat them and their leadership, which did not capitulate to American and Israeli pressure at Camp David. "It is vital for the Jewish and Arab peace forces to mobilise in a joint struggle to end the dangerous deterioration [of the situation]. "The CPI views the joint Jewish-Arab struggle as a guarantee for the success of a just and stable Israeli-Palestinian peace", concluded the statement. -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: US-Israeli policies face dead end
Communist Party of Australia Wed, 18 Oct 2000 18:22:37 -0700
