1. CIA gets into Saddam's head through a novel
2. CAMERA Alert: Are settlements illegal under international law?
3. Defense Minister Ben Eliezer announces settlement freeze on CNN
4. Arafat at the Ministerial Meeting of OIC

===========
To: bprlist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [bprlist] CIA gets into Saddam's head through a novel
From: "research-bpr" <research-bpr@philologos.org>
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 12:25:09 -0400
--------
CIA gets into Saddam's head through a novel
  
 As every president has his own sideshow, it seems that Saddam Hussien's
 hobby has finally been revealed... A novelist!
  

 May 26, 2001, 12:32 AM

WASHINGTON (Agencies) - The US Central Intelligence Agency has pored
over a novel in Arabic they believed may have been written by Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein to glean insights into his thinking, The New York Times
said Friday.

The novel, "Zabibah wal-Malik" (Zabibah and the King), was purchased by the
CIA in a London bookstore after the Saudi-owned, London-based Al Sharq Al
Awsat daily identified its author as the Iraqi leader -- on the book´s cover only
appear the words "by its author." And the pro-Iraqi Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-
Arabi wrote that the fact that there was no criticism following news of the
book "strongly" suggested that Saddam Hussein did write it.

"In a closed government like Iraq's, where reliable information about internal
politics and decision-making is almost nonexistent and where Mr. Hussein is
said to use a double for some public appearances, studying documents like
novels can be an important tool for the United States government," The New
York Times said in it's report.

After a US government interpreter scrutinized the novel for three months, the
CIA reached the conclusion that Hussein probably did not write it, but that he
carefully supervised its production and suffused it with his own words and
ideas, officials told the Times.

CIA officials have read between the lines to find what they claim is an
intriguing window into Hussein´s thinking. They believe Zabibah represents
the Iraqi people. "In the book, Saddam is the king, and the king is apologetic
to the people. He says: ‘I´m a great leader. You must obey me. Not only
that, you must love me´," said one US official.

"The book is a kind of dirge," another official said. "The king is talking about
his death. Every time I read the book I feel for the king. This is what Saddam
wants the people to do -- to feel for him."

In the book, the king, impressed by Zabibah's wisdom and intelligence, holds
long conversations with her — about God, politics, love, family, loyalty,
betrayal and the will of the people. Along the way, he reveals his insecurities,
according to the daily.

He considers creating a party to support him, for example, but is afraid of
fomenting rivalry between the party and senior political officials and military
officers. He wonders whether the people will honor or desecrate his corpse
after he dies. And he asks Zabibah, "Do the people need strict measures"
from their leader? "Yes, your Majesty," Zabibah replies. "The people need
strict measures so that they can feel protected by this strictness."

In a passage, Zabibah is raped, an action US official believes refers to the
US invasion of Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. The king declares a war "that
will not end until victory or death."

In Zabibah´s battle with her rapists -- her estranged husband and his
supporters -- she is killed. Her husband is also killed on the same day,
January 17, the day the US-led coalition began bombing Baghdad.

"The dialogue between the king and Zabibah exposes a wide spectrum of
Saddam´s thinking: tribal values are paramount and family is the only trusted
security," said the daily, quoting a US government summary of the book.

"Honor is linked to a woman´s purity, making rape worse than murder. In this
context, man´s revenge becomes his highest duty," the summary said,
adding that the king´s role, "is to give orders, rule and lead the people, who
must obey and satisfy his wishes."

In it's final chapter, the book describes an attempt to modernize the regime
by allowing more free speech through a popular assembly, but all of the
speakers are discredited. An aristocrat named Nouri Chalabi (The New York
Times believed is modeled after Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of a London-
based opposition movement) is dismissed from the session because he
disgraced the people by not defending the country.

The book sells for 1,500 Dinars — about $1 — and its back cover states that
all profits will go to the poor, the orphaned and the oppressed.

AFP and The New York Times contributed to this report

 Arabia on Line ©

http://www.arabia.com/news/article/english/0,1690,47618,00.html

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To: bprlist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [bprlist] CAMERA Alert: Are settlements illegal under international law?
From: "research-bpr" <research-bpr@philologos.org>
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 19:46:49 -0400
--------
CAMERA Alert: Are settlements illegal under international law? Two articles
by Eugene W.Rostow set the record straight

Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
                              www.camera.org

Shalom CAMERA E-Mail Team:

Recently, many mainstream American news outlets have been erroneously
reporting that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are
illegal. Please read the following articles by Eugene Rostow, a former
Distinguished Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, which will provide
you with critical background information to respond to false claims
about the legality of settlements.

If your local media falsely characterizes Israeli settlements in Gaza
and the West Bank as illegal under international law, place a call to
the foreign editor requesting a correction. Also, please write a
letter-to-the-editor for publication.

*********************************
Copyright 1991 The New Republic Inc.
The New Republic, October 21, 1991

HEADLINE: Resolved: are the settlements legal? Israeli West Bank policies
BYLINE: Rostow, Eugene W.

Assuming the Middle East conference actually does take place, its official
task will be to achieve peace between Israel and its Levantine neighbors in
accordance with Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Resolution 242,
adopted after the Six-Day War in 1967, sets out criteria for peace-making by
the parties; Resolution 338, passed after the Yom Kippur War in 1973,
makes resolution 242 legally binding and orders the parties to carry out its
terms forthwith. Unfortunately, confusion reigns, even in high places, about
what those resolutions require.

For twenty-four years Arab states have pretended that the two resolutions
are "ambiguous" and can be interpreted to suit their desires. And some
European, Soviet and even American officials have cynically allowed Arab
spokesman to delude themselves and their people--to say nothing of
Western public opinion--about what the resolutions mean. It is common even
for American journalists to write that Resolution 242 is "deliberately
ambiguous," as though the parties are equally free to rely on their own
reading of its key provisions.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Resolution 242, which as
undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped
produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer
the territories it occupied in 1967 until "a just and lasting peace in the Middle
East" is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to
withdraw its armed forces "from territories" it occupied during the Six-Day
War--not from "the" territories nor from "all" the territories, but from some of
the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan
Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it
perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means.
Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from "all" the territories
were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker
after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the
"fragile" and "vulnerable" Armistice Demarcation Lines, but should retire once
peace was made to what Resolution 242 called "secure and recognized"
boundaries, agreed to by the parties. In negotiating such agreements, the
parties should take into account, among other factors, security
considerations, access to the international waterways of the region, and, of
course, their respective legal claims.

Resolution 242 built on the text of the Armistice Agreements of 1949, which
provided (except in th case of Lebanon) that the Armistice Demarcation
Lines separating the military forces were "not to be construed in any sense"
as political or territorial boundaries, and that "no provision" of the Armistice
Agreements "Shall in any way prejudice the right, claims, and positions" of
the parties "in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem." In
making peace with Egypt in 1979, Israel withdrew from the entire Sinai,
which had never been part of the British Mandate.

For security it depended on patrolled demilitarization and the huge area of
the desert rather than on territorial change. As a result, more than 90 percent
of the territories Israel occupied in 1967 are now under Arab sovereignty. It is
hardly surprising that some Israelis take the view that such a transfer fulfills
the territorial requirements of Resolution 242, no matter how narrowly they
are construed.

Resolution 242 leaves the issue of dividing the occupied areas between Israel
and its neighbors entirely to the agreement of the parties in accordance with
the principles it sets out. It was, however, negotiated with full realization that
the problem of establishing "a secure and recognized" boundary between
Israel and Jordan would be the thorniest issue of the peace-making process.
The United States has remained firmly opposed to the creation of a third
Palestinian state on the territory of the Palestine Mandate. An independent
Jordan or a Jordan linked in an economic union with Israel is desirable from
the point of view of everybody's security and prosperity. And a predominantly
Jewish Israel is one of the fundamental goals of Israeli policy. It should be
possible to reconcile these goals by negotiation, especially if the idea of an
economic union is accepted.

The Arabs of the West Bank could constitute the population of an
autonomous province of Jordan or of Israel, depending on the course of the
negotations. Provisions for a shift of populations or, better still, for individual
self-determination are a possible solution for those West Bank Arabs who
would prefer to live elsewhere. All these approaches were explored in 1967
and 1968. One should note, however, that Syria cannot be allowed to take
over Jordan and the West Bank, as it tried to do in 1970.

The heated question of Israel's settlements in the West Bank during the
occupation period should be viewed in this perspective. The British Mandate
recognized the right of the Jewish people to "close settlement" in the whole
of the Mandated territory. It was provided that local conditions might require
Great Britain to "postpone" or "withhold" Jewish settlement in what is now
Jordan. This was done in 1992. But the Jewish right of settlement in
Palestine west of the Jordan river, that is, in Israel, the West Bank,
Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never
been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace
between Israel and its neighbors. And perhaps not even then, in view of
Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, "the Palestine article," which provides that
"nothing in the Charter shall be construed ... to alter in any manner the rights
whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international
instruments...."

Some governments have taken the view that under the Geneva Convention of
1949, which deals with the rights of civilians under military occupation,
Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal, on the ground that the
Convention prohibits an occupying power from flooding the occupied territory
with its own citizens. President Carter supported this view, but President
Reagan reversed him, specifically saying that the settlements are legal but
that further settlements should be deferred since they pose a psychological
obstacle to the peace process.

In any case, the issue of the legality of the settlements should not come up
in the proposed conference, the purpose of which is to end the military
occupation by making peace. When the occupation ends, the Geneva
Convention becomes irrelevant. If there is to be any division of the West
Bank between Israel and Jordan, the Jewish right of settlement recognized
by the Mandate will have to be taken into account in the process of making
peace.

This reading of Resolution 242 has always been the keystone of American
policy. In launching a major peace initiative on September 1, 1982, President
Reagan said, "I have personally followed and supported Israel's heroic
struggle for survival since the founding of the state of Israel thirty-four years
ago: in the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its
narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of
hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again."

Yet some Bush administration statements and actions on the Arab-Israeli
question, and especially Secretary of State James Baker's disastrous
speech of May 22, 1989, betray a strong impulse to escape from the
resolutions as they were negotiated, debated, and adopted, and award to the
Arabs all the territories between the 1967 lines and the Jordan river, including
East Jerusalem. The Bush administration seems to consider the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip to be "foreign" territory to which Israel has no claim. Yet
the Jews have the same right to settle there as they have to settle in Haifa.
The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were never parts of Jordan, and Jordan's
attempt to annex the West Bank was not generally recognized and has now
been abandoned. The two parcels of land are parts of the Mandate that have
not yet been allocated to Jordan, to Israel, or to any other state, and are a
legitimate subject for discussion.

The American position in the coming negotiations should return to the
fundamentals of policy and principle that have shaped American policy
towards the Middle East for three-quarters of a century. Above all, rising
above irritation and pique, it should stand as firmly for fidelity to law in
dealing with the Arab-Israeli dispute as President Bush did during the Gulf
war. Fidelity to law is the essence of peace, and the only practical rule for
making a just and lasting peace.

EUGENE V. ROSTOW is a Distinguished Fellow at the United States
Institute of Peace.

*****************************
Copyright 1990 The New Republic Inc. The New Republic April 23, 1990

HEADLINE: Bricks and stones: settling for leverage; Palestinian autonomy

BYLINE: Rostow, Eugene V.

Over the past several weeks the long-standing American objection to further
Israeli settlements in the West Bank has been pressed by the Bush
administration with new vehemence. The outcome of this argument is crucial.
It will affect the substance, fairness, and durability of any peace that may
emerge.

With varying degrees of seriousness, all American administrations since
1967 have objected to Israeli settlements in the West Bank on the ground
that they would make it more difficult to persuade the Arabs to make peace.
President Carter decreed that the settlements were "illegal" as well as
tactically unwise. President Reagan said that the settlements were legal but
that they did make negotiations less likely. The strength of the argument is
hardly self-evident. Jordan occupied the West Bank for nineteen years,
allowed no Jewish settlements, and showed no sign of wanting to make
peace. Yet if the West Bank were 98 or 100 percent Arab when the parties
finally reached the bargaining table, the impulse to accept a peace that
ceded the whole of the West Bank to an Arab state would be tempting to
Americans and Europeans, and even to some weary Israelis. The growing
reality of Israeli settlements in the area, on the other hand, should be a
catalyst for peace, by imposing a price on the Arabs for their refusal to
negotiate. But the American government keeps reciting the old formula.

Secretary of State James Baker has gone beyond previous American
positions by threatening to cut aid if the Israelis build more settlements in
the West Bank. He spoke after Arab protests against the possibility of large
numbers of Soviet Jews settling in Israel, particularly in the West Bank.
Wouldn't it have been more useful if Baker had told his Arab interlocutors
that if they want any parts of the West Bank to become Arab territory, they
should persuade Jordan and the Arabs living in the occupied territories to
make peace with Israel as rapidly as possible? Since 1949 the U.N. Security
Council has repeatedly urged and occasionally commanded the Arab states
to make peace, most recently in Resolutions 242 and 338. Thus far, with the
exception of Egypt in 1977, they have simply refused to comply. But Baker
yielded to the Arab outcry, and is trying to maneuver Israel into a position
that no Israeli majority can accept: to renounce the right of settlement "of the
Jewish people"-in the words of the Mandate-in any part of the West Bank.

The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same
provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and
Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created. The Mandate for Palestine
differs in one important respect from the other League of Nations mandates,
which were trusts for the benefit of the indigenous population. The Palestine
Mandate, recognizing "the historical connection of the Jewish people with
Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that
country," is dedicated to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home
for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be
done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonjewish
communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews
in any other country."

The Mandate qualifies the Jewish right of settlement and political
development in Palestine in only one respect. Article 25 gave Great Britain
and the League Council discretion to "postpone" or "withhold" the Jewish
people's right of settlement in the TransJordanian province of Palestine-now
the Kingdom of Jordan-if they decided that local conditions made such action
desirable. With the divided support of the council, the British took that step
in 1922.

The Mandate does not, however, permit even a temporary suspension of the
Jewish right of settlement in the parts of the Mandate west of the Jordan
River. The Armistice Lines of 1949, which are part of the West Bank
boundary, represent nothing but the position of the contending armies when
the final cease-fire was achieved in the War of Independence. And the
Armistice Agreements specifically provide, except in the case of Lebanon,
that the demarcation lines can be changed by agreement when the parties
move from armistice to peace. Resolution 242 is based on that provision of
the Armistice Agreements and states certain criteria that would justify
changes in the demarcation lines when the parties make peace.

Many believe that the Palestine Mandate was somehow terminated in 1947,
when the British government resigned as the mandatory power. This is
incorrect. A trust never terminates when a trustee dies, resigns, embezzles
the trust property, or is dismissed. The authority responsible for the trust
appoints a new trustee, or otherwise arranges for the fulfillment of its
purpose. Thus in the case of the Mandate for German South West Africa, the
International Court of justice found the South African government to be
derelict in its duties as the mandatory power, and it was deemed to have
resigned. Decades of struggle and diplomacy then resulted in the creation of
the new state of Namibia, which has just come into being. In Palestine the
British Mandate ceased to be operative as to the territories of Israel and
Jordan when those states were created and recognized by the international
community. But its rules apply still to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,
which have not yet been allocated either to Israel or to Jordan or become an
independent state. jordan attempted to annex the West Bank in 1951, but
that annexation was never generally recognized, even by the Arab states,
and now Jordan has abandoned all its claims to the territory.

The State Department has never denied that under the Mandate "the Jewish
people" have the right to settle in the area. Instead, it said that Jewish
settlements in the West Bank violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva
Convention of 1949, which deals with the protection of civilians in wartime.
Where the territory of one contracting party is occupied by another
contracting party, the Convention prohibits many of the inhumane practices
of the Nazis and the Soviets before and during the Second World War-the
mass transfer of people into or out of occupied territories for purposes of
extermination, slave labor, or colonization, for example.

Article 49 provides that the occupying power "shall not deport or transfer part
of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." But the Jewish
settlers in the West Bank are volunteers. They have not been "deported" or
"transferred" by the government of Israel, and their movement involves none
of the atrocious purposes or harmful effects on the existing population the
Geneva Convention was designed to prevent. Furthermore, the Convention
applies only to acts by one signatory "carried out on the territory of another."
The West Bank is not the territory of a signatory power, but an unallocated
part of the British Mandate. It is hard, therefore, to see how even the most
literal-minded reading of the Convention could make it apply to Jewish
settlement in territories of the British Mandate west of the jordan River. Even
if the Convention could be construed to prevent settlements during the period
of occupation, however, it could do no more than suspend, not terminate, the
rights conferred by the Mandate. Those rights can be ended only by the
establishment and recognition of a new state or the incorporation of the
territories into an old one.

As claimants to the territory, the Israelis have denied that they are required
to comply with the Geneva Convention but announced that they will do so as
a matter of grace. The Israeli courts apply the Convention routinely,
sometimes deciding against the Israeli government. Assuming for the
moment the general applicability of the Convention, it could well be
considered a violation if the Israelis deported convicts to the area or
encouraged the settlemen of people who had no right to live there
(Americans, for example). But how can the Convention be deemed to apply
to Jews who have a right to settle in the territories under international law: a
legal right assured by treaty and specifically protected by Article 80 of the
U.N. Charter, which provides that nothing in the Charter shall be construed
"to alter in any manner" rights conferred by existing international
instruments" like the Mandate? The Jewish right of settlement in the area is
equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to
live there.

Another principle of international law may affect the problem of the Jewish
settlements. Under international law, an occupying power is supposed to
apply the prevailing law of the occupied territory at the municipal level unless
it interferes with the necessities of security or administration or is "repugnant
to elementary conceptions of justice." From 1949 to 1967, when Jordan was
the military occupant of the West Bank, it applied its own laws to prevent
any Jews from living in the territory. To suggest that Israel as occupant is
required to enforce such Jordanian laws-a necessary implication of applying
the Convention-is simply absurd. When the Allies occupied Germany after
the Second World War, the abrogation of the Nuremberg Laws was among
their first acts.

The general expectation of international law is that military occupations last
a short time, and are succeeded by a state of peace established by treaty or
otherwise. In the case of the West Bank, the territory was occupied by
Jordan between 1949 and 1967, and has been occupied by Israel since
1967. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 rule that the Arab states
and Israel must make peace, and that when "a just and lasting peace" is
reached in the Middle East, Israel should withdraw from some but not all of
the territory it occupied in the course of the 1967 war. The Resolutions leave
it to the parties to agree on the terms of peace.

The controversy about Jewish settlements in the West Bank is not,
therefore, about legal rights but about the political will to override legal rights.
Is the United States prepared to use all its influence in Israel to award the
whole of the West Bank to Jordan or to a new Arab state, and force Israel
back to its 1967 borders? Throughout Israel's occupation, the Arab countries,
helped by the United States, have pushed to keep Jews out of the territories,
so that at a convenient moment, or in a peace negotiation, the claim that the
West Bank is "Arab" territory could be made more plausible. Some in Israel
favor the settlements for the obverse reason: to reinforce Israel's claim for the
fulfillment of the Mandate and of Resolution 242 in a peace treaty that would
at least divide the territory. For the international community, the issue is
much deeper and more difficult: whether the purposes of the Mandate can be
considered satisfied if the Jews finally receive only the parts of Palestine
behind the Armistice Lines-less than 17.5 percent of the land promised them
after the First World War. The extraordinary recent changes in the
international environment have brought with them new diplomatic
opportunities for the United States and its allies, not least in the Middle
East. Soviet military aid apparently is no longer available to the Arabs for the
purpose of making another war against Israel. The intifada has failed, and the
Arabs' bargaining position is weakening. It now may be possible to take long
steps toward peace. But to do so, the participants in the Middle East
negotiations-the United States, Israel, Egypt, and the PLO-will have to look
beyond the territories.

The goal of Yitzhak Shamir's election proposal is an interim regime of Arab
autonomy in part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in accordance with
the Camp David Accords; the goal of the PLO is to establish a Palestinian
Arab state in the whole of the territories. It is hard to be sanguine about the
possibility of reconciling those positions through negotiations. Establishing a
cooperative relationship between Israel and the Arabs who live in the
occupied territories is a crucial part of the Palestine problem, but it is not the
whole of it, and surely not an end in itself. The last thing Israel wants is an
Arab Bantustan. If the status of the occupied territories is viewed in isolation,
negotiation will be excruciatingly difficult, and every item on the agenda will
be a tense and suspicious haggle on both sides.

The prospects for peace would be less forbidding if the question were
approached as one element in a plan for achieving a larger goal: a
confederation involving at least Israel, Jordan, and the occupied territories.
Membership could perhaps be open to poor Lebanon as well, or parts of it.
Even Syria, behind its ferocious words, may be preparing to move toward
peace. Syria and Israel have congruent interest in Lebanon and elsewhere,
and neither country wants a state dominated by the PLO as a neighbor.

The idea of a Palestinian confederation has been the recommendation of
every serious study of the Palestine problem for more than fifty years. It was
the essence of the partition proposals of the Peel Commission in 1936, and
of the General Assembly's 1947 partition plan, at least for Israel and the
West Bank. With different boundaries, it was also the basic idea of Israel's
1967 peace offer, which will always correspond to Israeli public opinion:
Palestine divided into a jewish and an Arab state, united in a common
market, with special arrangements for Jerusalem and as much political
cooperation as the traffic will bear. Before the intifada started, it was the
notion behind the de facto Israel/Jordanian condominium for the West Bank,
which was both effective and practical.

After the past year's events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, who can
say that progress in the Middle East is impossible?

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To: bprlist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [bprlist] Defense Minister Ben Eliezer announces settlement freeze on CNN
From: "research-bpr" <research-bpr@philologos.org>
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 19:47:36 -0400
--------
Defense Minister Ben Eliezer announces settlement freeze on CNN

Aaron Lerner Date: 26 May 2001

Army Radio reported that Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said for the
first time today that he would not approve any new construction in the
settlements. In an interview on CNN Ben Eliezer said that Israel accepts the
Mitchell Report in full, including the demand of a complete freeze on
settlement construction.

Army Radio Diplomatic correspondent Raviv Drucker notes that Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon said at a press conference a few days ago that Israel
did not intend to freeze construction. In addition, the Mitchell Report has yet
to be brought before the Cabinet for discussion and no decisions relating to it
have yet to been made by the Cabinet.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director
IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-5480092
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
pager 03-6750750 subscriber 4811
Website: http://www.imra.org.il

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To: bprlist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [bprlist] Arafat at the Ministerial Meeting of OIC
From: "research-bpr" <research-bpr@philologos.org>
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 19:50:10 -0400
--------
President Arafat at the Ministerial Meeting of OIC: Palestinians Palestine
with their blood; Israel uses depleted uranium, poison gases and radioactive
material in war to exterminate the Palestinians; no compromise on return of
refugees their homes

President Arafat addressing the Ministerial Meeting of OIC:
http://www.wafa.pna.net/EngText/26-05-2001/page001.htm

Why this absolute incapacity in the UN Security Council in the face of this
war of aggression waged by the Government of Israel against our people?

Doha, Qatar, May 26th. Wafa,

President Yasser Arafat described the Israeli unleashed assault, as a
destructive war of aggression aimed at exterminating our people.

H.E. wondered about the absolute incapacity in the UN Security Council in
the face of this war of aggression waged by the Government of Israel against
our people? Who imposes this complete silence on the UN Security
Council? Is
it double standards and the total bias in favour of aggression and the
aggressors at the cost of international norms and laws and at the cost of
the victims of our people, our land and our Christian and Islamic holy
places that fall under the Omari concordat, which we are fully commeted to
it and respect it?

H.E. said We are for a just, full and comprehensive peace in our region and
on all Arab tracks. We are for the peace of the brave for the sake of our
children and their children. In the wake of these circumstances, dangerous
military escalation and the current situation, we do not find what is better
than the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative and the recommendations of the
Mitchell Commission, particularly its recommendation for a final and
complete freeze on settlements.

H.E. The President added that the government of Israel continue to evade all
resolutions of the international legitimacy. In this attempt, Israel is
being covered and protected by the rejection to let the UN Security Council
adopt a resolution on international forces or observers to proveide for
international protection to our people in the face of this total Israeli
aggression against our homeland, people and holy places.

Hereby is the full text of the speech of President Arafat to the Meeting of
the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Organization of Islamic Conference
in Doha Qatar Today:

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

Glory to (God)

Who did take His Servant

For a Journey by night

From the Sacred Mosque,

To the Farthest Mosque,

Whose precincts We did

Bless,- in order that we

Might show him some

Of Our Signs: for He

Is the One Who heareth

And seeth (all things)

Sadaqa Allahu Al Azhim

Your Highness Brother Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al - Thani,

President of the Islamic Summit, Prince of the fraternal State of Qatar,

Excellencies the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Countries of the
Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Peace, God's mercy and blessings be with you from the Holy Land whose
precincts God did bless, from Al Quds Asharif, Holy Jerusalem, the place of
the nocturnal journey of our Prophet Muhammad, God's prayers and peace be
upon him, and the place of nativity of our lord Jesus Christ, peace be upon
him.

Peace, God's mercy and blessings be with you from steadfast Palestine and
from the people of Palestine, who irrigate with their blood their holy land
with Al Aqsa Intifada in defense of the Al Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the
Rock, the Holy Mosque of Jerusalem (Haram Sharif), the Church of Nativity,
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and all the Christian and Islamic Holy
Places. The spark that ignited this aggression against our people and holy
sites was the visit made by Sharon, with agreement of Barak, to the Haram
Sharif (the Holy Sanctuary). Following Sharon's visit, the Israeli army
opened fire on the worshipers at the Haram Sharif, despite our calls on
Barak not to permit this provecative vist.

Peace be upon you from the land blessed by God, the first of the two Qiblas
and the third after the two holy Mosques. It is the land that is being
exposed to the conspiracy of judaization, and Zionist settlement with the
aim of uprooting our history that goes deep in time and existence. It is the
great international conspiracy that made our homeland, territory, history
and holy places free to grab in contravention of any human justice or
international legitimacy. The masses of our Palestinian people, who are in
garrison to the Day of Judgement, as our gracious Prophet had said, are
irrigating with their blood the land of Palestine, its plains, mountains,
historic and holy places. How many are the heinous massacres perpetrated
by
the Israeli occupiers at the Holy Al Aqsa Mosque against the worshipers as
they were praying in the presence of God during the month Ramadan "in
which
was sent down the Quran, as a guide To mankind, also clear (Signs) For
guidance and judgement (Between right and wrong)", at the Holy Ibrahimi
Mosque, at the Prayer at dawn where the treacherous bullets of the settlers
and the Israeli occupation army sawed the souls of innocent people as they
were worshiping God to protect their land and holy places. In addition,
there are the monstrous massacres against our unarmed people carried out
by
missiles and bombs shelled from the F-16 war planes, the Apache
helicopters,
tanks and artillery, their missiles and internationally prohibited bombs,
including depleted uranium, poison gases and radioactive material used
against our Palestinian people, their institutions and facilities, their
homes, farms and factories.

Your Highness Brother Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al - Thani,

Excellencies the Ministers of Foreign Affairs,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is the eighth consecutive month of this unjust war of aggression waged
by the Government of Israel, its army and settlers against our people, our
land, our Palestinian Authority, and its apparatuses, installations and
security forces. It is a destructive war of aggression that aims at
uprooting our people from their land, and the extirpation of our history and
holy places from this Holy Land, whose precincts God did bless. It is an
aggressive war aimed at the extermination of our existence from our
homeland, the only homeland that we have, and from our lands, the land of
the nocturnal journey of Prophet Muhammad, God's prayers and peace be
upon
him, and the land of the nativity our lord Jesus Christ, peace upon him.
They try by all means to obliterate and destroy our Islamic And Christian
holy places, and judaize our Holy Jerusalem.

The Government of Israel lays siege to our people for the eighth consecutive
month, bombards cities, bulldozes land, demolishes factories and
installations, destroys bridges and residential areas and kills children
while they are in the bosoms of their mothers and fathers. Which conscience
in this world can remain silent in the face of killing the child Muhammad
Durra? Which conscience in this world can remain silent while the shells
penetrate the body of four months old child Iman Hijjou as she was sucking
the breast of her mother? Did she threaten the Israeli security with her
missiles and tank bombs in order to kill her?! as they and their media with
the help of some foregn medias spread lies all the time!!.

Yes, indeed, this is a destructive war of aggression aimed at exterminating
our people, destroying their existence, entity and holy places without
giving due consideration to human rights and international legality. Our
people are facing this destructive war and these crimes and massacres
perpetrated by the Government of Israel over fifty years. Will the world
forget the massacre of Deir Yassin or the massacre of Dawaymeh, of Lod and
Ramla in 1948? Will the world forget the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla
refugee camps? Will the world forget the massacres at the Holy Al Aqsa
Mosque, the Holy Ibrahimi Mosque and the other crimes and massacres?
During
the last eight months we lost in the blessed Al Aqsa Intifada 600 martyrs
and more than 28 thousand injured among them huge numbers of children,
women
and elderly!

Our Palestinian people, who are in garrison to the Day of Judgement, in Holy
Jerusalem and in its precincts, call upon you and upon all brothers, friends
and the international community, to stop this destructive Israeli war of
aggression which is sawing every day the lives of our children and people.
These souls do not find in the international community anyone who stands up
in the face of aggressive Ito tell her: Enough killing the Palestinian
people, who have the right, as all other peoples in the world, to live in
freedom, dignity and independence on the territory of their homeland, in
their independent state and in their Holy Jerusalem, the eternal capital of
independent Palestine.

Why this absolute incapacity in the UN Security Council in the face of this
war of aggression waged by the Government of Israel against our people?
Who
imposes this complete silence on the UN Security Council? Is it double
standards and the total bias in favour of aggression and the aggressors at
the cost of international norms and laws and at the cost of the victims of
our people, our land and our Christian and Islamic holy places that fall
under the Omari concordat, which we are fully commeted to it and respect it?

Your Highness Brother Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al - Thani,

Excellencies the Ministers of Foreign Affairs,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The history of these Islamic meetings at the level of the summit and at the
level of foreign ministers is connected to this great conspiracy against our
people, our homeland, Palestine, Holy Jerusalem and our Christian and
Islamic holy places. Despite the important decisions adopted by the recent
Islamic summit, convened in the fraternal State of Qatar, to stop the
aggression and to protect our holy sites, the Israeli aggressors become more
obstinate. They continued their aggression against our people, homeland and
holy places because they are not afraid of punishment be imposed on them,
be
they political or diplomatic or economic, to force them to stop their
aggression. Frankly, I say, the Israeli aggressors enjoy complete protection
of and total support for their aggression from the dominating and hegemonic
forces in the international community. Regrettably, the Israeli aggressors
continue to receive the protection even though we have accepted the
resolutions of the international legitimacy and agreed that they be the road
to achieve just peace which will guarantee for us our national rights, full
and complete, in our homeland and holy places and in our holy Jerusalem.
The
conspiracy however was unmasked and appeared in its most ugly face. The
Israelis continued judaizing Holy Jerusalem, especially what they announced
recently that Sharon received the architectural designs to build a synagogue
in the courtyard of the Haram Sharif as a basis for building the Temple as
they claim. In addition, they continued building more settlements and
expanding already existing ones in- and outside Holy Jerusalem, instead of
vacating them in compliance with the resolutions of international legitimacy
which call for the Israeli withdrawal from all our occupied territories, and
which consider these settlements as illegal actions.

Our Palestinian people hold fast to their land, holy Jerusalem and their
holy places. They will not forsake any iota of dust of their homeland. They
will not give up any of the resolutions of international legitimacy. They
will not surrender the right of return of the Palestinian refugees which
they have in fulfillment of UNGA Resolution 194 which stipulate the right of
refugees to return to their homeland and homes from which they were unjustly
displaced at the point of the gun.

Your Highness, Brother Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al - Thani,

Excellencies, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs,

The issue of Palestine is your issue. The issue of Jerusalem and its holy
places are your issue and your holy places. There is no way to save Holy
Jerusalem from the dangers of judaization and the cancerous settlements
creeping on the Holy City except by your firm, solid and full - of - faith
stand, as an Arab and Islamic nation, in the face of this wicked aggression
and dangerous aggressors as well as in the face of those who protect the
Israeli aggressors from international legality, and the legality of human
rights and the United Nations.

The danger is imminent. It is grave. Henceforth it can not be stopped by
statements of denunciation, condemnation and censure. There is no way but
to
take a firm stand that puts aggression and the aggressors in shackles, and
that ensures the right of our people to live in their homeland free from
occupation, settlements, racist aggression and military escalation. The
Government of Israel is pressing on in these practices because it thinks
that by force and omnipotent power and by the most modern weapons of
destruction, murder and annihilation it will be able to subdue our people,
judaize their Holy Jerusalem and annul their right to independence,
sovereignty and a free and dignified life in their homeland. It forgets that
our people are omnipotent giants who will not be disparaged or resign, and
who will continue their steadfastness and sacrifices until a young boy or
girl will be able to hoist the flag of Palestine, on behalf of our nation,
on the walls of Jerusalem, the minarets of Jerusalem and the Churches of
Jerusalem. They see it far, we see it near. We say the truth. "And to enter
your Temple As they had entered it before, And to visit with destruction All
that fell into their power." (Sadaqa Allahu Al Azhim).

Your Highness, Brother Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al - Thani,

Excellencies, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs,

Our steadfast, persevering and mujahid people pin great hopes on you. You
are their support. You are the Arab Islamic bulwark on whom they depend in
their jihad and sacrifices, in their patience and perseverance in making
sacrifices. Our people await an Islamic Arab stand as well as a stand from
all believing Christians, the Non-Aligned countries and from all friends the
world over. They are awaiting this stand that will give them support,
encouragement and solidify their steadfastness in the face of the Israeli
war machine, and its ongoing escalation against our people and holy places.
They are awaiting a stand that supports their steadfastness in the face of
the Israeli actions of destruction caused to our people, to their towns,
villages and refugee camps, as well as in the face of bulldozing our green
lands, the demolition of our factories and installations and vital
facilities, the demolition of our infra- and supra-structures; the economic
and financial siege, the holding of our tax revenues, the siege imposed on
supplies and medicine and the prohibition of our workers to work whose
number exceed 360 thousand workers, and in the face of the other forms of
siege and starvation.

Dear Brothers,

We are for a just, full and comprehensive peace in our region and on all
Arab tracks. We are for the peace of the brave for the sake of our children
and their children. In the wake of these circumstances, dangerous military
escalation and the current situation, we do not find what is better than the
Egyptian-Jordanian initiative and the recommendations of the Mitchell
Commission, particularly its recommendation for a final and complete freeze
on settlements. We have agreed to freeze settlements and stop their
expansion after the Oslo agreement with our late partner Rabin, who was
assassinated by these extremist Zionist forces, who do not want peace or
any
agreement but want military escalation, and to bring our Palestinian people
and our Arab and Islamic nation to their knees, and to judaize the Christian
and Islamic holy sites, as they are doing in Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem,
Beit Jala and Beit Sahour. There is an international consensus on this
initiative and the report of the Mitchell Commission which was established
as a result of the Sharm Sheikh meeting in which the USA, the European
Union, the Secretary General of the UN, Egypt and Jordan participated. Why
do we not follow upon this to put a mechanism of implementation by
convening
a new conference of Sharm Sheikh in which the Russian Federation, the
other
co-sponsor of the peace process can participate and in which representatives
of the Islamic Summit, the Committee on Jerusalem and other international
forces are present. Why do we not exert all international efforts so that
they be accepted and implemented by Israel, which tries to rid itself from
all agreements and commitmensigned by the various Israeli Governments?
The
government of Israel continue to evade all resolutions of the international
legitimacy. In this attempt, Israel is being covered and protected by the
rejection to let the UN Security Council adopt a resolution on international
forces or observers to proveide for international protection to our people
in the face of this total Israeli aggression against our homeland, people
and holy places.

Our people pin great hopes on you and on your stand. They are fully
confident that Holy Jerusalem and beloved Palestine are held in trust by
you, and that you will not jeopardize this trust that God, Al Mighty, has
put in you til the Day of Judgement.

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful,

We will, without doubt,

Help Our apostles and those

Who believe, (both)

In this world's life

And on the Day

When the witnesses

Will stand forth,

Sadaga Allahu Al Azhim.

--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

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