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.