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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Arafat condemns the latest suicide bombing |
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by gehrig
Email: zemblan (nospam) earthlink.net (unverified!) |
13 Apr 2002
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Partial text of Chairman Arafat's statement -- fulfilling the US demand for a condemnation of suicide bombings before Colin Powell would agree to meet with him. And a comment from me. |
The AP is calling this a "partial text" of Arafat's announcment.
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The Palestinian leadership and His Excellency President Arafat express their deep condemnation for all terrorist activities, whether it is state terrorism, terrorism by a group or individual terrorism. This position comes from our steady principle that rejects using violence and terror against civilians as a way to achieve political goals.
We declared this position beginning in 1980 and also when we signed the Oslo accords at the White House and we have repeated it several times before, including our declaration on Dec. 16 last year. After that, we did not find any Israeli response but more Israeli escalation, a tighter siege, further occupation of our people, refugee camps, cities, villages, and more destruction of our infrastructure.
We strongly condemn all the attacks targeting civilians from both sides, and especially the attack that took place against Israeli citizens yesterday in Jerusalem.
We also condemn very strongly the massacre that was committed by the Israeli occupation troops against our refugees in Jenin and against our people in Ramallah, Nablus and Tulkarem and also the brutal aggression against the church in Bethlehem during the last two weeks.
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Comment: if by "after that" in the second paragraph he means "after the Dec. 16 statement," then he's essentially right. If he means "after Oslo," however, his memory is being selective; he was given considerable power and -- as important -- considerable funding, and was also given a certain amount of leeway on how best to deal with extremist organizations like Hamas. (Unfortunately, it now seems that the way he chose to deal with them was not to deal with them at all, at a time it would have been most effective to have done so; after letting things fester too long, he can now only wring his hands and say "sorry, it's more than I can handle.")
And if he means "after 1980," he should recall that he still has not yet come up with an adequate explanation for why the Palestinian National Charter was never modified, despite frequent international requests, to eliminate its explicit call for the destruction of the state of Israel through armed warfare, the refusal to do so being one of the main reasons why the 1980 statement was largely regarded as ambiguous at best. This is another example of something Arafat could have done that would have been very simple but would have aided his people immeasurably.
(Parenthetical aside: it might not hurt to remember that the Palestinian National Charter that founded the PLO was composed in 1964, when the West Bank was still an unwilling but de facto annex of Jordan. If the Palestinians, in the aftermath of the Six-Day war, hadn't still been clinging so tightly to the idea of destroying all of Israel, they could have gotten right then the same deal Egypt got -- land for peace. I think that, when the list of historical tragedies that have been befallen the Palestinian people is drawn up, it will necessarily include having been "led" by Chairman Arafat.)
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