Speaker of Yemeni Parliament denounces visits of Israelis to Yemen
Yemen-Israel, Politics, 4/8/2000

The speaker of the Yemeni Parliament Abdullah al-Ahmar, who is the leader of the Yemeni coalition party for reform, said in an interview with the United Arab Emirates al-Khaleij daily that the Yemeni authorities are committing a "deadly mistake" by permitting Israelis to visit Yemen.

The Yemeni speaker of parliament was commenting on the visit of a group of 13 Israelis from Tel Aviv through Addis Ababa on Thursday to Yemen, according to the Yemeni police.

This is the second such group to visit Sanaa in less than 10 days. Members of the first group were carrying travel documents and not Israeli passports.

Al-Ahmar added, "The Yemeni Jews left Yemen 50 years ago to Israel, and they fought the Palestinians and the Muslims in the holy lands. The Yemeni Jews have more hate and terrorism against the Palestinian people because they are among the extremist Jewish groups against the Palestinian people, against the Arabs and the Muslims as a whole."

He added, "The Israeli should not have come to Yemen, because they are Israelis and have no longer any links to Yemen or the Yemenis in order to permit them to come back."

He indicated that, "Israel is now a state which we cannot deny its existence, but as long as it has an aggressive, settlement and colonialist and terrorist stand against the Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese and Iranian people there should be no talks about normalization."

Despite the opposition al-Ahmar showed to the visit of the Yemeni Jews, he said that he had met with an American rabbi. He stated that rabbi Samah Yitzhak al-Qadi (a Jew of Yemeni origin who left Yemen in 1931) "met with me and with others in his being as an American and not a Yemeni Jew," adding that its is not the first time this rabbi has visited Yemen and that, "He came to Yemen by a US passport."

Some 300 Jews are still living in Yemen, and the main migration for the Yemeni Jews took place between June 1949 and June 1950 when some 43,000 Jews were evacuated in air flights from Aden in the south. This operation was called then "Bisat al-Reeh."

Meanwhile, the council for coordinating the Yemeni opposition, which includes five parties including the Socialist Party, expressed its protest against the visit of the Israelis to Yemen and called on the parliament to withdraw confidence from the government.

Previous Stories:
  Report: New Israeli tourism group from Addis Ababa to Sanaa   (4/7/2000)
  Yemeni opposition calls for withdrawing confidence from government over Israeli delegation visit   (4/6/2000)
  Yemeni president links normalization with Israel to achieving peace   (4/3/2000)

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