Arafat blames Netanyahu, bans pro-Iraq demos
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 2/12/1998

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with attempting to utilize the crisis in the Gulf to cover up for his failure to move forward on the peace talks.

Speaking at a ceremonial meeting in Ramallah Thursday of the Supreme Committee to Mark the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian catastrophe which followed the proclamation of Israel in May 1948, Arafat said the Palestinian people paid a dire price back in the Gulf War in 1991 and they should not pay any more. He demanded that Israel implement all the agreements it signed with the Palestinians and said peace can never be achieved if the national rights of the Palestinian people are not fully honored and recognized.

Netanyahu had earlier strongly attacked the Palestinians who, he claimed, were initiating pro-Iraq demonstrations. In a speech to the Knesset on its 49th anniversary Netanyahu said his government "cannot ignore the sights that we have been seeing recently, the sounds we hear, the glorifying of Saddam Hussein, the calls to wipe out the State of Israel. When we talk peace we want to see the total disappearance of these calls because the public must be prepared for peace on the other side too. We will not turn a blind eye." Netanyahu avoided any mention of the strict orders that were given to the Palestinian police forces to prevent demonstrations in the Palestinian government controlled areas.

Brigadier General Ghazi Jabali, commander of the Palestinian police, had given orders to his troops to ban all sorts of demonstrations in the Palestinian government controlled areas because of the possibility of violent clashes. LAW, the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and Environment, issued a statement criticizing Jabali's instructions and said the order "is a possible pretext for permanently depriving Palestinians of the right to peaceful assembly." LAW noted that a similar decision was taken by Jabali on 9 September 1994 requiring police permission for meetings or other assemblies.

But Jabali's orders seem to have somehow failed on Thursday when at least 2,000 Palestinians demonstrated through the streets of Nablus on the West Bank in support of Iraq and calling on the US to abort any plans to launch an attack on Iraq. The demonstrators called for lifting the embargo on Iraq and for the full implementation of all UN resolutions, those pertinent to the Palestinian cause as well as those on the Gulf crisis.

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search