Palestine question – UN African Meeting (Windhoek) – Press release

AFRICAN MEETING DISCUSSES SITUATION IN OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN

TERRITORY AND CURRENT STATUS OF PEACE PROCESS

(Received from a UN Information Officer.)

WINDHOEK, 20 April — At the first plenary  session of the United  Nations African Meeting in Support of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, which was chaired  by Namibia's  Ambassador to  the United Nations, Martin  Andjaba, a member of the Executive  Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Special Envoy of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, warned that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin  Netanyahu  had become the  hostage of the right-wing  forces of Israel, which were holding the entire peace process hostage to their own ambitions.

Delivering a  keynote address, Suleiman Al-Najab noted  that under  Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the two main Israeli political  parties, the Likud and  Labour, the current peace process had for all practical purposes come to an end.  Despite  the personal  involvement of United States President William Clinton, Mr. Netanyahu was using the pretext  of  concerns over terrorism to encourage the extremist forces on the Israeli side and  force the Palestinians to become Israeli collaborators.

The thrust  of the current Israeli  policies was to force the Palestinian Authority to downgrade  their expectations, he said, cautioning that  Israel was trying to implement the interim arrangements as the final solution.

Land-for-peace agreements, he said, had been swept under the carpet under the current Israeli Government, and instead of abiding by agreements reached at the highest international level, the Israeli Government pursued policies of colonizing the occupied territories.

The Palestinian cause had, despite the efforts of the Netanyahu Government, made good progress on the international front and succeeded in getting a more even-handed treatment  from the present United States Administration, Mr. Al-Najab noted.  But despite that, the extremism of the Netanyahu Government scheduled its upcoming  elections at the worst possible time — on 17 May — barely two weeks after the  4 May deadline  for the

implementation of the Oslo Accords.

Latif Dori, Secretary of the Committee for Israeli-Palestinian  Dialogue, warned that  the entire region was faced with  two crucial issues in the immediate  future:  Israel's  upcoming national elections, which  would determine who the next  Prime Minister would be  and what the new Government would look like, as well as the end of the interim period and  the Palestinian declaration of independence.

While the current Israeli Government had achieved "a new low" at the United Nations and its diplomatic isolation was becoming more acute, the upcoming  elections presented all  parties concerned  with a new opportunity to wrest the future from the hands of the extremists, he said.

Mr. Dori said the Palestinian Authority had made  over the last year very significant diplomatic progress, including the unequivocal support of the European Union to the creation of the Palestinian State.  Even Washington had recognized  that the Palestinian Authority  had met  all its obligations under the Wye River Memorandum, and  the question was no longer "if", but rather "when" the State of Palestine should be declared.

As  a result, he said, the Palestinian people faced  a crucial question: what would be the best timing for the declaration of the Palestinian State?  Should it  be  declared  on 4 May, the day the  five-year obligations under the Oslo Agreements end,  or should  the Palestinian  people, as  urged by  many good friends, wait a little longer?

Leaving aside the question of the timing for the declaration of the Palestinian State,  economist Ibrahim Matar, former Chairman of the Department of Business and Economics at Bethlehem University, traced the history  of dispossession of Palestinian land by  successive Israeli Governments since 1948.

This was most clearly illustrated by the progressive  occupation  of Jerusalem, which he said happened in two distinct phases.  In May 1948, 60,000 Palestinians were  forced out  of West  Jerusalem and all homes and land seized under the controversial Absentee  Property Regulations.  All such  property was sold  to so-called  "custodians", and  today, remained in Jewish hands — including the land on  which the Israeli Parliament or  the Knesset was  built on, the  land to which the Lifta family  still held  the original title deeds.

During the June 1967 War,  Israel brought East  Jerusalem also under  its control,  including the walled Old City, dismissing and disbanding  the Palestinian municipality and  deporting the elected Palestinian Mayor, Rohi El-Khatib, to Jordan, Mr. Matar said.  The fact, however, remained that although Palestinian land  had been  usurped and  the Palestinians declared permanent absentees by the Jewish State, the Palestinian people still  held all legal titles in land registries.

On 22 June 1967, the Jewish State formally annexed East Jerusalem, as well as parts  of the West Bank, thereby increasing the  size  of  East Jerusalem  to three  times its  original  size.  Further gerrymandering of boundaries  in order to  always ensure a Jewish majority in  any given area led to further exclusionary practices.   One significant development of this policy was  the creation  of Jewish  "fortress settlements"  such as  "Ramot Shu'fat", designed to encircle Palestinian areas and artificially  boost Jewish  numbers  in  such  areas to where they now rival that  of  the Palestinian people.

Since 1967, the Israeli Government had confiscated some 28,000 dunums of land and real estate (one  dunum is equal  to 1,000 square meters), most  of this by what Mr. Matar described as "legalized theft" by applying severely discriminatory laws.  This was further  expanded upon  by applying restrictive  building  requirements on the Palestinian  population,  or consigning  Palestinian land as "Green Zones" to prevent any Palestinian construction from taking place in such areas.

Mr. Matar, in conclusion, called  for  any  agreement  on Jerusalem  to include the relocation of all illegal  Jewish settlers; repatriation of  all Palestinians  by changing  their status  from  "absentees" to  "present"  or compensation for  those who did  not want their property back in accordance with United Nations resolution 194 of 11 December 1948; the restoration of Palestinian  sovereignty to East  Jerusalem, as the capital of the Palestinian State, and the  declaration of West Jerusalem as an open city, freely accessible to people of all three monotheistic faiths.

Gershon  Baskin,  the  Director of the Israel/Palestinian  Center   for Research and Information, presented the audience with photographic  evidence of further  and ambitious  Israeli expansion into  the occupied  Palestinian territory.   These  included aggressive  seepage of Jewish  settlements into "Green  Areas", as well as a network of expensive roads designed to link the various and especially isolated settlements to each other.

Mr.  Baskin said, in his opinion Mr. Netanyahu remained  as committed as ever to his ideological opposition to the creation of a  Palestinian State.  This impression  had come after lengthy  discussions with close advisers to the current Government and included the following points:

— Israel was  afraid of  an independent Palestine with its own military capabilities, especially  of how such a strike force could be deployed inside an independent Palestine;

— A sovereign Palestine would have full control over its own borders, and  potentially allow hundreds  of thousands  of Palestinians  to enter its territory, thereby potentially destabilizing its own economy;

—  An independent Palestine could enter into defence pacts with potentially hostile  nations such as Iraq or Iran and should the current Hashemite Government  of Jordan fall, could invite foreign troops to its territory; and

—  An independent Palestine would have sovereign control of material resources,  particularly water resources, thus,  potentially   affecting Israel's supply.

Mr. Baskin urged the Palestinian negotiators  to be  better prepared for final  status  negotiations  and  called upon them and the international community to avail themselves of the best possible  legal advice in advance.  This should include a strategy for  returning  all of Palestinian assets currently being held by the Israeli Government and create a more  level playing field.  This, he suggested, could be achieved along  the following lines:

—  The  Palestinians  must correctly  anticipate, in advance, the true Israeli positions and understand them;

— The Israeli Government must be  coerced into responding to Palestinian positions, and not the other way around;

—  Rather  than respond  to Israeli  discussion documents directly, the Palestinians  should instead prepare  lists of  questions to  be directed at their opponents and avoid allowing Israel to set the agenda;

—  At all times, the Palestinians should be cognizant of Israeli "security concerns"  and avoid allowing the Israelis to view  every issue in these narrow terms;

—  The Palestinians  should  always demand, within agreements  reached, special  contingencies for  partial implementation or  non-implementation of the agreements on the part of Israel, including  both political and economic contingencies (such as in the case of the closures of the West Bank);

—  The Palestinians should know in advance what their own "red lines" would  be, and use this as a blueprint to keep their own negotiators within their mandate.

In  her  contribution, Elizabeth  Sidiropoulos  of the South African Institute  of  International Affairs, said an important lesson had been learned from the South  African experience:  true peace  was only possible once true reconciliation had taken place.  With Mr. Netanyahu's  Government consistently failing to recognize  the humanity of the Palestinian  people, peace in the Middle East remained elusive.

The Oslo  accords did not guarantee Palestinian statehood,  and the  Wye River accord only increased the onus on the Palestinian Authority to stamp out "terrorist activity" while Jewish settlement  of occupied  territories continued apace,  she said.  Palestinian  Authority officials feared that a formal declaration of  the Palestinian  State  on 4  May could  prompt  the Israeli Government  to move to  annex area C instead,  which comprises about 70 per cent of the envisaged Palestinian State.

With some 144 settlements, she said, the majority  of which in the occupied West Bank, a territorial settlement had become extremely complex.  And  the Likud Government, despite the various accords, was pressing ahead — perhaps for this reason  — with their policies.  While the recent accords did not expressly forbid new settlements,  it  certainly was  against the spirit of both Oslo and Wye.

As such, this echoed  South Africa's own history of resettlement of black people under  the apartheid policies, and  the South African Government had issued strong calls in this respect on Israel to halt its expansionist policies, especially in respect of Jerusalem, she said.  As the capital of a future Palestine, it would be unacceptable to the Palestinian Authority to divide the city in any way, but with Israel in de facto control of the city, only sustained pressure from the  United States could budge the Israeli position.  But given the apparent unwillingness by the United States to force Israel's hand, that appeared unlikely.

While the declaration of a Palestinian State could be used to make  the case that the Palestinian issue had been resolved, it still remained to be seen if this was viable — for Palestinians to exercise their inalienable rights,  the Palestinian State  must also  be sovereign,  viable and secure.  Declaring a Palestinian State now  could see Mr. Arafat  held hostage politically by the Israeli  Government.   It would  be, for all  intent and purpose, little more than an apartheid-era Bantustan, she warned.

With Israel exercising control  over all  vital resources  such as water, commerce,  borders and security, it  was  in both  Israel's and  the future Palestine's  interest to  develop a  mutually beneficial  relationship,  she said. This  called for  reciprocity from  both sides — even  if the world opinion is mustered behind the Palestinian Authority, its ambitions would come to nothing if there was no genuine commitment between the two States to co-exist.

There must be peace, there must be a state, but  not  at the  cost of conditions that undermined that very peace and that very state, Ms. Sidiropoulos stated.

Ambassador Badr Hamman of Egypt said in a brief  presentation that the present Likud  Government was simply expanding on policies initially implemented  by the previous Labour  Government.  He questioned whether Israel was intent on occupying as much land as possible  so as to leave the Palestinian people with a non-viable State.  If so, they had achieved that, he said.

The international community should therefore, as a matter of urgency, call on Israel to immediately halt all new settlements, Ambassador Hamman said.  The world should also  not recognize any part of  Israel that was not part of the Jewish State before 1967, and deny all  forms of finance, aid or grants that could be used to build new settlements.

Chief Editor of the Johannesburg-based Sunday Independent John  Battersby said that every effort should be made to level the playing  fields between Israel and  the Palestinian people.  In this respect, South Africa  could play a vital role, both in its capacity  as current chair of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), as  well as in its unique  position as a bridge between the Group of Eight major industrialized countries and the developing world.

This  position as a  bridge-builder was  best exemplified  by South Africa and Saudi Arabia's brokering of the Lockerbie case and the handing over of Libyan suspects to be tried in the Netherlands under the Scottish law, Mr. Battersby said.  He, however, cautioned  against the  declaration of a Palestinian State  on 4 May, arguing  that the  Palestinian people  should, through the Non-Aligned Movement, pursue the moral high ground and try  and level the playing fields between the PLO and Israel before any final status

negotiations.

In the ensuing debate  it was suggested that,  while the prognosis  for an equitable  settlement of the question of Palestine  looked  poor, efforts should   be made  to bring  additional pressure to bear on Israel and its major partners,  namely the United States.    Although large tracts of Palestinian land had been illegally occupied by Israel, there was nothing in international law that  precluded the reversal  of the  situation on the ground.

The Observer for Palestine at the United Nations, Nasser Al-Kidwa, said Israel should therefore be put under more pressure to comply with the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention; not  to do so would be sending the wrong message to Israel.  All new Israeli settlements must be stopped immediately, he said.

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* Reissued to correct symbol of press release. It had been previously issued as PAL/1871.

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