3 - 9 May 2001
Issue No.532
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 3 - 9 May 2001 Issue No.532 |
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Word wars
Ariel Sharon's decision to step up military action in the occupied territories has fuelled anti-Israeli sentiment and brought opposition forces together in the spirit of solidarity, reports Khaled Dawoud
Heated speeches and strongly-worded slogans marked an opposition rally held at the headquarters of the leftist National Progressive Unionist Party, or Tagammu, on Monday. The gathering, held at the Gamal Abdel-Nasser Hall was held in solidarity with the Palestinian uprising and to show support for Syria and Lebanon.
An image of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, tagged with the slogan "Jerusalem will not fall, even if a million martyrs die" hung in the background as leaders of Tagammu, the Wafd Party, the Nasserist Party and the frozen Labour Party declared that any hope for reaching peace with right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was an illusion. All leaders started their speeches by saying that words were useless, and that the time for action has come, but they came up with little to support this assertion.
Tagammu leader and member of parliament Khaled Mohieddin echoed the demands by all of Egypt's opposition parties, asking the Egyptian and Jordanian governments to expel Israeli ambassadors, regardless of the provisions of peace agreements signed with Israel by Cairo in 1979 and Amman in 1994. He also called for opening a special bank account to raise funds to support the Palestinian uprising and "cover up the failure of Arab leaders to honour the pledges they made in two summits to provide $1 billion to support the Palestinians."
Recommendations announced by opposition leaders at the end of the rally called for a total boycott of Israel and severing all political, economic and cultural ties until the massacre of Palestinians and the occupation of all Arab territories in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon comes to an end. The opposition leaders also strongly condemned what they described as blind US support for Israel and refusal to name the actual aggressor in the ongoing clashes in Palestine.
Noaman Goma'a, leader of the Wafd Party, said he backed Mohieddin's demand for opening a bank account to raise funds for the Intifada. But he said the government should not be excluded from making donations, "in order to avoid accusations of illegally raising funds without government permission." He said the proposal should be coordinated with the Egyptian Red Crescent "so that we can be sure that the money we collect will go to Palestinians on the ground, and not to any particular governments or organisations" -- a reference to the misgivings of some Arabs that donations made in support of the Intifada do not reach Palestinians, instead ending up piled in accounts held by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Diaeddin Dawoud, leader of the Nasserist Party, was the most critical, saying the government should stop, once and for all, any attempt to broker deals between Israel and the Palestinians. He cited the confusion that prevailed following Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's visit to Cairo on Sunday about whether a Palestinian-Israeli cease-fire agreement had been reached as yet another reason why Egypt should not be involved in the peace process.
"Until when are we going to host meetings that end up in nothing?" Dawoud asked. "How many times do we have to mediate agreements that are never implemented? Israel is ridiculing and humiliating us. Each time we opt for peace, they step up the killing of Palestinians in the occupied territories."
The Nasserist Party is one of the strongest opponents of the Arab-Israeli peace process. The same day Peres arrived in Cairo, the mouthpiece of the Nasserist Party, Al-Arabi, ran a front-page picture of the Israeli foreign minister dressed as a Nazi officer, and reminded readers of the massacre of civilians he committed in Qana, southern Lebanon, in 1996. Peres, at a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, said he was obviously unhappy with the picture. On Monday, Israel sent Egypt an official protest.
"I don't see any reason for his anger," Dawoud said on Monday at the rally. "What the Israelis are doing to Palestinians -- the aggression against Lebanon and the bombing of the Syrian radar station [in Lebanon] -- all confirm that this is a man of war, and has nothing to do with peace," he added. The few hundred people attending the rally responded by shouting the heated slogan: "Liberation will come by using weapons, not negotiations, with the murderer [Sharon]." They also chanted: "[Mohamed] Dorra, rest assured that your blood was not in vain. We reject negotiation and normalisation." Dorra is the 12-year-old Palestinian boy whose brutal murder by Israeli soldiers, despite his father's pleas to stop firing, was caught on video.
Dawoud added that Arab governments "must respect the people's will and stop negotiating on our behalf. We refuse these humiliating negotiations. We should also stop being afraid of America -- America is not God."
Ibrahim Shoukri, the 82-year-old leader of the dissolved Labour Party, was left with little to say as the last speaker. Making good use of his long political career, Shoukri traced the Arab-Israeli conflict back to the days of the establishment of Israel in 1948, when he was an MP. After speaking about the Intifada and the necessity of supporting it, Shoukri shifted gears and opened fire on the government's misuse of the emergency law -- in force since 1981 -- and what he described as "disrespect of the judiciary", which has ordered a lifting of the ban on his party's newspaper, Al-Shaab several times without effect.
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