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		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 30 August - 5 September 2001 Issue No.549
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

International outcry
US AND Europe called on Israel to withdraw its forces immediately from the West Bank town of Beit Jala. US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Tuesday, "The Israelis need to understand that incursions like this do not solve the security problem and only make matters worse." Boucher asked Israel to remove its troops from positions next to a Beit Jala orphanage affiliated with the Lutheran church, and called on the Israelis and Palestinians to avoid actions that jeopardise the safety of children.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement that the Israeli incursion undermined existing agreements signed by both parties that "establish the borders between Israel and territories handed back to the Palestinians." He added that Israel was entitled to security, insisting that the only means to achieve this is through peace. The sole means to realise this goal, said Straw, is through a political process that implements land for peace, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, European Union officials intensified their efforts to contain the worsening situation in the Middle East. A spokesman for EU foreign policy commissioner Javier Solana said that Solana is planning to travel to the Middle East in the next few days to try to advance diplomatic efforts. Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, whose country currently holds the presidency of the European Union, said he was trying to organise a meeting with US and Russian officials to coordinate their approach to the region. Michel said the EU "must use all its clout" to press for a resumption of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians, and work with the US towards this end.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher had visited the region earlier this month and is working on setting up a meeting between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Italy's Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero was in Israel yesterday for talks after meeting Arafat on Tuesday. The Middle East crisis is expected to be discussed at a European foreign ministers meeting on 8 and 9 September.
In a harshly-worded statement, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah warned: "The entire area will not enjoy the peace and stability it seeks as long as the Israeli military machine continues to attack the unarmed Palestinian people."

Spy plane shot down
IRAQ vowed on Tuesday to down more US and British warplanes, a day after Washington admitted losing a spy drone for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War.
"Iraq is determined to inflict more losses on the American and British aggressors and to improve its (military) capacities despite the unfair embargo," said Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.
"The fact that an American reconnaissance plane was shot down over Basra by our anti-aircraft defences is proof of the improvement of Iraq's military capacities," he added.
The brief statement, seeming to confirm official US concern that Baghdad had upgraded its air-defence systems, was carried by the Iraqi News Agency after the United States said Monday that an RQ-1 Predator surveillance plane had disappeared over Iraq.
Iraq said the plane was shot down, and national television later aired footage of mangled wreckage scattered across a desert landscape. A few days earlier, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had voiced high-level US concern for the safety of aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones over Iraq. He noted that Baghdad has managed this year to upgrade the quality and quantity of its air-defence systems.

March for justice
VICTIMS of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre will lead a peaceful march in the Belgian capital, Brussels, on 16 September to commemorate the massacre's 19th anniversary.
The Arab European League-Sabra and Shatila Committee (AEL-SSC), a Belgian-based NGO, is sponsoring the march. A sub-committee of the NGO recently filed a legal complaint against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and others for their role in the massacre which killed over 2000 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. 19 years later, 22 survivors of the massacre, together with the AEL-SSC, decided to take legal action on 18 June against the perpetrators and submitted a complaint to the Belgian judiciary demanding a fair trial. The judge accepted the complaint and is currently carrying out an investigation.
The massacre will thus be marked "differently" this year, said a statement issued by AEL-SSC. "The bitterness we felt every year at this time since 1982 will be replaced with hope. Finally justice is not an absurd dream anymore."

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