21 - 27 February 2002
Issue No.574
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 21 - 27 February 2002 Issue No.574 |
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One-sided
During a visit to Cairo this week, Richard Haass, director of policy planning at the US State Department, confirmed that Washington will not adopt a more balanced approach to the ongoing violence in the occupied territories.Haass, considered an expert on Middle East affairs and the Arab-Israeli conflict, insisted on blaming Yasser Arafat alone for the deadly violence, ignoring the murderous policies Ariel Sharon has pursued for the past year.
Haass spoke about the conflict between Israel and Palestinians as if it had started only 17 months ago with the Al- Aqsa Intifada. He claimed that the Intifada and the violence that has followed were simply tactics adopted by Arafat and the PA to force Israel to offer political concessions. The senior US official ignored the peace process begun over 10 years ago, and may also have forgotten a document called the Oslo agreement, signed by the two sides in 1993. In that agreement, Israel pledged to comply with UN Resolutions 242 and 338, and committed itself to gradual withdrawal from the Palestinian territories it had occupied in 1967. It also agreed to release thousands of Palestinian prisoners, open safe passages between the West Bank and Gaza and guarantee free trade between the PA-controlled areas and neighbouring countries -- namely, Egypt and Jordan.
Israel then proceeded to scrap Oslo unilaterally, and continued its universally condemned construction of illegal Jewish colonies on occupied Palestinian land, confirming to Palestinians that the "peace process" was little more than a game allowing it to change the situation on the ground and make any final settlement talks impossible.
Finally, Sharon, backed by Ehud Barak, made an incursion into Al-Haram Al-Sharif in occupied East Jerusalem. In the following days, his troops killed a dozen demonstrators, triggering the Intifada and the subsequent violence.
Haass simply pretended all this had never happened. Can his wilful blindness possibly provide a starting point to resume negotiations?
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