Al-Ahram Weekly | Editorial | Why was he here?

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 April 2002 Issue No.582
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Why was he here?
The Arabs are increasingly suspicious and puzzled regarding the precise aims of the 11-day regional tour carried out by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, and which ended in Cairo yesterday. Powell has been accused of intentionally delaying his tour to give Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon time to finish his military operation in the West Bank, and to slaughter more innocent Palestinian civilians in Jenin and Nablus.
The world can now see the horrific pictures emerging from Jenin: charred bodies buried under mountains of rubble and thousands of refugees stranded once again, searching desperately for lost relatives. These pictures should remind Powell and US President George Bush what America's blind support for Israel really means. The Arabs are justified in believing that Washington fully backs the Israeli military campaign and gave Sharon an explicit go-ahead.
As soon as Powell reached Israel, earlier statements by President Bush and other US officials on the necessity of Israel's "immediate" withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territories simply vanished. Over 19 days, while Powell trundled back and forth, the Israeli army destroyed Palestinian cities in the West Bank, killed hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians, arrested 5,000 people, and carried out a deliberate plan to demolish the Palestinian infrastructure and institutions built over the past eight years. The campaign Sharon is implementing against Palestinian civilians must be added to his record of crimes against humanity.
During his stay in Israel, Powell refused to pressure Sharon to declare a timetable for the withdrawal of Israeli troops, a precondition for any resumption of talks with Palestinians. He also rejected appeals to visit Jenin or the Church of Nativity, where over 200 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been besieged without food or medicine for two weeks.
Instead, Powell backed Sharon's proposal to hold a regional meeting that would deliberately exclude Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Does the US administration really expect a single Arab head of state to sit down with a war criminal?

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