Palestinians protest against UN impotence

With Annan in his living room, Sharon continued this week to thwart the fragile peace process and persecute the Palestinians, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank

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UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan lays a wreath at late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's grave in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Monday 14 March, 2005

Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in Ramallah Monday, 14 March, to protest against what they called "UN flaccidity" towards Israel, especially the continued building of the gigantic apartheid wall Israel is erecting in the heart of the West Bank.

Last year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared the wall a clear violation of international law. Israel, relying on near unrestricted support from its guardian-ally, the United States, ignored the ruling, dismissing it as "irrelevant".

The demonstration took place as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was meeting Palestinian Authority (PA) officials, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas at the bombed-out headquarters of the Palestinian government.

Protesters scolded Annan for "not daring to visit the wall" and witnessing for himself "the utter nefariousness of the hateful structure".

"He [Annan] should go there and see for himself," said Anwar Dik, one of the protesters. "The UN, which created Israel on our land, can't just allow the Zionist state to effect a slow-motion extermination of our people," he added.

A female demonstrator complained that the world community was effectively atoning for one holocaust by allowing Israel to commit another.

A co-organiser of the demonstration, Jamal Jumaa, said the protest was meant to convey a message to Annan that the present UN approach towards "what Israel is doing in Palestine" is "flaccid, indecisive and totally inadequate".

"We want to tell him that this satanic wall is not only tormenting Palestinians and narrowing their horizons as never before, but that it is also killing the prospects of peace and stability in this part of the world."

Earlier, Annan told PA officials that the UN position on the wall remained unchanged. He pointed out that the UN was creating a special committee to register Palestinian property damage and other losses on both sides of the huge structure, in order to calculate possible compensation.

The symbolic UN measure in this regard was castigated by the Islamic resistance group, Hamas, whose West Bank leader Hassan Youssef called it "a pathetic, symptomatic treatment".

"The issue is not compensation. The issue is the wall itself. It is an act of rape and Annan should condemn this fact publicly and openly. This is his moral and legal duty and by choosing to pander to the Israeli aggressors, by not taking an aggressive stance on this crime, he is effectively condoning the crime."

Annan arrived in Israel Sunday to take part in a ceremony commemorating Jewish suffering during WW II. Palestinians were left asking why Annan would lend his moral weight to remembering a catastrophe almost 60 years past while ignoring a catastrophe in the living present but miles from where he was standing.

Indeed, as Annan and a handful of world leaders were arriving in Israel to attend the holocaust-related ceremony, Sharon endorsed the annexation of large swathes of the West Bank, including the huge settlement of Maali Adomim, in direct and blatant violation of international law and the American-backed "roadmap". Sharon also approved the remaining route of the separation wall in the Jerusalem area; a plan that completely cuts off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.

Even graver still, Sharon sought to effectively sabotage Egyptian efforts to get Palestinian factions to agree to a one-year truce with Israel, saying that Israel wouldn't accept any ceasefire with "armed Palestinian groups". Further, the Israeli premier has tabled new conditions that he says ought to be implemented before Israel could start carrying out its obligations under the "roadmap" plan. During a meeting Sunday night, Sharon told Annan that the PA should end what he called "incitement against Israel and Jews" in mosques as well as in Palestinian textbooks.

Sharon carefully ignored any mention of the ultimate source of "incitement" against Israel, namely Israel's Nazi-like treatment of the Palestinian people, with the murder of thousands of civilians, including hundreds of children, as well as the wanton demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes. Sharon also overlooked the manifestly racist indoctrination of tens of thousands of Jewish children studying in Talmudic schools throughout Israel.

One Palestinian official interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly accused Sharon of "seeking a pretext" to evade the implementation of the roadmap.

"He is trying to blackmail the world. The international community, including the US, is discovering his deceptive tactics, so he is constantly seeking to concoct distractions," said Abdullah Abdullah, director-general of the Palestinian Foreign Ministry.

"His real intentions are being exposed to the whole world," Abdullah continued. "You see, Sharon doesn't want a ceasefire. He doesn't want calm. He doesn't want Hamas to move towards moderation. All this militates against his agenda which is based on demonising the Palestinians and stealing more of their land."

Abdullah's remarks, if stark, are not out of touch with reality. Earlier this week, Sharon told the Israeli cabinet that the Egyptian- sponsored inter-factional Palestinian talks in Cairo were "not in Israel's interests". Further, Sharon and other Israeli officials have been anxious about the possibility that Hamas's integration into the Palestinian political system would strengthen the overall Palestinian stance vis-ˆ-vis Israel and make it much more difficult for any Palestinian leadership to succumb to Israeli pressure and dictates on such paramount issues as Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees' right of return.

Avi Pazner, Israeli government spokesman, expressed this anxiety on Monday. He was quoted as saying that Hamas's decision to contest the upcoming Palestinian elections, slated to take place in July, could undermine the "Israeli-Palestinian peace process".

The Israeli media this week also disseminated reports that the PA was about to partially give up on the right of return and that Abbas was going to tell factional leaders in Cairo that the right of return couldn't be implemented in full given political and demographic realities.

The PA denied the Israeli reports as "cheap disinformation".

"I assure you of the sanctity of the right of return. No Palestinian under the sun, be he one day old or a hundred years old, would give up on this right," Abdullah told the Weekly