TUNIS, 22 August 2003 — The exiled political head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Farouk Kaddoumi, said resistance to the Israeli government was the “only option” left open to the Palestinian people.
In an open letter to US President George W. Bush, the European Union, United Nation Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UN Security Council members published yesterday, Kaddoumi, said the Palestinians had the right to defend “their land, their freedom and their sovereignty.”
He called on the international community to send a force to Palestinian territory immediately “to end the bloodbath and preserve security and stability.”
The letter was released as Palestinian militant group Hamas declared its cease-fire over after an Israeli raid killed one of its top leaders in an apparent reprisal attack for a suicide bombing in Jerusalem Tuesday which killed 20 people.
“How can a government or a Palestinian Authority in the current circumstances prevent a Palestinian from seeking revenge for himself and also for his people and wanting to put an end to the siege, the misery being suffered?” wrote Kaddoumi, who is based in Tunis.
“Before linking noble (Palestinian) resistance with terrorism, order the Israeli colonialists instead to withdraw their forces from our land,” he said, adding: “Colonization itself is a form of terrorism”.
He said the Palestinian people had accepted a truce but Israel had not responded, and had “continued to kill, assassinate, imprison, destroy houses and tighten its siege.”
Kaddoumi, also attacked Israel for building a wall between Israel and the occupied West Bank, saying it had taken away land belonging to Palestinian farmers, depriving them of their livelihood.
Kaddoumi said the only peaceful alternative was Israel’s immediate withdrawal of its forces from Palestinian territory.
