CAPE TOWN, 30 June 2004 — A two-day UN conference on Palestinian rights opened in South Africa yesterday with a message from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, saying Israel’s pullout plan from Gaza “was in direct contrast of what was happening on the ground.”
“Today (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon is talking about a disengagement plan for Gaza while his actions on the ground reflect exactly the opposite,” Arafat said in a pre-recorded statement that was broadcast to delegates at the conference in Cape Town.
“Closures of our areas, arrests and killings are a daily and nightly occurrence. It gets bloodier every day,” Arafat said in his message, which organizers said were recorded “in the last few days.”
Sharon is planning unilaterally to evacuate all settlers and troops from Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank by the end of next year in the absence of any progress in the US-backed road map peace plan, which aims for the creation of a Palestinian state in 2005.
Arafat has been prevented by Israel from moving freely outside his Ramallah complex, in the West Bank, since 2001.
He called on conference delegates to “raise your voice and intervene to get Israel to stop its war and aggression on our people, and to halt its economic siege and air raids on our cities, villages and refugee camps.”
Arafat called for a return to peace between the two sides that started after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was slain.
“We look for a permanent and just peace that we started and signed with my late partner Yitzak Rabin,” he said.
Addressing the conference, South African President Thabo Mbeki called on African nations to take action on the Mideast issue rather than focus solely on their own challenges.
Mbeki called on the conference to have proposals on what course of action should be taken by Africa ready for discussion at a forthcoming meeting of African countries.
“Those outcomes should be considered by the summit of the African Union due to start in Addis Ababa in less than a fortnight,” he said.
