OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 30 September 2003 — The man accused by Israel of masterminding the intifada, Marwan Barghouti, warned yesterday there would be no end to the bloodshed until Palestinians are granted independence as the uprising entered its fourth year. Speaking in near-perfect Hebrew, Palestinian uprising leader Marwan Barghouti closed his trial in Israel on murder charges with a demand for independence for his people as the price of peace.
“We are a people like all other people. We want freedom and a state just like the Israelis,” said Barghouti, a senior figure in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction accused of orchestrating gun ambushes and suicide bombings that killed 26 people.
“Israel must decide: either it allows for a (Palestinian) state alongside it, or it becomes a state for two peoples,” he said in an hourlong closing argument in the language he learned in jail. Barghouti, 43, denies the charges while supporting a three-year-old Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Giving his own defense at his last court appearance before sentencing, Barghouti said: “The occupation cannot continue over the Palestinian people who want freedom and independence like every other people in the world.”
In his 45-minute speech, Barghouti made no references to the charges leveled against him, but rather gave an impassioned speech about the realities of living under Israeli occupation and called for an immediate end to it.
Army restriction on the free movement of people and goods began a few months into the intifada and Palestinian cities have been subjected to sieges since June 2002. The first deaths of the intifada were recorded on Sept. 29, 2000, the day after the then opposition leader and current Premier Ariel Sharon visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem.
To mark the occasion over the weekend, militant groups renewed their vows to continue the intifada while thousands of Palestinians took to the streets to protest against the Israeli occupation. In Ramallah, incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei was finalizing the composition of his new Cabinet by holding meetings with various officials, said his office and Arafat’s top aide Nabil Abu Rudeina.
Meanwhile, Arafat shrugged off concerns over his health yesterday to declare that he had fully recovered from a bout of flu. “Thanks be to God, the illness is over,” said Arafat as a team of Jordanian medics arrived at his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah to examine him.
Although a little pale, Arafat appeared smiling and relaxed and spoke in an assured voice. He thanked Jordan’s King Abdallah for sending the team which included his personal physician Ashraf Kurdi as well as a gastroenterologist and a cardiologist.
In another development, the Israeli official sources said that Palestinian Al-Quds University will not be ripped apart by the separation barrier Israel is building around East Jerusalem after an agreement was reached with the Israeli Defense Ministry.
Israel agreed to change the route of the barrier in order not to damage the campus after Israeli Defense Ministry director general Amos Yaron met yesterday with Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Al-Quds University, Nusseibeh’s office said.
The agreement was “a result of the continued peaceful resistance which took place on the university grounds for the past 30 days and especially of the pressure exerted by US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and US Middle East envoy John Wolf,” Nusseibeh’s spokesman Dimitri Diliani said.
In another development, agents of a US activist killed in Gaza by an Israeli Army bulldozer in March called yesterday for an independent US investigation of her death. Rachel Corrie, 23, from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death on March 16 while trying to block a huge army bulldozer destroying structures in a Palestinian refugee camp near the Gaza-Egypt border.
After its internal investigation, the Israeli military said that because of the size of the bulldozer and its limited view due to heavy armor plating, the driver could not see Corrie.
Peace activists have hotly disputed that. Rachel belonged to a pro-Palestinian group called International Solidarity Movement. Its members often place themselves between Israeli forces and Palestinians to try to block Israeli military activity.
At a news conference in Jerusalem, her parents said they were not satisfied with the Israeli explanations.
“Having read the report, we still have a lot of questions,” said Rachel’s mother, Cindy Corrie. “We feel that it does call for further investigations,” she said, adding that close to 50 members of the 435-seat US House of Representatives have signed a bill calling for an independent investigation.
