Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom met with foreign ministers of several Arab and Muslim countries on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York last week. This encouraged him to state that it was time to launch diplomatic relations with countries such as Pakistan and Indonesia.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had meetings with the heads of state in New York during which his incomplete pullout from Gaza was lauded. But he rushed to Israel to issue fresh orders to bomb Gaza and besiege Palestinian territories.
Sharon wanted, seemingly, to reaffirm the statements he made as Israel’s war minister that Gaza would remain within the range of the Israeli guns and any pullout would be only to safeguard Israeli interests and if Israeli interests demanded the army’s return to Gaza nothing would stop it.
This impudent stand has become more evident in the army’s recent rocket attack on a school in Gaza that killed 20 children and four adults and wounded 20 others. This coincided with the Israeli bombing of a Hamas meeting in the Jabaliya district of Gaza to mark the Israeli pullout.
These killings soon after the international praise for the Gaza pullout signify that Sharon does not recognize the right of the Palestinians to an independent state with full sovereignty. His aim is to make some tactical moves to hoodwink the international community and continue his violations under the cover of a favorable public opinion evoked by the pullout.
In these circumstances it is not wise on the part of the Arab and Muslim nations to rush to establish diplomatic and economic relations with Israel in appreciation of the Gaza withdrawal before the Jewish state complies with the basic principles laid down by the Arab League.
These principles are:
First, the total and comprehensive pullout from all the Arab lands occupied in and after June 1967 including the Golan Heights in Syria and the remaining pockets in Lebanon, Gaza, and Jerusalem.
Secondly, the removal of the apartheid wall so that when Palestine wins freedom it would be territorially contiguous and the disbanding of all Jewish settlements constructed on the West Bank.
Thirdly, a just solution to the refugee problem in line with UN resolutions.
Fourthly, the founding of a geographically integrated Palestine state with full sovereignty and independence.
Lastly, an Israeli commitment to the Arab peace initiatives and American road map fulfilling all the conditions required for a comprehensive and just peace in the region.
The present phase also requires action on the following four points:
1. Supporting the Egyptian efforts to strengthen the internal setup in Palestine.
2. Fulfilling the Arab commitments toward the Palestinian people so that they can strengthen the resistance against the occupation and expedite the reconstruction of Gaza.
3. Mobilizing international opinion after the Arab countries adopt a unified position on the Arab peace initiative and the resolutions of the Arab summits as well as the US-brokered road map.
4. Call upon the Western countries to adhere to the internationally agreed stands on the issue and caution them not to be deceived by Israeli efforts to mislead.
The pullout from Gaza is not a free gift from Israel. On the other hand Palestine is the birth right of the Palestinian people and it is their right to liberate their land. The Israeli presence can only be described as military occupation in all its connotations. The pullout has, apparently, brought to the international attention that there is a people called Palestinians and that they should get a state which is currently under the military occupation of Israel while the present pullout is just the start of marking the political borders between Israel and the Palestine state which the former always wanted to obliterate.
That is why Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, said that Israel would strive to exploit its exit from Gaza to make political and material gains. It is clearly visible to all that Israel has been expanding to and digging deep into the West Bank and Jerusalem in order to separate the two places from other Palestinian territories.
Israel fears the peace in the Middle East because peace means the burial of its expansionist designs to control all the land between the Nile and Euphrates.
