Re: I may be mistaken, but the point that Gus may be making is that Americans are livid about "foreigners" infiltrating into the U.S., taking jobs and undermining what they consider American culture and economy, but are numb, dumb, and silent about Palestinians who have complained about "foreign" Zionists doing the same to Palestine.
Are you this obtuse intentionally?
rrufff sounds like an FBI-paid provocateur...
Besides, as I told you, Abu Mazen's lease on life runs out in December 2005:
The calm before the storm?
The Cairo Declaration was more a victory for Hamas than Abu Mazen, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem
Two years after it began the Palestinian national dialogue produced "a fruitful national success", said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) on 17 March. He was speaking at the close of three days of discussions, hosted by Cairo, attended by 13 Palestinian factions as well as by deputy Syrian foreign minister, Walid Al-Moalem, whose government, he said, blessed all moves towards Palestinian unity.
The fruit was less than Abbas and Egypt had wanted, though probably the most they could get in the absence of genuine Israeli reciprocation and the strength of Hamas in the Palestinian national movement. Make no mistake: the unprecedented integration of Hamas into the Palestinian political system that the Cairo Declaration heralded marks not the movement's decline. It marks its ascent.
That new weight could be read in the declaration's second clause on the future of the Palestinian armed resistance. What Abbas and Egypt had sought was an open-ended ceasefire to "remove all excuses" preventing Israel's return to political negotiations based on the roadmap and the final status issues of Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders and water and other resources. What they got was a conditional and limited extension of the status quo:
"Those gathered agree to a programme for 2005 centred on a commitment to maintain the atmosphere of calm ( tahdiya ) in return for an Israeli commitment to stop all forms of aggression against our land and the Palestinian people, wherever they might be, and the release of all prisoners and detainees".
Similarly Abbas failed to get a cross- factional commitment that the strategic aim of the Palestinian struggle was the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital as well as a "just and agreed solution to the refugee problem on the bases of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 and the Beirut Arab summit resolution". What he received was Clause One, a reaffirmation of Palestinian "constants" void of all ambiguity:
"Those gathered confirm their adherence to Palestinian principles, without any neglect, and the right of the Palestinian people to resistance in order to end the occupation, establish a Palestinian state with full sovereignty with Jerusalem as its capital, and the guaranteeing of the right of return of refugees to their homes and property".
Aside from these victories, Hamas more or less got its way on the terms for its entrée to the PLO. This includes a high-powered committee to set new bases for membership that "reflect the radically different realities of the Palestinians and their representatives today rather than those that existed when the PLO was established", said Hassan Youssef, Hamas West Bank spokesman.
The Cairo conference also recommended that the Palestinian Authority parliamentary elections in July be held under a mixed electoral system in which 50 per cent of the seats are determined by constituency and 50 per cent by proportional representation. Hamas had already declared its intention to run. The change in the electoral law may persuade Islamic Jihad and the other non- PA factions to do likewise.
Not surprisingly, Cairo's "historic" decisions received a cool response in Tel Aviv and Washington. In a phone call with President Mubarak, Ariel Sharon said the declaration was "a positive first step" but "for there to be progress in peace efforts, terrorist organisations cannot continue to exist as armed groups and certainly not as terrorist organisations". The US went even less. While "certainly not negative", the declaration "did not go as far as we would like" since it failed to tackle "the root cause of all this, which is the acceptance of violence to solve a problem," said State Department deputy spokesman, Adam Ereli.
Still -- with calm in place -- Abbas can now press on other parts of his strategy. One is to accelerate Israel's painfully slow redeployment from the West Bank cities so that the PA as a government can resume the position and power it had prior to the Intifada. With this, progress on the political front and a "sense of personal security restored to the Palestinian citizen", Abbas hopes the parliamentary elections will deliver Fatah the democratic mandate he needs to move from calm to a truce and from security coordination with Israel to final status negotiations. But here too there are mountains to climb.
Even as the Palestinian delegates were assembling in Cairo, the Israeli cabinet announced that the West Bank separation wall would separate occupied East Jerusalem from the West Bank by looping around the vast settlement bloc of Maali Adomim. On 20 March Israel's defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, approved plans for the construction of 3,500 new houses for the bloc, cutting off another large slice of the little urban space that remains to Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
The Cairo Declaration anticipated these moves. "Continued settlement, construction of the wall and the Judaisation of Jerusalem are issues liable to explode the calm," it warned. This should not be taken as bluff, says PA Assistant Minister for Detainees and Fatah activist, Ziad Abu Ein. "Settlements were a cause of the first Intifada and the cause of the second. And, believe me, if Israel does not end their expansion, withdraw from our cities, end the construction of the wall and free the prisoners, they will be the cause of the third. Abu Mazen has until the rest of the year to deliver on his 'negotiations alone' strategy -- but that's all he has".
[...]
weekly.ahram.org.eg |
