The Arab world fumed Tuesday over the landmark vote against a future Palestinian state by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s right-wing Likud party.
”It is very dangerous,” Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretary General Abdul Rahman al-Attiyah said in Riyadh. Attiyah, who heads the regional council of the six oil-rich Gulf states, squarely blamed Sharon for the hardline vote on Sunday by his hawkish party’s 2 600-member central committee — despite efforts to kill the motion.
”It’s a function of what Sharon is doing, from the time he occupied (Palestinian) cities,” said Attiyah referring to the West Bank offensive launched by the Israelis on March 29.
He was referring to Sharon’s own reputation as an uncompromising defender of Jewish settlements and military attacks to crush Palestinian militants, embodied in last month’s sweeping invasion of the West Bank.
Arab League chief Amr Mussa, also in Riyadh, warned that the Likud vote essentially scrapped one of the conditions for Arab-Israeli peace talks.
”If the Likud vote that there should be no Palestinian state is mandatory on the Israeli government and the Israeli prime minister, then one of the essential conditions for negotiations has been dropped,” Mussa said.
The Arab League chief called on Sharon to publicly disassociate himself from the vote.
”The situation is very critical. There must be an explanation if the Israeli prime minister is committed to the vote, and if he was, then we must reconsider all our positions,” he warned.
However, Sharon, who has come out publicly for a limited Palestinian state, opposed the hardline motion, saying it would damage ties with Israel’s top ally Washington and would trip him up in any future peace negotiations.
Sharon’s party humiliated him by voting down his own motion to scrap the controversial measure. In light of the vote, Mussa added there was no point to hold a US-proposed peace conference on the Middle East, if Sharon honours the Likud decision.
”If the reference for Sharon and his government is the Likud vote, I believe that talking to him and holding the conference is futile and must be avoided, unless the Israeli premier says he is not committed,” he said.
Meanwhile in Egypt, newspapers lashed out at the Likud’s rejection of a Palestinian state.
”The expulsion of the Palestinian people, the seizure of their territory to build the state of Israel is the greatest piracy in the history of humanity,” wrote the editor of the government’s Al-Akhbar, Galal Dewidar.
”Because of this, the pirates of the Likud party voted against the creation of a Palestinian state,” he added.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri also hit out at Sharon’s party, pointing to the hardline vote as irrefutable evidence Israel was to blame for years of Middle East violence.
”The Likud vote shows the problem is on the Israeli side, not the Arab side,” he told reporters in Beirut.
Iran sounded a similar theme.
”The vote by the Likud party shows the common will of all Zionist groups in ignoring Palestinian rights and proves again that negotiations with this regime are useless and that all peaceful claims by Zionist regime are untrue,” said Iran’s foreign ministry representative Hamid-Reza Asefi. – Sapa-AFP