Arab Support For Palestinian State Seen As Fading

by Nizar Al-Aly

The meeting, convened as part of the Jerusalem Committee, stuck to a mere rhetorical call on the United Nations Security Council "to shoulder its duties...and adopt a resolution for the immediate deployment of a multinational force for the protection of the Palestinian people."

The Committee was set up in 1975 as an offshoot of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC, based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia). It is a political structure aimed at financially and politically backing the Palestinians' claims over Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent state.

The Committee is chaired by Morocco's King Mohammed and counts the foreign ministers of Bangladesh, Egypt, Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, and Syria.

But observers like Nouha Awamleh, a Morocco-based Palestinian journalist, said Palestinians had little to gain from such meetings.

"No great expectations were in fact pinned on the Committee's meeting to come up with tangible actions in favor of the Palestinians," she said, adding "Successive meetings have been held, but to no avail."

For Ahmed Iraqi, a Moroccan political analyst, "nobody expected any kind of measure like declaring an Arab war against Israel. But the moral backing expressed towards the Palestinians can at least attract the world's attention to the serious situation in the occupied territories."

Awamleh decried what she called "the hypocrisy of Arab rulers in dealing with the Palestinian issue."

"The rulers of the region hold conferences and call for backing the Palestinian struggle, while in reality they only act on orders coming from the west," she said, adding that she was "disheartened" when Morocco banned a recent pro-Palestinian demonstration.

Awamleh laments: "Palestinians are being killed and their houses destroyed almost on a daily basis, while our Arab brothers ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations as if we were terrorists."

The Rabat administrative court banned on Jan. 20 a pro-Palestinian demonstration that the Moroccan Association for Support of the Palestinian People was planning to stage in Rabat. The court argued that the demonstration was "a threat to public order."

Khalid Jamai, former editor-in-chief of the national Moroccan daily L'Opinion who now writes for the weekly Le Journal Hebdomadaire, wondered whether the pro-Israeli lobby in Morocco was behind the ban. Morocco has a high-ranking Jewish politician named Andre Azoulay, who serves as the king's economic and financial advisor.

The Marrakesh meeting was also marked by the absence of Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian National Authority, besieged by Israel in the town of Ramallah.

Arafat, however, sent a message to the meeting decrying "the barbarous Israeli war" and appealing to the Committee to intervene for an end to the situation of siege.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco criticized the siege imposed on Arafat and warned that the Israeli "aggression grew to intolerable limits."

"The Israeli aggressive practices can longer go unheeded," he said at the meeting. "The impact of this situation will not be confined to the Middle East only but may spread well beyond."

The Marrakesh meeting lost much of its impact as key Arab and Muslim countries, members of the Committee, did not send their foreign ministers, dispatching rather low-profile delegations.

These are Egypt, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Only Morocco, the host country, Senegal, Guinea, Bangladesh and Mauritania were represented by their foreign ministers.

The low level of participation in the meeting raised, once again, questions about the efficiency of the Jerusalem Committee in handling the thorny issue of the holy city.

Countries like Iraq, Iran and Syria, which oppose the Moroccan permanent chairmanship of the body, want a rotating presidency for better action.

The future of Jerusalem is the most intractable and sensitive of all issues in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. The city arouses passions because of its nationalist and political resonance to both Palestinians and Israelis.

Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam, is one of the foremost symbols to the Palestinians, while the adjacent Dome of the Rock is a 1,300-year-old testament to Arab and Moslem attachments to the city.

Jerusalem's very name in Arabic, Al-Quds, the holy, reflects its sanctity for Arabs.

In its Marrakesh Declaration, the Jerusalem Committee warned that "Israel's behavior is likely to trigger reactions at a time of global consensus reached in the aftermath of the criminal acts perpetrated on Sept. 11th against innocent civilians and institutions in the U.S."

It renewed its "support for the resistance of the Palestinian people and their blessed Intifada (uprising)" and decried "the destructive war waged by the government of Ariel Sharon."

The Israeli occupation troops uprooted 40,000 olive trees and destroyed more than 4,500 houses, says the Institute, adding that thousands of Palestinians are held in Israeli jails.

Israel, which controls 80 percent of water resources in the West Bank and Gaza, gives Palestinians no more than 80 cubic meters per person per year, while an Israeli settler consumes more than 1,400 cubic meters in the same period.

The Institute deplores that 55 percent of Palestinians are unemployed and more than 50 percent live under the poverty line on less than $2 a day.

Jerusalem has been at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The city is equally holy to Jews, who mention its name at least six times a day in their prayers.

According to Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements, the status of Jerusalem is to be decided through negotiations.

Israel has traditionally claimed all of the city, including the East Jerusalem area that contains the holy sites, as its "eternal, undivided capital."

In 1967, it annexed East Jerusalem and its Arab inhabitants after capturing the area from Jordanian troops.

The Palestinians reject the annexation and envision East Jerusalem as the future capital of an independent Palestinian state. Until the issue is resolved, they oppose any diplomatic or other recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. <