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Bij de dood van Yasser Arafat
Nederlands Palestina Komitee - 12.11.2004 13:52
Het Nederlands Palestina drukt zijn medeleven uit met alle Palestijnen in Israel, in de bezette gebieden en in de diaspora en alle andere mensen buiten Palestina die treuren om het verlies van Yasser Arafat. Yasser Arafat heeft een historische rol gespeeld in die strijd tegen de onderdrukking van het Palestijnse volk en het is om die reden dat we hem als mens en als politicus ons respect betuigen.
Net als de strijd van de Palestijnen naar vrijheid vaak verkeerd begrepen is, zo is de historische rol van Yasser Arafat in die strijd ook vaak verkeerd begrepen. Het is de verdienste van Arafat dat hij in een tijd waarin het Israelische leger kans had gezien de Palestijnen
grotendeels uit hun land te verjagen en in een tijd waarin de Israelische premier, Golda Meir, riep "Palestijnen nog nooit van gehoord" door zijn charismatische leiding de Palestijnen uit het dal heeft gehaald, de weg naar bevrijding en zelfbeschikking heeft doen inslaan. Het is die rol die het prestige verklaart dat hij nog steeds bezit bij vele Palestijnen, die verklaart waarom hij het symbool werd van de Palestijnse strijd voor vrijheid. Die rol had heeft hij alleen maar kunnen spelen door zijn tomeloze inzet, zijn indrukwekkende werkkracht. Als hij de corrupte slappeling was geweest, waarvoor hij vaak versleten is, was hem dat niet gelukt. Het prestige dat hij aan deze rol overhield zijn altijd slecht begrepen in Nederland.
Waardering kreeg Arafat pas toen hij in het kader van het Osloproces in onderhandeling trad met de staat Israel. Om net zo snel weer verguisd te worden op het moment dat dat proces mislukte. Maar het Osloproces is niet mislukt door Arafat, op zijn gebrek aan bereidheid om compromissen te sluiten. Het is mislukt omdat Arafat zijn volk niet kon dwingen te leven in een enkel in naam souvereine staat, een miniem Bantustan dat op alle mogelijke manieren afhankelijk was van Israel.
Wie de komende leiders ook zullen zijn, degene die hoge ogen gooit als het gaat om de opvolging, Marwan Barghouti, die zit als een Nelson Mandela met een levenslange straf in Israel in de gevangenis, één ding is zeker : het Palestijnse volk is niet dood, de Israelische regering zal geen excuus hebben het volk te negeren zonder zijn aanhoudende verzet te riskeren. Het Palestijnse volk laat zich niet langer
straffeloos verjagen. Er wordt wel gezegd: “zonder Arafat zou er allang vrede geweest zijn”. Dat is een misvatting. Ook zonder Arafat zal de strijd doorgaan zolang Israel de Palestijnse rechten ontkent.
Europa, de EU, kortom onze politici zullen, waar het Amerika van Bush het laat afweten, een krachtiger rol moeten gaan spelen om het recht van de Palestijnen op leven, land en toekomst, het recht op vrijheid en veiligheid af te dwingen.
Yasser Arafat is nu gestorven in Parijs. Hij kreeg van de staat Israel geen toegang tot de medische verzorging die hij nodig had. Net zoals dagelijks tientallen Palestijnen geen toestemming krijgen om langs de checkpoints te komen om toegang te krijgen tot medische voorzieningen. Yasser Arafat wilde begraven worden in Jeruzalem. Dat wordt nu verhinderd door de Israelische autoriteiten. Dezelfde autoriteiten die verhinderen dat Palestijnse jongens en meisjes naar school kunnen, dat Palestijnse boeren hun land bebouwen, dat Palestijnse mannen en vrouwen kunnen werken om hun families te onderhouden, dat het Palestijnse volk leeft in zijn land! Het Palestijnse volk kan niet anders dan op te komen voor zijn meest elementaire mensenrechten. Zolang die strijd voor de elementaire mensenrechten van het Palestijnse volk gevoerd wordt zal de naam van de man die hem begon niet vergeten worden.
 E-Mail: npk@xs4all.nl  Website: http://www.palestina-komitee.nl
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| Read more about: vrijheid, repressie & mensenrechten wereldcrisis | | supplements | | | some supplements were deleted from this article, see policy | | Lijst aanwezige hoogwaardigheidsbekleders | JV - 12.11.2004 15:31
AFGHANISTAN - Vice President Hedayat Amin Arsala
ALGERIA - President Abdelaziz Bouteflika
ARAB LEAGUE - Secretary-General Amr Moussa
AUSTRIA - Vice Chancellor Hubert Gorbach
BANGLADESH - President Iajuddin Ahmed
BELGIUM - Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht, Development and
Foreign Aid Minister Armand De Decker
BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA - Prime Minister Adnan Terzic
BRAZIL - Cabinet Chief Jose Dirceu
BULGARIA - Vice President Angel Marin
CANADA - Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew
CHINA - Vice Premier Hui Liangyu
CROATIA - Foreign Minister Miomir Zuzul
CYPRUS - Foreign Minister George Iakovou, Presidential envoy
Vassos Lyssarides
CZECH REPUBLIC - Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda
DENMARK - Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller
EGYPT - President Hosni Mubarak
EUROPEAN COMMISSION - Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner-designate Louis Michel
EUROPEAN UNION - Foreign policy chief Javier Solana
FINLAND - Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja
FRANCE - Foreign Minister Michel Barnier
GERMANY - Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
GREECE - Foreign Minister Petros Molyviatis
HUNGARY - Foreign Minister Ferenc Somogyi
INDIA - Minister of State for External Affairs Edappakath
Ahamed
INDONESIA - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
IRAN - Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi
IRAQ - Vice President Rowsch Shways
IRELAND - Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern
ITALY - Speaker of the Senate, Marcello Pera, Agriculture
Minister Giovanni Alemanno and Foreign Ministry Undersecretary
Alfredo Mantica
JORDAN - King Abdullah
KUWAIT - Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah
LEBANON - President Gen. Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Omar
Karami, Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud
LUXEMBOURG - Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Jean
Asselborn
MALAYSIA - Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Foreign
Minister Syed Hamid Albar
MOROCCO - Prince Moulay Rachid, King Mohammed's younger
brother
NETHERLANDS - Foreign Minister Bernard Bot
NORWAY - Foreign Minister Jan Petersen
PAKISTAN - Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz
POLAND - Senate Speaker Longin Pastusiak, Deputy Foreign
Minister Boguslaw Zaleski
PORTUGAL - Foreign Minister Antonio Monteiro
ROMANIA - Presidential adviser Simona Miculescu
RUSSIA - State Duma Chairman Boris Gryzlov, Deputy Foreign
Minister Alexander Saltanov
SAUDI ARABIA - Crown Prince Abdullah
SLOVAKIA - Foreign Minister Eduard Kukan
SLOVENIA - Foreign Minister Ivo Vajgl
SOMALIA - President Abdullahi Yusuf
SOUTH AFRICA - President Thabo Mbeki
SOUTH KOREA - Former Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan
SPAIN - Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos
SUDAN - President Omar Hassan al-Bashir
SWEDEN - Prime Minister Goran Persson
SWITZERLAND - Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey
TANZANIA - Vice-President Mohammed Ali Shein
TUNISIA - President Zine el-Abdine Ben Ali
TURKEY - Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Speaker of the Federal National
Council Mohammed Saeed al Kindi, Minister of Supreme Council
Affairs Sheikh Fahim bin Sultan al-Qassimi, Information Minister
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan and his brother Sheikh
Dhiyab, both are brothers of President Sheikh Khalifa
UNITED KINGDOM - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
UNITED NATIONS - Special representative for the Middle East
peace process Terje Roed-Larsen
UNITED STATES - Assistant Secretary of State William Burns,
Consul General in Jerusalem David Pearce
YEMEN - President Ali Abdullah Saleh
ZIMBABWE - President Robert Mugabe
Website: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=500850&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
| | Over de doden niets dan goeds? | Anarchist - 12.11.2004 23:17
Waarom worden kritische noten over Arafat verwijderd! Wat een onzin zeg. Die man was geen heilige. Hij was zelfs niet links. Hij streed wel voor een goede zaak, maar hij was een nationalist die geen vorm van kritiek op zijn handelen dulde en corrupt was. Slap hoor...
De verheerlijking hier van de corrupte Arafat komt me mijn neus uit en doet me denken aan de tijd dat een aantal stalinisten kritiekloos achter Mao, Pol Pot en Stalin aanliepen.
| | Ze doen het weer..... | Klaas. - 13.11.2004 09:42
Het Jeugdjournaal 12-11-2004: "...... Na de plechtigheid in Cairo werd het lichaam van Arafat overgebracht naar Israel, Ramallah......."
Nu weet ik dat je met de jeugd moet beginnen, maar deze vondst van NOS-redactie is het zoveelste bewijs dat ze eenzijdig zijn (Astris Essed weet daar veel beter op te wijzen.
Het Jeugdjournaal had bijv. kunnen zeggen:
"Het lichaam van Arafat is overgebracht naar Ramallah in de door Israel bezette Jordaanoever" of de langere versie:
"Het lichaam van Arafat is overgebracht naar het bezette Ramallah, waar Arafat zijn laatste jaren in een omsingeld kantoor zijn leven doorbracht, terwijl overal in de Palestijnse gebieden de terreur van de bezettingstroepen van Israerl woedde. Ondanks het verzet van de Israelische leider, Sharon, heeft internationale druk het mogelijk gemaakt dat Arafat op Palestijnse grongebied begraven werd. De wens van Arafat om in het Palestijnse Oos-Jeruzalem begraven te worden werd niet goedgekeurd door de bezetter"
| | "ashamed to be an Israeli" | Uri Avnery - 15.11.2004 09:53
by Uri Avnery, Israeli dissident/journalist Saturday, Nov. 13, 2004 at 9:40 PM
"The disgusting filth poured out over Yasser Arafat during the last few days in practically all the Israeli media makes one ashamed to be an Israeli".
Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth, Lest the Lord see it, and it displease him.” This biblical injunction (Proverbs 24:17) is one of the most profound Jewish moral tenets.
In this connection, Israel is very far from being a “Jewish State”, as it likes to define itself. The disgusting filth poured out over Yasser Arafat during the last few days in practically all the Israeli media makes one ashamed to be an Israeli.
The demonization of the Palestinian national leader, which has been the center-piece of Israeli propaganda for decades, continues even after his death. It seems that 37 years as occupiers have bestialized our society and left it bereft even of common decency.
Ministers and fishmongers, TV icons and university professors, “leftists” and outright fascists tried to outdo each other in utter vulgarity.
Never was the huge gap in the perceptions of the two peoples more striking than on the day of Arafat’s funeral. While Israeli commentators and “experts on Arab affairs” – almost all of them veterans of the various intelligence agencies – described the late leader as a veritable monster, the epitome of cruelty, viciousness and corruption - a hundred thousand grief-stricken mourners in Ramallah exploded in a burst of emotions that nearly threw the funeral into pandemonium.
If the Israeli army had not surrounded and isolated all Palestinian towns that day, more than a million people would have been there.
Gush Shalom, the only Israeli organization that openly mourned alongside the Palestinian people, decided to send a delegation to the funeral. All of us activists, women and men, wore on our breast a big sticker displaying the Israeli and Palestinian flags. The sheer pressure of the multitude split us up among the crowd. Throughout the hours of the funeral, we felt completely safe, even when thousands of shots were fired around us into the air to express grief and bereavement. We encountered hundreds of expressions of gratitude and friendship from Palestinians of all ages and stations in life.
I was in the middle of the melee when the helicopter bearing the coffin arrived from Cairo. Standing beside the grave among the Palestinian ministers, religious dignitaries and diplomats, I was vividly aware of the intense emotions of the huge crowd around us when the helicopter touched down. I remembered the scene of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser’s funeral in 1970, when the masses surged forward and literally captured the body of their beloved leader from the soldiers, and felt that this was going to happen here at any moment. And it did.
No Arab leader – and very few world leaders – evoke such profound love and admiration among their people as this man, whom Israelis consider a veritable monster in human form. The Palestinians trusted him, relied on him, let him make all the big decisions that demanded courage, derived from him the strength to defy the intolerable conditions under a brutal occupation. Now, suddenly, incredibly, they found themselves alone, like orphaned waifs, in a world changed by the death of a man who left a huge gap behind him.
What will happen now? Arafat has brought his people from the edge of oblivion to the threshold of independence. But the battle for liberation is still far from over. The new leadership will have to face all the problems that confronted Arafat, without the towering authority of Arafat.
Abu Mazen, Abu-Ala and their colleagues are upright, decent people. I have known them for years, mostly from meetings with Arafat. But they have no deep roots in their people. It may be years before a strong leadership emerges.
At the moment, the Palestinians are united in their resolve to show the world that they can overcome this crisis in a civilized and responsible manner. This could have been a chance for Israel (and the United States, of course) to open a new chapter in relations with the Palestinian people.
What could have been done? Well, there should have been a show of goodwill with such gestures as the mass release of Palestinian prisoners, including the much respected Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who has been sentenced to serve five consecutive life sentences. Sieges should have been lifted and army operations at least reduced. Peace negotiations should have been announced for the near future.
The first test was, of course, the funeral itself. Arafat should have been buried in Jerusalem, according to his wishes. His interment in Ramallah will only strengthen the resolve of the Palestinians to fight until they are able to re-bury him there.
The Minister of Justice, Tommy Lapid, an extreme rightist posing as a liberal, reached new heights of vulgarity when he declared that “Jewish Kings, not Arab terrorists, are buried in Jerusalem”. Well, Menachem Begin, a terrorist who became a “king” and was buried in Jerusalem, could have served as a precedent.
But the most important thing is to enable the Palestinians to hold elections within 60 days of the death of the President, as their constitution demands. Actually, my last conversation with Arafat, a few weeks ago (when, by the way, he looked quite healthy) concerned elections. We agreed that they are impracticable while the Israeli army routinely assassinates potential candidates and makes movement between towns and villages almost impossible. How will candidates – if they remain alive – canvass their voters? How will they distribute material, hold meetings and debate policies, with tanks in the background and helicopter gunships hovering overhead?
This situation must be changed at once. All troops must be withdrawn at least from the areas under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (so-called Areas A and B, according to the Oslo agreements), freedom of movement restored, the assassination campaign stopped and, most importantly, international observers invited.
Will this happen? Probably not. Ariel Sharon has absolutely no interest in sitting opposite a democratically elected leadership enjoying international legitimacy and respect, perhaps even weakening his control over President Bush and obstructing his plan for the annexation of most of the West Bank . He will do everything to prevent elections, and, of course, blame the Palestinians.
As always, it is advisable to ignore what Sharon says - and pay close attention to what he does.
| | Death, delusion and democracy | JV - 15.11.2004 10:26
"When Arafat finally went to Camp David to meet Barak, he was allegedly offered 95 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza but turned it down and went to war with the second intifada. A study of the maps, however, shows that - with the exclusion of Jerusalem and its extended boundaries, with the exclusion of existing major Jewish colonies and with the inclusion of an Israeli cordon sanitaire, Arafat was offered nearer to 64 per cent of the 22 per cent of mandate Palestine that was left to him. Then a new explosion of Palestinian suicide bombings, usually aimed at Israeli civilians, destroyed Israel's patience with Arafat. Sharon, who had provoked the second intifada by strolling on to the Temple Mount with a thousand policeman, decided that Arafat was a Bin Laden-style "terrorist" and all further contact ended.
This is not to excuse the PLO or Arafat himself. His arrogance and corruption, and his little dictatorship - initially encouraged by the Israelis and Americans who lent Arafat their CIA boys to "train" the Palestinian security services - ensured that no democracy could thrive in "Palestine". And I suspect that while he personally disapproved of suicide bombings, Arafat cynically realised that they had their uses; they proved that Sharon could not provide Israel with the security he promised at his election, at least until he built the new wall - which is stealing further Palestinian land. But that was only one side of the story - and last week Bush and Blair went back to the old game of seeing only the other side. The Palestinians - the victims of 39 years of occupation - must prove themselves worthy of peace with their occupiers. The death of their leader is therefore billed as a glorious occasion that provides hope. All this is part of the self-delusion of Bush and Blair. The reality is that the outlook in the Middle East is bleaker than ever."
Website: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=582717
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