Yasser Arafat urges for sanctions against Israel.
Reuters reported that Palestinian President and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat urged the United States and Europe yesterday while on a visit to South Africa to impose real and effective economic sanctions against the Israel. At the South African Institute of International Affairs, he said: "We need the same kind of international pressure that was put on the apartheid regime in its last years. No one can deny the role that international economic sanctions played against the apartheid regime in forcing that regime... to reach a permanent settlement. Time is running out. What is needed is real and effective pressure on the Israeli government by the American administration, European Union and international communities. We look forward to the day when the international community will impose real and effective pressure on the Israeli government as long as this government continues its current policies, insisting on being stubborn and refusing to comply with signed international agreements.
The victory of the extremists in Israel and the taking over by Mr Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 have led to a freeze in the negotiations process. All negotiation tracks have broken down." He also reiterated his warning that if the peace process was not completed on schedule in May next year, his government would declare "the establishment of the Palestinian Arab state on the Palestinian lands occupied in 1967."<p><p>Reuters said that Arafat spoke earlier to South Africa's parliament in Cape Town saying, "It [Israel] has challenged international legitimacy and its resolutions and opened the door wide for the return of violence, anarchy, war and destruction."
ARAFAT'S FATAH MOVEMENT WEBSITE CALLS FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL
The Jerusalem Post reported today that even while the Palestinians negotiate to change their charter, Yassar Arafat's Fatah movement has released a constitution on their website at www.fateh.org that calls for the destruction of Israel. The report said that the constitution calls the Zionist movement "racial, colonial and aggressive in ideology, goals, organization and method. The Israeli existence in Palestine is a Zionist invasion with a colonial expansive base, and it is a natural ally to colonialism and international imperialism...Liberating Palestine and protecting its holy places is an Arab, religious and human obligation." The constitution lists the goal of the Fatah movement as "complete liberation of Palestine and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence...armed public revolution is the inevitable method for liberating Palestine. Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab people's armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated." The document does not mention the Oslo Accords, supposedly supported by Fatah, but says it opposes any "political solution offered as an alternative to demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine..."