Israeli Settlements Hindrance to Peace: Jesse Jackson
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Jackson
described Bush's attempts to change the Palestinian President
as "an undemocratic idea"
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OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, July 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. civil
rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson called Sunday, July 28, on Israel
to halt settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and Gaza
Strip as a key to renewing peace talks frozen for nearly two years,
news agencies reported.
On
Sunday, Jackson met Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres who told the
visiting Reverend Israel was doing all it could to ease the situation
of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living under curfew after the
army re-occupied almost the entire West Bank on June 19, Agence France
Presse (AFP) reported.
But
Peres put the blame for Israeli violence on the Palestinian Authority,
accusing it of terrorism. "Only when the Palestinian
Authority begins to take action against terrorism will it be possible
to renew political negotiations," his office said in a statement
after the meeting in Tel Aviv.
Jackson’s
visit comes in the wake of a widely condemned deadly Israeli raid on
Gaza Monday, July 22, in which 18 Palestinian civilians were killed
and 150 were wounded. A U.S.-built Israeli F-16 warplane dropped a
one-ton bomb on a building in densely-populated Gaza City late Monday,
killing 18 civilians, eleven of them children, including a
two-month-old infant. The target for assassination, Hamas military
chief Salaah Shehada, was killed in the attack, along with his wife
and daughter.
Jackson,
on a “reconciliation, reconstruction, peace and non-violence”
mission, condemned the Israeli raid, saying "non-violence
is not a form of surrender. It is a form of resistance."
Jackson
arrived Saturday, July 27, at the head of a multi-denominational
delegation of religious leaders that will spend five days in Israel
and the occupied Palestinian territories, and meet with officials
including Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and possibly with
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
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| "Non-violence is not a form of surrender," Jackson said in his meet with Peres Sunday, July 28 |
"We
are independent religious leaders seeking to be bridge-builders,"
Jackson told a press conference Saturday.
"We
search to organize a third force of reconciliation, reconstruction,
peace and non-violence. We cannot give up reconciliation, because war
is not a viable option," he said, calling for more international
involvement in the region.
"The
forces of peace must have a place at the table of negotiations."
He
said he regretted that the administration of U.S. President George W.
Bush was not making a greater effort to bring peace to the troubled
Middle East.
Jackson
criticized the U.S. government's policy of shunning Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat. He criticized Bush's call for a change in
Palestinian leadership. "That's an undemocratic idea," he
said in an interview with Israel Television.
"In
a democracy you govern with the consent of the governed," he
said.
Previous
U.S. administrations' decisions to not talk with Palestinians had
proved unsuccessful, he said. "We must move from battlefield to
bargaining table," he told Israel Television.
"We
must reconcile the leadership that both have chosen," he said.
"Israelis and Palestinians must coexist and not
co-annihilate."
"There
must be some global commitment ... to use our strength, our leverage,
our incentive, and our will," to achieve peace, he said.
Jackson,
scheduled to meet Arafat Monday in Ramallah, said he would ask the
Palestinian President “to assume the power of nonviolence.”
But
Arafat was not the deciding factor in the conflict, Jackson said.
"There's a much bigger picture than the focus on a guy who can
deliver neither war nor peace by himself," he said.
Jackson
has said he hopes to hold talks with Sharon, but no meeting has been
confirmed.
Jackson
was also to speak with Palestinian officials in Bethlehem, Ramallah
and Gaza City, as well as peace advocates from both sides.
More
than 2,300 people, the majority of them Palestinians, have been killed
since the Palestinian Intifada against Israeli occupation erupted in
September 2000.
Meanwhile,
Jackson’s peace visit met with strong criticism for Israeli media.
The
Jerusalem Post, which described Jackson as “pathetic,” found
his visit “astounding” and described his bridge-building mission
as an attempt at “selling his snake oils.”
“A
known anti-semite, Jackson should not be allowed in Israel”, said
the Post, blaming the black Reverend for a recent
poll of U.S. blacks showing 35% were anti-semitic.
The
Israeli paper blasted Jackson’s call for an end of Middle East
violence as a must for the end of terrorism: “He is touting the same
line as the U.S. and Israel's enemies: the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict being the cause of terrorism,” it said.
Jackson’s
peace mission in the violence-stricken region is nothing but an
attempt “to lecture in the Mideast,” the Israeli paper concluded.
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