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Following U.S. Footsteps, Israel May not Go to Durban
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, Aug 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Israeli Foreign Ministry delegation originally scheduled to go to the anti-racism conference in Durban Thursday, is still waiting for final word of what the U.S. plans to do before deciding whether to boycott the conference, an official Israeli daily said Wednesday.
Israel's right-wing daily, The Jerusalem Post, quoted a Foreign Ministry official Wednesday as saying, "If the U.S boycotts, we will boycott."
If the U.S. only sends a low-level delegation arises over whether Israel will send a delegation headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior, the official said.
The U.S. has decided that it will not send Secretary of State Colin Powell.
A department official said earlier that the U.S. was still debating whether or not to send any representation at all to the conference, the BBC online service said.
The announcement came after weeks of negotiations by U.S. officials to remove language from conference documents that equates Zionism - the movement that promotes a Jewish state in the Palestinian occupied land - with racism and singles out Israel as a "racist" occupying power.
"The level tends to imply a certain association that we certainly don't want with this kind of language," a State Department spokesman said. "We spent years working to eradicate some of these ideas from the U.N. system, and we don't think this is a time or the place to put them back in."
"The level tends to imply a certain association that we certainly don't want with this kind of language," Boucher said. "We spent years working to eradicate some of these ideas from the U.N. system, and we don't think this is a time or the place to put them back in."
According to CNN's website, some of the language was removed, but the Bush administration was still not satisfied.
The U.N. General Assembly, which had labeled Israeli policies of Zionism as "racist" in 1975, dropped the charge after the 1991 Madrid peace talks.
"There was a whole series of references to one particular government, to one particular country, and to its polices as being racist," Boucher said. "That's what we object to, that's what the president objected to on Friday."
U.S. president George W. Bush warned on Friday that the United States would boycott the conference completely if the participants "picked on" Israel.
The Israeli official said that a number of countries - including India, New Zealand, and France - have said that they will stand by Israel in opposing any anti-Israel resolutions.
However, top-ranking Palestinian and Egyptian officials vowed Wednesday that Arab states would work for a condemnation of Israeli practices at the U.N. Durban conference, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.
Faruq Qaddumi, the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) political chief, said the PLO delegation would demand a "firm condemnation of Israeli criminal attacks" over the 11-month-old Palestinian uprising.
"Israeli practices against the Palestinians have surpassed the holocaust in horror," he said in Cairo on his way to the U.N. conference, which starts Friday in Durban, South Africa.
He accused Israel of "war crimes, meriting such sanctions as those imposed" against South Africa's late apartheid regime.
He labeled Israel a "racist state" and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "racist and fascist."
Meanwhile, Fayza Abul-Naga, who headed Egypt's delegation to the preparatory session for Durban, told the state's French edition of Al-Ahram weekly that Arab states would not seek to revive in Durban a dormant 1975 U.N. resolution equating Zionism with racism.
"We will no longer make this question a priority during the conference in Durban.
"The priority must be given to revealing and denouncing Israeli practices," Abul-Naga said in reference to the bloodshed over the past year, which has seen more than 750 people die, the vast majority of them Palestinians.
She said distinctions needed to be drawn between equating Zionism with racism and drawing links between "Israeli policies and the deplorable situation in the Palestinian territories."
The 22 members of the Arab League are set to meet Friday in Durban ahead of the conference in order to coordinate their efforts to condemn Israel's practices toward the Palestinians.
Arab League Chief Amr Mussa insisted earlier this month that the conference would not succeed if it fails to condemn "all racist behavior understood in the racist practices and declarations of Israel."
A draft declaration before 7,000 delegates at the non-governmental meeting earlier urged the U.N. to accept that Israel was a "discriminatory" state and that Palestinians could resist "occupation by any means."
The document also demanded that Israel pay "full compensation," and grant effective reparations to Palestinians living under the foreign military occupying power.
"The Palestinian people are one such people currently enduring a colonialist, discriminatory military occupation that violates their fundamental human right of self-determination," the draft said.
The resolution, consisting of a single operative paragraph declaring, "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination," was adopted by 72 votes to 35, with 32 abstentions, in a reflection of prevailing Cold War divisions.
Meanwhile, African-American leaders voiced disappointment Tuesday at Powell's decision not to attend the Durban meeting, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
In Durban, activists meeting ahead of the U.N. conference vowed to put pressure on governments that benefited from colonialism and slavery to pay reparations.
The adoption of the "Zionism is racism" resolution followed a year of activity at the U.N. during which the rights of the Palestinians were recognized with increasing vigor.
In 1974, the General Assembly invited the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in its proceedings via observer status.
In November of that year, the Assembly reaffirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property.
Those rights have been reaffirmed every year since and have remained unfulfilled by Israel.
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