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Palestinian Resistance Groups Denounce Bushs’ Threats As Cover For Israel
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| Palestinians protest with pictures of their President Yasser Arafat in Gaza |
DAMASCUS, Jan. 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Palestinian resistance groups Wednesday rejected threats from U.S. President, George W. Bush, saying that Washington was only providing political cover for its ally Israel.
Hamas and Jihad, who have spearheaded the 16-month Palestinian Intifada against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, also pledged to continue their retaliatory attacks on the occupation force.
"Hamas and Jihad are exercising their right to resist the Zionist occupation; this right is guaranteed by all international charters," Jihad spokesman Ziyad Nakhal said in Damascus, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"We are defending ourselves against Zionist aggression; we are convinced of our rights and will continue the resistance without taking into account the American accusations which are aligned with Israel," he added.
"The United States does not have the right to accuse of terrorism while it is carrying out terrorism every day throughout the world in committing murder and destruction and by economic pillaging," said Nakhal.
In his first State of the Union address to Congress Tuesday night, Bush threatened U.S. action against Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and promised to hunt what he described as "ticking time-bombs" across the globe, warning his war on terror had only just begun.
President Bush described Islamic resistance movements: "Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad [and] Jaish-e-Mohammed" as "a terrorist underworld … operat[ing] in remote jungles and deserts, and hid[ing] in the centers of large cities."
In a statement to AFP, a senior Hamas official hit back at Bush's terrorism charges, saying that Washington sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "with the eyes of Israel."
The Bush administration was giving Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon "political cover to kill children and women, to raze homes and besiege the Palestinian people," charged Mussa Abu Marzuk, deputy head of the Hamas political bureau.
A Hamas spokesman in Gaza City had a similar response to the warning from the American leader. "Hamas rejects the unjust American threats, which reflect the hostility of the United States toward our people, and affirms its determination to pursue the battle against the Israeli occupation," Ismail Hamiya told AFP.
Both Jihad and Hamas are opposed to the 1993 Oslo peace accords with Israel and are responsible for most of the attacks against Israelis.
After the September 11 attacks on the United States, Washington included both groups on a blacklist of organizations whose assets are to be frozen under the U.S. war on Afghanistan.
Islamic Jihad was founded in 1980 along the lines of Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon such as Hizbollah, and is based in Damascus. Hamas was founded in 1987, just after the start of a first Intifada against Israeli occupation, which lasted until 1993.
Meanwhile, Syrian-based Palestinian resistance group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), described Bush's speech as part of "the American and Israeli pressure" on the Palestinians and their President, Yasser Arafat, who remains under virtual house arrest in the West Bank.
"This is political blackmail exercised by Washington against Yasser Arafat and all Palestinians," said Ali Badwan, an executive member of the secular group, which is one of the three main components of the Palestine Authority (PA).
Bush this week also accused Arafat of falsely professing a commitment to peace as U.S. officials renewed demands that the Palestinian leader act immediately to rein in anti-Israel violence. The U.S. president said alleged high-level Palestinian involvement in a foiled weapon smuggling attempt earlier this month had left him "disappointed."
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 Palestinian refugees staged a sit-in in Tyra, Lebanon, Wednesday to express support for Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, and residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip "besieged" by Israel.
Men wearing the checkered Arab keffiyeh headdress and women in Palestinian embroidered traditional robes gathered in front of the United Nations offices in this southern coastal port city, carrying Palestinian flags and portraits of Arafat.
The refugees handed over a memorandum to U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan, asking for "protection for the Palestinian people...and the lifting of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people and their leader."
Dozens of youths also chanted slogans in support of their President, who has been forcibly bunkered in his West Bank headquarters by an Israeli army blockade since December 3, 2001.
The protest took place as Arab interior ministers in Beirut wrapped up Wednesday a two-day conference, pledging to continue to support the Palestinians against "Israeli state terrorism."
"The Council of Arab Interior Ministers expresses its utmost concern about the escalation of terrorist acts," said Lebanese Interior Minister, Elias Murr, reading a final statement after the ministers met for two days.
"This requires a confrontation, with coordinated measures ... while stressing the need to make a distinction between terrorism and peoples' right to fight using all means to liberate their land," he said.
The Council reiterated a call for "holding an international conference under the auspices of the United Nations, to discuss and define the concept of terrorism and differentiate it from people's legitimate struggle against occupation."
Arab states have backed the U.S.-led war on terrorism, but have rejected Washington's inclusion of groups -- mainly Lebanon's Hizbollah and Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements -- on its "terrorism" lists, emphasizing that those groups are leading a legitimate resistance against Israel's occupation of Arab lands.
The council also "strongly denounces the Israeli enemy for its acts of genocide, displacement, destruction and siege against the Palestinian people and their leader Yasser Arafat," Murr said. Arafat has been blockaded in his offices by the Israeli army and under virtual house arrest in the West Bank city of Rammalah for nearly two months.
"We call for an urgent intervention by the international community and the United Nations in order to stop the [Israeli] aggression on the Palestinian people and guarantee that they receive their rights, chiefly their right to return and to establish an independent state with its capital Jerusalem," the Lebanese minister said.
The ministers expressed their "support for the Palestinian police, subjected to Israeli harassment, and decided to grant it assistance in a bilateral manner" from each Arab country, according to its capabilities.
The offices of the Palestinian police have been wrecked by Israeli bombardments during the 16-month Palestinian Intifada.
The ministers expressed "pride for the steadfastedness and the struggle of the Palestinian people against Israeli occupation forces in order to obtain its legitimate rights."
Eighteen of the 22 members of the Cairo-based Arab League, including the Palestinians, attended the conference. Djibouti, Somalia, Libya and the Comoros did not send representatives.
Ahmad Saeed al-Tamimi, undersecretary at the ministry of the interior, was representing the Palestinian Authority at the conference, after Israel blocked Palestinian Justice Minister, Freih Abu Middein, from attending.
The Palestinian crisis is expected to top the agenda at the upcoming Arab summit to be held in Beirut at the end of March.
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