(Petaling Jaya, Wednesday):
The Israeli government of Ariel Sharon has continued to
defy world opinion and morality
with the Israeli army killing nine Palestinians in one of the biggest raids in
the Gaza Strip while the United Nations Security Council was debating the Middle
East and the swift official Israeli
rejection of the UN Security Council resolution demanding Israel end its siege
of Yasser Arafat’s compound and the “expeditious withdrawal” of Israeli
forces from Occupied Palestine.
Yesterday, the Security Council by a vote of 14 in favour
to none against, with United States abstaining, demanded that Israel immediately
cease measures in and around Ramallah, including the destruction of Palestinian
civilian and security infrastructure, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces
towards positions held prior to September 2,000. The resolution also called on the Palestinian Authority
to meet its expressed commitment to bring to justice those responsible for
terrorist acts.
In rejecting the UN Security Council resolution demanding the end of the Ramallah siege of Arafat, Israeli official sources have said that military operations, including the Ramallah siege, would continue and “gradually intensify” in the Gaza Strip specifically.
The Malaysian Parliament should set aside the 2003 Budget debate
to pass an all-party
motion to express the world outrage
and to deplore the Israeli rejection of the UN Security Council resolution to
end the siege of Arafat and expeditious withdrawal of Israeli forces from
Occupied Palestine.
British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, should be standing up
in the House of Commons to present a case as to how Anglo-American efforts could
restore peace to the Middle East by ending the Israeli state terrorism in the
Palestinian territory instead of presenting the dossier entitled “Iraq’s
Weapons of Mass Destruction – the Assessment of the British Government”,
which had been described as “damp
squib” and “PR stunt” by his Parliamentary backbenchers as it did not add
a great deal of information to what was already known.
US President Bush should re-prioritise US foreign policy to give greater importance and urgency to end the Palestinian conflict instead of going to war against Saddam Hussein of Iraq, as he would only be giving credence to the view that in the absence of credible evidence of immediate and imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from Iraq, Bush is more interested in getting rid of Saddam Hussein than in ensuring effective WMD inspections under the auspices of the United Nations or the achievement of durable peace in the Middle East.
(25/9/2002)