Qurei: Fight Has Begun For Jerusalem

2005-08-29

Israel's Apartheid Wall, Ghettos, Leave No Room for Viable Palestinian State

Palestine Media Center - PMC [Official PA website]

http://www.palestine-pmc.com/ details.asp?cat=1&id=973

The Palestinian government had agreed to give extra priority to the issue of Jerusalem, where Israel's settlement drive and the construction of its Apartheid Wall are leaving Palestinians living in "ghettos," and leave no "room for the creation of a viable Palestinian state" that "should be built on the borders of 1967 and the Palestinians will not accept any state less than that," Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei confirmed on Sunday.

Qurei chaired a symbolic cabinet meeting in the Jerusalem eastern suburb of Abu Dis Sunday to highlight the Palestinian concern about the Israeli settlement expansion in and around eastern Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in 1967.

The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is "very worried about the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, particularly around Jerusalem ... this will destroy the possibility of a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza," Qurie told Reuters ahead of the unprecedented cabinet meeting, the first ever to be held so close to Jerusalem.

Abu Dis remains under Israeli occupation control but the Palestinians control the suburb's administration, since the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) stormed the PNA security offices there in 2001.

"What is happening is very dangerous ... They are expanding the borders of Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley. Who will accept that? Who will accept swapping Gaza for Jerusalem or for the West Bank?" Qurie asked.

Jerusalem Issue Has Priority

The PNA is giving priority to the issue of Jerusalem because it could wreck the peace process, Qurei said.

"The cabinet and the ministries will give priority to the Jerusalem issue because of the Wall and the building of the ghettos which are wrecking the peace process," he said on Sunday.

The "fight has begun for Jerusalem, and it is a dangerous war. No Arab, Palestinian - Christian or Muslim - will accept Israel's racist plans," Qurei told the PNA cabinet.

Qurei denied Israeli security justifications for erecting Israel's "racist" Wall and appealed to the world to understand that Jerusalem and the West Bank are in "danger."

"This wall is not a security wall. It is a wall meant to set borders. How else would you explain the fact that the fence runs through Palestinian communities? If they want a security fence, let them build it on the Green Line," he said.

The Wall "endangers the entire peace process, and not only the Israeli-Palestinian one. Peace throughout the region is endangered," he added.

"Instead of the disengagement being a starting point to advance the diplomatic process, as the world expects, the government of Israel has decided to continue with its policy of expropriations and building a wall that will leave 70,000 Palestinians in what they call a 'ghetto'."

"We will not allow Israel to say, 'we have finished pulling out of Gaza' while at the same time expanding towns in the West Bank and around Jerusalem," he said.

"We call on the United States, the Quartet and the world to show responsibility for this," he said.

Reminding the US President George W. Bush of a promise to establish a "viable" Palestinian state, Qurei confirmed that "the only viable country would be with the 1967 borders," he said, "not a series of disconnected cantons."

Tufakji Briefs PNA Cabinet

Khalil Tufakji, a Palestinian expert on settlements, was invited to address the cabinet on the implication of Israeli policies for Jerusalem.

"The thing is that is Israel is working on the land in an intensive way," he told AFP.

"They are the ones who are changing the reality on the ground, the ones who are winning the case," Tufakji said.

"The Palestinian Authority appears to be able to do nothing on the ground except express its anger and appeal to the United Nations and the United States."

Israel embarked on demarcating the radium of the illegal Jewish colony of Ma'ale Adumim on 100 square kilometers of occupied Palestinian land east of Jerusalem, 35 km deep into the West Bank and with a width of 15-25 km.

The main goal of the construction of the Ma'ale Adumim settlement bloc is to separate the northern part of the West Bank from its southern part, which would impede territorial contiguity between the southern and northern West Bank, Tufakji said.

The cabinet meeting was held inside the premises of Al-Quds University in Abu Dis. Ministers visited a section of the Apartheid Wall that Israel is building around east Jerusalem in defiance of Palestinian protests and the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague in July last year, which was later adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.

Source: IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis