From: Ismail Zayid
To: Guardian Weekly
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2000 2:29 PM

Subject: Letter to Editor

19 July, 2000

The Editor,
The Guardian Weekly,
London,U.K.

 

Dear Editor:

Your editorial {July 13-19} is titled: "Peace on the Line at Camp David". A more appropriate title would have been :"The Final Sell-out on the Line at Camp David".

The Palestinians are asking for Isreali withdrawal from the West Bank,including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, a territory illegally occupied in 1967 {a mere 22% of the land of Palestine}. They are asking for the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, in compliance with the 1948 U.N. resolution no. 194. They are also asking for the dismantlement of the Jewish settlements, created on illegally occupied and expropriated Palestinian territory, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Security Council resolutions.

It is astonishing that Isreal's noncompliance with international law, repeated longstanding U.N. resolutions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has to be negotiated by the U.S., with pressure on Arafat to make concessions. It was the U.S. and its allies who attacked Iraq and continue to devastate its people, supposedly to implement a Security Council resolution.

You speak of Yitzhak Rabin rising to the challenge of statesmanship when he stated in 1993 : "Enough blood and tears, I say enough". Rabin never complied or intended to comply with these U.N. resolutions and the Oslo agreement he signed, anymore than his successors did.

In essence, the pressure applied on Arafat to make concessions on the legitimate rights of the Palestinians will bring about his final sell-out of the rights of his people, the sell-out he started in the 1993 Oslo agreement.

Yours sincerely

Ismail Zayid,MD.