U.S.: Palestine, Not P.A.

U.S.: Palestine, Not P.A.

NewsMax.com Wires
Monday, Nov. 12, 2001

UNITED NATIONS -- The Bush Administration has quietly begun to refer to Palestine as a state instead of as the Palestinian Authority. President Bush used the term in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly Saturday and Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday the change was "appropriate."

In his speech at the opening day of the 56th U.N. General Assembly, Bush said the U.S. was "working toward the day when two states, Israel and Palestine, live peacefully together within secure and recognized borders as called for by the Security Council resolutions."

The United States had previously avoided referring to the Palestinian enclave -- in its current or possible future configuration -- as Palestine. Bush had used the term on at least one previous occasion, saying he would welcome the creation of a Palestinian state once a way had been found to stop the present violence, but referring to Palestine in his U.N. speech was regarded as especially significant.

Asked on the Sunday television program "Meet the Press" if it was now official policy to refer to the Palestinian Authority as Palestine, Powell neither denied nor confirmed that there had been a change in policy, but he said Bush had used the term "quite deliberately." Powell said the President wanted to show that when "one is moving forward with a vision of two states living side by side, it's appropriate...to call those two states what they will be: Israel and Palestine."

Asked a similar question on CNN Sunday, Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, spoke of the United States’ " vision of the future (that) clearly includes a Palestinian state that can live in peace with its Israeli neighbor... once that vision is achieved it's going to be a much better place for Israel and for the people of Palestine."

The change was not lost on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, either. In his address to the General Assembly Sunday he expressed his "deepest appreciation of what President Bush declared in his speech about the necessity to achieve a just peace based on the implementation of (U.N. Security Council) Resolutions 242 and 338, on the basis of two states, Israel and Palestine, and to expeditiously resume the peace process."

The passage thanking Bush was hand-written in the official text distributed to journalists, and a Palestinian source said Arafat -- who was present during Bush's address -- had inserted it after hearing Bush's speech.

Israel's seats were empty during Bush's address, but some U.N. reporters said members of the permanent Israeli delegation had phoned them to say they had stayed away to observe the Jewish Sabbath.

Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 call for an Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War, and assert the Palestinians' right to establish an independent state.

Arafat has threatened to declare an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital without a peace agreement with Israel on more then one occasion, but has always stopped short of following through on his threat.

There had been speculation that he would declare a Palestinian state at the General Assembly this weekend. Instead he appealed for international support to put pressure on Israel to withdraw its security forces from the West Bank and Gaza, and to resume the stalled peace process. In the region itself, some senior Palestinian officials expressed disappointment that President Bush had failed to make concrete proposals for reviving the Middle East peace process. Zeyad Abu Amro, a moderate Palestinian member of parliament, said we are looking for "U.S. deeds, and not only words.

"We expected that President Bush would present a more powerful and precise statement and offer a specific timetable to get out of the crisis and end the Israeli military aggression on the Palestinian people," Abu Amro told UPI.

Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank started about 13 month ago what they call an "Intifada" or revolt against the continuing Israeli occupation, aimed at the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

More than 800 people have been killed during the Intifada, the vast majority of them Palestinians.

Palestinian security forces continued their crackdown against Islamic militants over the weekend, arresting three members of the extremist Hamas movement near the West Bank town of Ramallah, according to Palestinian officials and Hamas sources Sunday.

Hamas sources said that members of the Palestinian Authority preventive security force -- headed by Col. Jibril Rajoub -- arrested three Hamas militants wanted by Israel on their way to the village of Beir Zeit near Ramallah on Saturday evening

Hamas sources said officers of Rajoub's security had first arrested Ahmed Ghazali, adding that after he was interrogated in the field, he had identified the place where his two colleagues were hiding.

Meanwhile, Iz El Dein El Kassam, the armed wing of Hamas, issued a statement claiming responsibility for an RPG attack against an Israeli army post in Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border.

Palestinian military analysts said that the use of such heavy weaponry by Hamas – which had previously employed improvised bomb and mortars – represented a shift in the group’s military tactics.

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