Uprising will continue —Arafat

Press, 25 January 1988, Page 6

Uprising will continue —Arafat

NZPA-Reuter Tunis The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, has vowed to continue protests in occupied Arab territories, saying the unrest has exposed the weakness of Israel’s crackdown.

“It’s not merely civil disobedience,” he told 21 Arab League delegates in Tunis. "We have found the weak point in Israel. Arab blood has overcome the Israeli war machine.” “The Israeli Government says it needs very strong sticks to break Palestinian bones,” the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.0.) told the emergency session of the Arab League’s Foreign Ministers.

“No matter the sacrifice, no matter how ruthless (the Israeli response), we will continue the uprising until occupation is eliminated.” Mr Arafat dismissed Israeli reports that 39 Palestinians had been killed since unrest broke out on December 9, saying he had the names of 86 fatalities.

He poured scorn on Washington’s response to the unrest, accusing the United States of ignoring Palestinian protests.

“The United States wanted to tame these people ... we know America has no ear but for Israel,” he told the meeting, called by Libya to step up international pressure on Israel.

“Our people refuse any alternative to the right of self-determination,” he said.

Mr Arafat urged the Arab League to set up a committee to coordinate strategy aimed at ending the occupation and settling the Arab-Israeli dispute, with an international peace conference

in which the PLO would participate. The Syrian Foreign Minister, Farouq al-Shara, told reporters after the opening session that Syria had tabled a draft resolution calling on Egypt to sever diplomatic ties with Israel.

Egypt is the only Arab country to have signed a peace treaty with Israel. Cairo’s 1979 peace accord with Israel prompted Egypt’s suspension from the Arab League. The Syrian draft demanded full support for what Mr Shara called the uprising in the occupied territories and the setting up of an Arab commission to investigate “Israeli crimes against humanity” in Gaza and the West Bank.

The United Nations Security Council will meet next week to consider a report on the occupied territories by the United Nations Secretary-Gen-eral, Javier Perez de Cuellar. It urges Israel to correct its reaction to Palestinian unrest.

Opening the meeting, the Arab League’s Secretary General, Chedli Klibi, compared the violence with anti-apartheid protests in the black South African township of Soweto.

He said the Security Council’s five permanent members — the United States, the Soviet Union, China, France and Britain — had special responsibility for initiating a comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian problem.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, said on Saturday that Israel must resist a proposal for an international MiddleEast peace conference as put forward by Soviet Foreign Minister, Edward Shevardnadze, last Thursday.