Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1999, pages 107-109

Arab-American Activism

The NAAA Foundation Hosts Briefing with PLO Director

Hasan Abdel Rahman, director of the PLO office in Washington, DC, was the featured speaker at an Arab-American Forum breakfast sponsored by the NAAA Foundation on Dec. 8. NAAA Foundation president Khalil Jahshan asked Mr. Abdel Rahman to discuss the unilateral moves that had frozen the implementation of the Wye memorandum and to brief guests on the donor conference held in Washington Nov. 28and Palestinian plans regarding U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit.

Mr. Abdel Rahman reminded the audience that the Wye memorandum culminated a year of intensive discussions on how to implement already agreed-upon redeployment of land, a prisoner exchange and the formation of committees to decide how to implement final status issues of borders, settlements and Jerusalem. Palestinians have implemented everything they agreed to on schedule, Abdel Rahman contended, but Israel has stalled, and added new conditions after Wye. Israel had agreed not to engage in unilateral actions in a side letter to the Wye agreements, but then continued confiscating Palestinian land and houses, building new Israeli houses, grabbing hilltops for settlements, and confiscating Palestinian identity cards, which in effect are residence permits. Committees were to form to discuss Gaza harbor, safe passage issues, and economic issues (Israel still holds $400 million in Palestinian taxes).

As for the prisoner release, Abdel Rahman continued: "At Wye we submitted a memo to the Israelis and a note to Clinton including the issue of prisoners. We enumerated the categories of prisoners that were supposed to be released including those jailed before 1994, when the agreement was signed with Israel. Many have been in prison for 25 years...Israel claims that we never discussed who was to be released. That is absolutely untrue. Do you think we negotiated for 10 years to secure the release of car thieves? We were talking about political prisoners. We even listed how many from each political group...We even stipulated that those political prisoners not included in the 750 released would be discussed name by name in a committee meeting...I was privy to those negotiations.

"Even Israeli negotiators are upset with these actions so inconsistent with the agreement and the spirit of partners for peace in which they were made," Abdel Rahman charged. "Israel is taking our political prisoners as hostage and flagrantly violating our agreements with regard to the prisoners and the expansion of Jewish settlements."

Assessing current relations between Americans and Palestinians, Abdel Rahman said Clinton played a pivotal role in the success of the donor conference, where 52 countries and organizations pledged $3 to $4 billion in aid to strengthen the Palestinian economy. Even more important than the promised financial assistance was the political message given by countries that called on Israel to implement freedom of trade and movement for Palestinians. The World Bank and IMF also testified that the Palestinian Authority has done a good job in accounting for all funds.

Abdel Rahman expressed the hope that President Clinton can put the peace process back on track with the "first visit by any U.S. president to any Palestinian territories." Abdel Rahman said he also hopes Clinton can put a stop to unilateral Israeli actions that violate the letter and spirit of the peace agreements to which he is a signatory. The first of two safe passages should already have opened, and discussions on the harbor should be underway, Abdel Rahman said. As for the prisoner release fiasco, "We never discussed the release of common prisoners."

Israel lumped together common prisoners and political prisoners whose terms were almost expired, Abdel Rahman concluded, noting that "3,200 prisoners are awaiting release and they're related to 3,200 families, who in turn are related to half a million relatives. They see that the release of common criminals in their place was not honorable... It's an affront to the whole notion of peacemaking. It's too difficult to swallow."

--Delinda C. Hanley

Members of Congress Consider U.N. Sanctions on Iraq

A bipartisan ad hoc congressional hearing on the humanitarian crisis in Iraq was held Oct. 6 at the Longworth House Office Building. The hearing, organized by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the Arab American Institute (AAI), the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a national network of religious and peace organizations, and four congressional offices focused on the humanitarian, political and international implications of the sanctions against Iraq.

Chairing the hearing, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said that he would insist on full committee hearings on the sanctions issue. "We are here today to release a message to the president to stop the economic sanctions against Iraq," Conyers said. Commenting on a bill passed Oct. 5 authorizing the U.S. government to bring Iraq's president to justice, Conyers said that though he believes that President Saddam Hussain should be brought to justice, "there are other issues that should be considered regarding the Iraqi crisis."

Phyllis Bennis, a U.N. and Middle East fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's U.N., discussed questions of U.S. policy. "We as people in the U.S. should take it seriously that it is our government which is taking this policy against Iraq," Bennis said. She called upon the U.S. government to change its sanctions policy against Iraq and to separate the economic sanctions from military sanctions.

"Unfortunately, we are doing it in the opposite way," Bennis explained. "We are tightening the economic sanctions against the Iraqis." Arguing that the sanctions are leading to the death of thousands of Iraqi children, Bennis said that the "sanctions against Iraq should end."

Dr. Peter Pellet, professor of nutrition at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who has conducted several surveys for the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) on nutritional conditions among the Iraqi population, discussed effects of the economic embargo on food availability, nutrition and health. Pellet said that recent surveys in Iraq agree that "there is severe malnutrition in hospitals, malnourished children and under-nourished adults in the towns, ever-changing food prices, increased mortality and a general breakdown in the whole fabric of society."

Pellet reported that despite the implementation of the oil-for-food deal, widespread malnutrition remains in both the north and south of Iraq. "From a country that was edging toward Western standards in health and nutrition, there has been, since 1990, a precipitous decline toward poor Third World status," Pellet added.

In his first public appearance after his resignation as United Nations assistant secretary-general and head of the U.N. humanitarian mission in Iraq, Dennis Halliday discussed the "damage and futility" of the sanctions and their incompatibility with the U.N. Charter and the U.N. Convention on Human Rights. "UNICEF confirms that five to six thousand Iraqi children under the age of five are dying unnecessarily every month due to the impact of the sanctions, and that figure is probably modest," Halliday testified. "It is unnecessary and unacceptable to allow this human tragedy to continue."

According to Halliday, the sanctions led to increases in Iraq of child labor, high rates of street crime and begging by children, increases in unemployment, collapse of the educational system, deterioration of the status of the civil service, and a decrease of women in the professions. "Sanctions are by no means contributing to a healthy system in Iraq," Halliday argued.

He said that instead of the Iraqi government being undermined by the U.N. sanctions, these sanctions are hurting innocent Iraqi civilians. One of the most dangerous results of the sanctions is that "they could breed fanaticism and deep-seated resentment in future generations," Halliday argued. "The absence of overseas communication will give us an Iraqi generation which is very defensive and much more extreme, passionate and angry."

"Sanctions continue to kill people," Halliday said. "They will not change the Iraqi government and they destroy families. I resigned to draw attention to the fact that the U.S. government and the U.N. are not responding to the human rights suffering in Iraq," he concluded.

The ad hoc hearing coincided with the official delivery to President Clinton of a congressional letter (signed by 44 House members and 2 senators) calling upon the U.S. government to "de-link economic sanctions from military sanctions, improve and expand the oil-for-food program, and stop impeding the flow of humanitarian goods into Iraq."

The hearing was also sponsored by the offices of Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI), and Rep. David Bonior (D-MI).

--Raja' M. Abu-Jabr