Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday that Israel would not accept international observers to oversee a tenuous ceasefire with the Palestinians.
"We will not be able to accept international forces or international observers," Haaretz newspaper quoted the hardliner as saying in an interview with Fox News Sunday.
"I would like to make it very clear: Israel will not accept any international intervention here. Israel will not accept any international observers. That we are not going to do," he added.
In rejecting the suggestion of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat that the United States and other nations put an international observer team into the region, Sharon said peace talks could not resume until “all violence had ceased.”
He urged Arafat to move against the list of about 100 suspects Israel has identified as "terrorists."
"What he has to do is just to stop them," Sharon said. "We don't see any change whatsoever."
Meanwhile, the Palestinians intensified their campaign for such international monitors in the Occupied Territories.
On Friday, Palestinian Minister for International Cooperation Nabil Shaath reiterated the PA position on "the necessity of pursuing efforts for international protection for the Palestinian people," and urged the United States to pressure Israel to accept observers.
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, AFP estimates that Palestinians have killed 129 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to AFP, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 541 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report issued early this year, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
International human rights groups have repeatedly reported on Israeli troops firing live rounds at demonstrators in situations in which there was no threat to the soldiers' lives.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
