TEHRAN Disappointed at the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), President Mohammad Khatami said yesterday that the Muslim nations will not wait for the Muslim rulers to decide about the fate of Palestine.
Khatami made the remark at a meeting with the Secretary General of the OIC, Ezzeddine Laraki. He was referring to the indifference of the Arab rulers to the plight of the Palestinian nation.
As the chairman of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, President Khatami called for a meeting of the OIC foreign ministers to discuss the Palestinian crisis, but apparently he has not been welcomed by the Muslim rulers. This is what has in fact infuriated him.
The Israeli Army has thus far killed more than 120 Palestinians and wounded about 4,000 others.
Khatami has every right to be angry at some of the rulers of the Muslim countries, one analyst said adding, minimum that the Muslim countries could do at this stage was to hold a foreign ministerial meeting on Palestine. After all the OIC is the only worldwide Muslim organization covering all Muslim states.
If the organization fails to take a crucial decision at the time of a serious crisis, then what will be the use of such an organization? Given the fact that the Arab League has virtually failed to take a concrete measure or take an effective decision with regard to the Palestinian issue, the OIC must respond to Khatami's call favorably and perform its historical mission at this crucial juncture, he added. The unrest is still going on in the occupied territories with Israel killing and wounding the Muslims with full impunity.
The Israeli Army threatened on Monday to surround the West Bank town of Beit Jala near Bait-ul-Moqaddas to stop gunmen there firing at the Zionist settlement of Gilo.
"If the danger against the residents of Gilo continues we will take further steps and today (Monday) already we will surround Beit Jala," Army Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz told Israel Radio.
Israel built houses in Gilo, situated between Bethlehem and Bait-ul-Moqaddas, after occupying land there during the 1967 Middle East War.
Police said 12 Israeli apartment buildings had been raked by gunfire from beit Jala village near Bethlehem. No one was hurt.
Israeli helicopter gunships opened fire with missiles on Beit Jala late on Sunday and a tank fired a warning shell at an open field near the town on Friday.
Clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli Army continued sporadically elsewhere during Sunday night and into Monday.
At least 127 people, nearly all of them Palestinians, have died in more than three weeks of violence, according to checks made by Reuters.
Near the Gush Katif Zionist settlement in the mostly Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip, dozens of children threw stones at an army base, and soldiers opened fire, critically wounding a 13-year-old boy.
Hospital sources said the boy was hit in the head by a rubber-coated metal bullet.
Colonel Raanan Gissin, an army spokesman, said the army had decided to impose a "partial closure" around Beit Jala to prevent armed militias of Palestinian President Arafat's Fatah faction from entering.
Barak on Sunday declared that Israel would suspend the seven-year Middle East peace process.
The "time-out", during which Israel will break off all peace negotiations with the Palestinians, will remain in place as long as violence continues, a government spokesman confirmed later.
Arafat angrily rejected the move, telling reporters on his return to Gaza late Sunday that Barak could "go to hell".
"My response is that our people are continuing on the road to Bait-ul-Moqaddas, capital of the independent Palestinian state, whether (Barak) accepts or does not accept, let him go to hell," AFP quoted him as saying.
Meanwhile U.S. President Bill Clinton kept up the seemingly futile international efforts to ease the situation.
Clinton spoke with Barak for the second time Sunday in an effort to "find a pathway back to the negotiating table," White House Chief of Staff John Podesta said on CNN.
Barak, while announcing the suspension of the peace process, acknowledged the deep divisions within his own cabinet.
He said he would now seek to buttress his government with the formation of a national emergency government, which would also strive toward a peace deal, though with "differences of emphasis and nuance." "We face the immediate danger of severe attacks, shooting and deterioration," he warned.
The new government, if constituted, is likely to include Ariel Sharon, of the right-wing Likud Party, a sworn enemy of peace process concessions to Palestinians since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Palestinian council member Hanan Ashrawi's reaction was scathing, saying on CNN that Barak had "managed to rob the peace process of any credibility, any legitimacy, any substance and any relationship to reality.
" The peace process now "exists only as a fiction in the minds of the few, merely in the minds of the Arab leaders, who still think they can salvage peace from the jaws of destruction and war that is being waged against us," said Ashrawi.
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara expressed disappointment that the Arab Summit in Cairo did not take a stronger line against Israel.
"We were hoping for stronger decisions, notably concerning (Arab) relations with Israel," Shara was quoted as saying by the official SANA news agency.
"Syria is relatively satisfied with the final communique," from the summit, he added Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had called, at the start of the summit Saturday, for Arab nations to totally break off relations with Israel in a bid to persuade it to quit the whole of the occupied territories.
The Arab leaders on Sunday threw their financial and moral weight behind the Palestinian uprising and threatened to cut ties with Israel.
The summit was convened in response to Palestinian-Israeli clashes that have claimed more than 130 lives since they erupted on September 28 when Israel's opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The leaders called on all Arabs to "support the Intifada and support the Palestinian national struggle" by donating a day's wages.
Reuters yesterday reported that anti-U.S. sentiment is growing in the Arab world, fuelled by Washington's perceived pro-Israel bias, are slowly seeping into the lives of American citizens in Persian Gulf Arab states.
Some Americans said they were cutting outdoor activities, U.S.
companies are drawing up contingency plans and some hotels are reporting cancelations of American bookings.
"We're getting E-mails from the American Embassy. It makes me nervous. You get so many advisories and after a while you don't know when to take them seriously," said one American woman reached by telephone in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
The United States has thousands of troops deployed in the oil-rich region, including in Bahrain which is the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, and in Saudi Arabia where militants staged two attacks on U.S. military targets in 1995 and 1996, killing 24 Americans.
Saudi citizens said security in the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh where most embassies are located was heavy.
"Checkpoints are stopping every car, opening the trunks and asking for identification. It is stricter than I have seen there in many years," a Saudi businessman told Reuters.
The U.S. State Department advised Americans on October 18 to be cautious in the face of possible "terrorist" attacks in reaction to the Palestinian-Israeli violence. The advisory also followed the October 12 apparent suicide bombing of a U.S. destroyer in Yemen in which 17 sailors were killed.
The U.S. warning reiterated earlier advice either to avoid travel to the region or to vary travel routes, avoid crowds and remain vigilant.
But in Saudi Arabia, the latest embassy advisory to the more than 35,000 U.S. citizens there had an extra word of caution which some families found alarming.
Also, Head of the Judiciary Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi said on Monday the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is expected to help the Palestinian cause and take practical step to help liberate Al-Qods and repatriate Palestinian refugees.
He said that due to the influence exerted by the U.S., the summit of the Arab League in Cairo has failed to bring on the table the aspirations of the Muslim nations.
He said Palestine is part of the Islamic ummah and the Muslim nations cannot bear to see the Palestinians suffering.
At the instance of Iran's Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Bank Melli Iran opened on Sunday a current account for volunteer donations to the Palestinian Intifada. Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide can deposit to account numbers 702200 and 800 in the said bank. The move is part of measures Iran is taking in support of the Palestinians.
Also, first dispatch of Iranian aid to Palestinians arrived yesterday to Jordan to be sent to Palestine later.