April 2, 2002

The Daily Star

Thousands demonstrate across nationwide, calling on Arab leaders to cut ties with US and Israel and ‘open new fronts’

Maha Al-Azar and
Nayla Assaf
Daily Star staff

Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged protests in and around the capital Monday, calling on Arab leaders to toughen their stance against Israel and its ally, the United States.
Amid exceedingly tight security measures, thousands of demonstrators wearing keffiyehs marched in different locations, defying the pouring rain.
Some 1,000 demonstrators went first to the US Embassy in Awkar, but were blocked about a kilometer  short of the compound by some 300 police officers who stood behind a barbed wire fence.
They included members of the Palestinian Red Crescent, Islamist group Al-Jamaa Al-
Islamiya, as well as Palestinian refugees and members of various student groups.
In the afternoon, nearly 3,000 protesters marched to the Egyptian Embassy in Corniche Al-Mazraa, where they were forcibly restrained by the police when they tried to approach the building’s entrance.
Among those participating in that protest were Palestinian refugees, members of Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Lebanese student movements.
Protesters burned the Israeli flag at both demonstrations.
In the evening, the Democratic Forum, led by former MP Habib Sadeq and the Progressive Socialist Party, invited people to march from Barbir to the burial ground of the Shatila camp.
The site marks the mass grave of victims of the 1982 massacre in Sabra and Shatila.
More than 1,000 people, including communists and Palestine Liberation Organization representatives, responded to the call, ignoring heavy rain and wading through rivers of sewage to reach the cemetery.
Meanwhile, an open-ended leftist student sit-in, which began Sunday at Martyrs Square, continued despite bad weather.
During each demonstration, protesters called on Arab governments to withdraw their diplomats from the US and demanded that Egypt and Jordan to expel Israeli diplomats.
They also said they wished to see all Arab fronts reactivated to allow military engagement with Israel.
“Our decision is confrontation ­ withdraw the initiatives and open the fronts,” read one banner, in reference to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace initiative, adopted by last week’s Arab summit in Beirut.
“It is our turn to wage a war against terror,” read another banner in English.
“We ask them (Arab governments) to apply political and economic pressure,” said Mohammed Kayed, a Palestinian from the Al-Jalil Refugee camp in Baalbek who studies at Beirut Arab University.
Youssef Qaddoura, from the Ain Al-Hilweh camp, called for an oil embargo against the US.
Many protesters expressed their disappointment at the “weak” stances of Arab leaders.
“We tell Arab leaders that either they should fight or they should resign or they should be forced to resign,” said Elias Atallah, from the Democratic Forum.
Atallah, a leading commander in the resistance to Israel during its 1982 siege of Beirut, said that Arab countries should threaten to end their pledge to protect the Israeli border.
However, he said that a confrontation with Israel would require a coordinated effort between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt so that the action would not fall on Lebanon’s shoulders alone.
“Arab nations should also start by boycotting US products and favoring European products instead,” he added.
At the entrance of the Shatila refugee camp burial ground, PLO official Kheiry Abu Hajj declared that “we have to learn that those who want to be free should be willing to make sacrifices.”
Many of the banners read “Shame on Arab states,” while one protester shouted through a loudspeaker: “We cannot understand how the whole world sits by and watches while Abu Ammar (Palestinian President Yasser Arafat) is imprisoned only meters away from Israeli guns.”
“We salute Belgium and wish it would join the Arab League instead of all those useless Arab member nations,” said Mahmoud Jazzar, a refugee and Beirut Arab University student, at the US embassy.
His remarks were in reference to the decision by a number of Belgian provinces to cut ties with Israel in opposition to its aggression against Palestinians.
According to Raji Hakim, head of the Association of Beiruti Groups and Leagues, and one of the organizers of the US Embassy protest, demonstrators submitted a memo to the ambassador, in which they condemned “the Zionist attack on our families in Palestine.”
“We also told them that the siege is not against Arafat or Palestinians but the entire Arab people. If Palestine falls, then many Arab leaders will fall as well,” he added.
Hakim said the memo also called on Arab nations to withdraw their diplomats from the US and expel all US diplomats from their countries.
“We want to make them (the US) feel that their interests are at stake,” said Fatah member Edward Kattoura, standing outside the US Embassy.
“They are always preaching human rights values,” he said, “so why don’t they ever
apply them?”

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