Solidarity delegation planned
Recently the minister for refugees of the new Palestinian government, Atef Adwan, visited Sweden and Norway. While in Sweden he met representatives of the parliamentary opposition, in Norway even a meeting with a functionary of the foreign ministry took place.
Given the hard-line Zionist position to starve the Palestinian people and to boycott its democratically elected government taken by the European Union on the US coat-tails, the Swedish decision to grant visa to Atef Adwan is already a political success as such. This is being confirmed by the aggressive Israeli reaction against Sweden calling its ambassador into the foreign ministry. Norway already before had dissociated somewhat from the US war drive by abolishing the “Black list of terrorist organisations” which in clear violation of the UN Charta includes Hamas as well as all other main political organisations of the Palestinian people.
But the Swedish visa was valid also for mainland Europe which constituted a formidable threat to Euro-America. Invited by the European anti-imperialist coalition which had been already campaigning to bring Hamas spokesman Salah Bardawil and Mohamed Rantissi to Europe but whose visa requests had been turned down by France, visits quickly were scheduled in Germany, Italy and Austria.
Minister Adwan, however, did not want to enter by the window but by the door. So he put the pre-condition that the respective governments should be asked beforehand. It was the Austrian government, which for the time being holds the presidency of the Union, in an act of cowardice and subordination to Washington declared that the minister should refrain from coming and should postpone his trip until more favourable conditions would prevail. Consequently Mr Adwan cancelled his conferences in despite of the fact that important meetings have been scheduled or were under way. Among them the most prominent would have been in the German Bundestag in Berlin to which the commission of foreign policy of the parliamentary fraction of the PDS had invited Minister Adwan.
The chief rabbi of the Orthodox Anti-Zionist Jewish community of Vienna, Moishe Friedman, facing the fact that his meeting with Atef Adwan could not take place in Austria, took an airplane to Stockholm to meet him there. In a common press conference he pledged support for the Palestinian struggle against the Zionist occupation.
Europe must be brought to terms
The EU’s position alongside the US and Israel is unprecedented in its partiality and clearly violates the will of the majority of the European peoples. Only about one year ago an opinion poll revealed that by majority the Europeans can not be deceived by the media machine and do understand that Israel and the US are the prime threat to peace.
If the European oligarchy continues to openly back the Zionist aggression it has to bear the full responsibility for taking the popular masses as hostages of the US imperial and bellicose plans.
We believe that this extremist position will not hold as the the Swedish position hints. In any case the Anti-imperialist Camp will do its best to campaign for lifting the embargo and for recognising the legitimate government elected by the Palestinian people reaching out for all democratic forces to join hands. As the visit of minister Adwan to mainland Europe did not materialise he extended an invitation to Palestine which we gratefully accepted. Consequently in the next months we will compose an European solidarity delegation.
One democratic anti-imperialist state in Palestine
The European demand to Hamas to first “renounce violence and recognise Israel” is pure hypocrisy. Nobody even dares to say that the core of the problem is that Israel uninterruptedly continues to exert violence by the occupation and does in no way recognise a Palestinian state.
The historic reason why Hamas won the elections is exactly that the Oslo agreement promising two states – which was originally endorsed by the majority of the Palestinian people – was in no way respected by Israel. Israel showed in deeds that it would at maximum accept Bantustans but actually wanted to continue the war until the extinction of the Palestinian nation.
The Palestinian did nothing more than to cancel a contact which Israel never respected. And they are right in doing so and thus deserve our support! By voting for Hamas they revived the historic goal to liberate entire Palestine creating one state for all Arabs and Jews. This is the only way to a just peace.
Anti-imperialist Camp
