Subject: Cooks' Visit to Israel Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 23:43:00 +0000 To: "Arutz-7 List"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
From: Eddie Chumney Subject: Cooks' Visit to Israel To: <HEB_ROOTS_CHR@geocities.com> ************************************************************************* THE JERUSALEM POST DAILY INTERNET EDITION Wed, Mar 18, 1998 NETANYAHU: COOK BROKE THE RULES By JAY BUSHINSKY JERUSALEM (March 18) - Great Britain's attempt to speed up the peace process degenerated into a bitter squabble yesterday. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accused visiting Foreign Secretary Robin Cook of violating the ground rules for his hotly contested tour of the Har Homa construction site in Jerusalem. The unprecedented verbal clashes that followed Cook's presence on the hilltop were triggered by his having met Palestinian leaders, including Salah Ta'amri, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, nearby. "There were understandings according to which the tour would not include contact with Palestinians," a visibly angry Netanyahu said after a tense discussion with Cook. He said there had been a prior discussion with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the gist of which was that there be no contact with Palestinians at Har Homa. Netanyahu demonstrated his displeasure by cancelling a supper at which Cook was to have been the guest of honor. "I had three four-course meals since I came to the Middle East," Cook said, denying a crisis in UK-Israel relations after a news conference at the King David Hotel. "I'm not going to miss another one." Cook described his visit to Har Homa as "a symbolic act," which was meant to show the extent to which "settlements" are destroying the peace process. He contended that this view is held by the international community. Netanyahu rejected this terminology, declaring that Har Homa is a housing development within Jerusalem's city limits, not a settlement in the West Bank. "We stuck to the letter of our agreement," Cook went on, referring to the terms that had been agreed upon by the two Foreign Ministries. He was escorted to Har Homa by cabinet secretary Dan Naveh and the Jerusalem Municipality's Amos Radian, after his initial intention to go there with the Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Faisal Husseini had been abandoned. According to Israel Radio, when Naveh greeted Cook, he said, "Welcome to Jerusalem, the capital of Israel." Cook replied: "It's not just the capital of Israel, it's also the capital of Palestine." Cook also refused a briefing from Radian on Har Homa saying, "I don't need your briefing, because I don't recognize your right to be here." "We repeatedly bent over backward to accommodate their concerns," Cook said, indicating that his rendezvous with Ta'amri did not constitute a violation of the visit's conditions. But Netanyahu regarded Cook's activities as a challenge to Israel's exclusive sovereignty over Jerusalem. "Israel is prepared to accept European assistance," he said. "But this is on condition that it not supersede direct contact between Israel and the Palestinians." Cook's tour not only rendered Netanyahu unable or unwilling to discuss any subject other than Jerusalem during their exceptionally tense meeting, but it also evoked a series of rhetorical reminders of his government's commitment to preserve the city's current status as the undivided national capital. "Jerusalem is a cardinal issue in my eyes," Netanyahu said. "Israel is the sovereign and it will remain as such forever. Europe understands very well our position with regard to Jerusalem." PA Chairman Yasser Arafat said that, "I'm sorry to say that Netanyahu is trying to make a big issue against Mr. Cook. No doubt this is provocative action against Europe." Earlier, Cook conferred with Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, probing the negotiations with the Palestinians and especially Israel's proposal to withdraw from Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 425. Reuters adds: The US said it has great confidence in Cook's efforts to promote peace, but had not been consulted on his visit to Har Homa. The State Department said it hopes the uproar over Cook's visit would end with Israeli and Palestinian leaders deciding that it is time to move forward on peace. Margot Dudkevitch and Mohammed Najib add: Cook was warmly received by Arafat in Gaza. During a three-hour meeting, Palestinian officials said the two discussed the deadlock in peace negotiations and the EU role in getting them back on track. Following their meeting, Cook and Arafat held a short press conference before Cook continued on to Jerusalem. Cook said the EU is deeply concerned about the deadlock and cannot accept settlement construction. The EU intends to establish a permanent security committee with the PA and work more closely with the Palestinians in training security officers, he said. Some 5 million will be set aside for the committee and Europe will continue providing aid to the PA after the five-year funding plan expires at the end of the year, he said. After Har Homa, Cook met with Husseini in a college opposite Orient House then placed a wreath at the Jerusalem memorial erected in memory of Palestinians killed by Israel. Liat Collins adds: "Netanyahu as foreign minister has apparently taken it on himself to ruin Israel's relations with Britain and all Europe," said MK Yossi Beilin (Labor). "Instead of allowing the visit of the British foreign secretary to Har Homa as an unimportant and marginal event in his trip, Netanyahu turned it into an international media event and succeeded in worsening world opposition to one of the few issues on which there is a consensus in Israel: the unity of Jerusalem and Israeli sovereignty." ******************************************************************** THE JERUSALEM POST DAILY INTERNET EDITION Wed, Mar 18, 1998 CHAOS PREVAILS DURING COOK VISIIT By ELLI WOHLGELERNTER JERUSALEM (March 18) - On a tumultuous, chaotic first visit to Jerusalem yesterday, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook was cheered and jeered by dueling demonstrators when he paid two symbolic visits to the controversial Har Homa construction site. Cook and his entourage met for a few minutes with cabinet secretary Danny Naveh at the foot of the hill, where Cook was shown the lay of the land and the surrounding rocky hills where 1,200 homes are expected to be built sometime soon. From there Cook proceeded a kilometer down the road past the military checkpoint to the back of Har Homa, where he was greeted for 30 seconds by Salah Ta'amri, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, amid a throng of jostling journalists, and right-wing demonstrators shouting: "Antisemite go home." "This is occupied territory since 1967; this is the playground of our youth, and we remember it," Ta'amri told Cook. "We have great faith in your courage, and sense of fairness and justice. Thank you for coming, I appreciate it." "Thank you very much," responded Cook, as he was quickly led away by nervous security agents trying to shield him from the vociferous mob. "I hope we can talk another time, in different circumstances." "He is an antisemite; he should go back to England and take care of his problems there," said right-wing activist Noam Federman. "He has problems in Ireland with the IRA and Sinn Fein, and he should not get involved in what's happening in Israel. This is our land, and we will take care of our business here." Federman and a handful of other Kach supporters had taken a back road through Bethlehem to demonstrate at the Cook-Ta'amri meeting. An hour before he had been part of a demonstration at the Hebron Road turnoff to Har Homa, together with some 100 others, including members of Our Jerusalem and Women in Green, who banged on pots while yelling: "Cook go home|" Three feet away, a smaller pro-Cook demonstration organized by Peace Now was facing off against the anti-Cook protesters. MKs Yossi Sarid (Meretz) and Yael Dayan (Labor) joined the rally, as demonstrators held up signs saying: "Cook, you fold, the peace roasts," "Har Homa is not Jerusalem," "Robin: Don't let Bibi bully you," and "Robin: Help us save the peace." Following his meeting with Ta'amri, Cook traveled to eastern Jerusalem to meet with Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Faisal Husseini. Cook said that, as Britain currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the European Union, his visit was an attempt "to renew the peace process and make sure we provide peace with justice to the Palestinians and peace with security to the Israeli population. The European Union is deeply concerned about the stalemate in the peace process. We are near neighbors of the Middle East; we also are the largest financial backers of the peace process. We want to see the peace process back on track." ************************************************************************************ THE JERUSALEM POST DAILY INTERNET EDITION Wed, Mar 18, 1998 THE GRAVEYARD OF COOK'S CAREER? BACKGROUND by DOUGLAS DAVIS LONDON (March 18) - British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook - dubbed "Throbbin' Robin" since abandoning his wife for a younger parliamentary aide - might yet look back on Har Homa as the graveyard of his political career. Not that the diplomatic imbroglio over a nascent Jerusalem neighborhood is, in itself, a resignation matter; it is just the latest in a series of high-profile miscalculations, misjudgments and mistakes by this unlikely Lothario. What makes the Har Homa debacle particularly embarrassing for the pristine government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair is that it has tarnished the jewel in the crown of Britain's six-month presidency of the European Union. Far from propelling Britain to center stage in Europe and the Europeans to center stage in Middle East diplomacy - the unalloyed objective of the mission - Cook's abortive public relations extravaganza in Har Homa has almost certainly scuttled that ambition. It is likely to have awakened Israel's darkest suspicions about Europe's innate pro-Arab tilt and, in the process, to have antagonized a principal protagonist in the peace process. An editorial in the London Times made just that point yesterday when it noted that the Har Homa issue "has all but eclipsed the main purpose of his trip and seems likely to have a thoroughly adverse impact on the EU hopes of becoming more actively engaged... Cook is not known for his emollient manner; but he has not served the EU's purposes well by donning his diplomatic big boots." This is not the first time that the accident-prone, 52-year-old Cook has discomforted Blair, who is said to have had a cordial encounter with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu less than two weeks ago and who is said to be personally well-disposed to Israel. Soon after entering office last May, Cook was criticized for having deliberately kept Princess Diana waiting for 20 minutes when she called on him for a briefing on land mines. He provoked another storm for raising the controversial issue of Kashmir with Pakistani leaders, immediately before accompanying Queen Elizabeth on what became a disastrous visit to India. Cook was further criticized for abandoning her in the middle of the problematic visit to rush back to Britain to be with his new lover. More recently, he has been accused of duplicity for continuing to sell arms to Indonesia while making human rights a top priority. Indeed, Cook's commitment to ethics and human rights has come back to haunt him. Labor chairperson of the bipartisan Parliamentary Human Rights Group Anne Clwyd accused him of not doing enough to act against the "brutal and sustained torture" of prisoners in Saudi Arabia, one of Britain's major arms clients. Cook's pledge to put human rights at the heart of British foreign policy, she said, "appears not to apply in the Gulf." But the greatest political embarrassment has not been one of his many foreign policy gaffes, but rather the bizarre circumstances in which his 28-year marriage abruptly ended at London's Heathrow Airport last August. On their way to the airport, Cook received a call on his mobile phone from a senior Blair aide who told him that a London tabloid was about to expose his affair with parliamentary assistant Gaynor Regan. The time had come, Cook was instructed, to do something about it. Just minutes before he and his wife, Margaret, a physician who had supplemented her husband's meager income as an ordinary member of parliament, were about to board a flight for a holiday in the United States, Cook took her into a side room at the airport and told her their marriage was over. ******************************************************************************************* THE JERUSALEM POST DAILY INTERNET EDITION Wed, Mar 18, 1998 HAR HOMA, ONE YEAR LATER REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK by ELLI WOHLGELERNTER JERUSALEM (March 18) - What a difference a year makes - or is that deja vu all over again? Exactly a year ago today, some 2,000 media representatives assembled at the base of a lovely, tree-saturated hill in southeast Jerusalem to watch bulldozers and shovel trucks break ground for a controversial new neighborhood called Har Homa. After a morning of heavy rain that Tuesday, the skies turned partly cloudy, and though cold and blustery it was not enough to deter the multitude that came for the show. Yesterday, the journalists gathered there again for another media scene, fighting off driving rain and hail for the visit of British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. In the 12 months between these two scenes, Har Homa became the political buzz word. No story from the world's media relating to the peace process could be written without a mention of this hill: every deadlock in negotiations, every potential breakthrough, every threat of street violence - in short, any twist and turn between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat since last March 18 has had the building project at Har Homa silently - and sometimes vocally - hovering above. The government argued it was Jerusalem, and as such it needed to be built, as much to ease the city's housing shortage as to make a statement on the city's boundaries. For the Arabs from the nearby village of Beit Sahur, Har Homa - or Jabal Abu Ghneim as they call it - was an extension of their land, and part of their future capital of Palestine. Everyone feared the worst that day, expecting a reaction similar to what occurred after the opening of another exit to the Western Wall Tunnel in September '96. But no violence and no threats would stop Netanyahu's government, and for the next nine months constructed continued unimpeded, despite worldwide condemnation and UN resolutions condemning the building. Moreover, in the face of such worldwide opposition, it became the perfect rallying cry for the right-wing, the litmus test for those MKs and politicians - like Michael Kleiner of Gesher and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert - who wanted to know just how strong was Netanyahu's commitment on the issue of Jerusalem. More than once in the past four months, Netanyahu has had to explain he was not caving in to US pressure to slow down the process, and that the project "will proceed without delay." But these politicos will not wait forever. When the issue was raised in December and January, it was said that technical problems were holding things up, but that the next stage - the offering of tenders - would proceed sometime in the first quarter of '98, that is by the end of this month. But sources in the Housing Ministry and the Israel Lands Administration told The Jerusalem Post that everything has been ready for a couple of months and that the delay is because they are waiting "for a green light from above. He is waiting for the right time." With Kleiner threatening to bring down the government over stalled construction and Olmert intimating he will challenge Netanyahu for party leadership if he hesitates on the issue, Cook's visit to the site yesterday with Salah Ta'amri, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, only sets the stage for the imminent Act II in the year-long drama known as Har Homa. ************************************************************************ To educate, train and equip for study both the Jew and Non-Jew in the Rich Hebraic Heritage of our Faith. Please visit the Hebraic Heritage Ministries Web Site located at: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2175/index.html Eddie Chumney Hebraic Heritage Ministries Int'l