ROPORT: PALESTINE BEFORE AND NOW. [Archives:2000/42/Reportage]

Palestine in the 20th Century
The British Mandate Aided by the Arabs, the British captured Palestine from the Ottoman Turks in 1917 and 1918. The Arabs revolted against the Turks because the British had promised them, in correspondence (1915-1916) with Husein ibn Ali of Mecca, the independence of their countries after the war. Britain, however, also made other, conflicting commitments. Thus, in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement with France and Russia (1916), it promised to divide and rule the region with its allies. In a third agreement, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain promised the Jews, whose help it needed in the war effort, a Jewish national home in Palestine. This promise was subsequently incorporated in the mandate conferred on Britain by the League of Nations in 1922.
During their mandate (1922-1948) the British found their contradictory promises to the Jewish and Palestinian communities difficult to reconcile. The Zionists envisaged large-scale Jewish immigration, and some spoke of a Jewish state constituting all of Palestine. The Palestinians, however, rejected Britains right to promise their country to a third party and feared dispossession by the Zionists; anti-Zionist attacks occurred in Jerusalem (1920) and Jaffa (1921). A 1922 statement of British policy denied Zionist claims to all of Palestine and limited Jewish immigration, but reaffirmed support for a Jewish national home. The British proposed establishing a legislative council, but Palestinians rejected this council as discriminatory.
After 1928, when Jewish immigration increased somewhat, British policy on the subject seesawed under conflicting Arab-Jewish pressures. Immigration rose sharply after the installation (1933) of the Nazi regime in Germany; in 1935 nearly 62,000 Jews entered Palestine. Fear of Jewish domination was the principal cause of the Arab revolt that broke out in 1936 and continued intermittently until 1939. By that time Britain had again restricted Jewish immigration and purchases of land.
The Post-World War II Period
The struggle for Palestine, which abated during World War II, resumed in 1945. The horrors of the Holocaust produced world sympathy for European Jewry and for Zionism, and although Britain still refused to admit 100,000 Jewish survivors to Palestine, many survivors of the Nazi death camps found their way there illegally. Various plans for solving the Palestine problem were rejected by one party or the other. Britain finally declared the mandate unworkable and turned the problem over to the United Nations in April 1947. The Jews and the Palestinians prepared for a showdown.
Although the Palestinians outnumbered the Jews (1,300,000 to 600,000), the latter were better prepared. They had a semiautonomous government, led by David Ben-Gurion, and their military, the Haganah, was well trained and experienced. The Palestinians, on the other hand, had never recovered from the Arab revolt, and most of their leaders were in exile. The Mufti of Jerusalem, their principal spokesman, refused to accept Jewish statehood. When the UN proposed partition in November 1947, he rejected the plan while the Jews accepted it. In the military struggle that followed, the Palestinians were defeated. Terrorism was used on both sides.
The state of Israel was established on May 14, 1948. Five Arab armies, coming to the aid of the Palestinians, immediately attacked it. Israeli forces defeated the Arab armies, and Israel enlarged its territory. Jordan took the West Bank of the Jordan River, and Egypt took the Gaza Strip.
The war produced 780,000 Palestinian refugees. About half probably left out of fear and panic, while the rest were forced out to make room for Jewish immigrants from Europe and from the Arab world. The disinherited Palestinians spread throughout the neighboring countries, where they have maintained their Palestinian national identity and the desire to return to their homeland. In 1967, during the Six-Day War between Israel and neighboring Arab countries, Israel captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as other areas.
In 1993, after decades of violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, leaders from each side agreed to the signing of a peace accord. Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin met in the United States on September 13, 1993, to witness the signing of the agreement. The plan called for Palestinian self-rule in Israeli-occupied territories, beginning with the Gaza Strip and Jericho. Palestinian administration of these areas began in May 1994.
Reference
Palestine Information Centre
Palestinian Radio Station in
Ramallah Hit by Israeli Rockets
In a letter sent to the Israeli Prime Minister ad Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, Reporters sans Frontires (RSF) expressed its concern about rockets shot by the Israeli army at the antenna of the official Palestinian radio, The Voice of Palestine, based in Ramalah. Robert Menard, RSF General Secretary, asked the Prime Minister to give explanations for these shootings, especially since the Israeli army stated before that its targets have been carefully chosen. Robert Menard added that under no circumstances should civil buildings be taken as targets during clashes. A radio antenna may not be considered as a military target. RSF recalled that in less than one week, about ten journalists have been hit by shots fired by Israeli soldiers.
According to the information collected by RSf, on 12 October 2000 at around 3.00 pm, the Israeli army fired six rockets at the antenna of the Palestinian radio station, The Voice of Palestine, based in Ramallah. The radio cannot broadcast in A.M. anymore but can continue its broadcasts in F.M.. Nobody was injured in these shootings.
Israel Must Withdraw From Palestinian Territories: Egyptian FM
SHARM EL SHEIKH (Egypt)Israel must pull its troops back to the positions they held before the more than two weeks of violence began and stop the killings of Palestinians, said Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa here on Sunday. Moussa made the appeal at a joint press briefing with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan after his 30-minute meeting here with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the latest Middle East situation.
Egypt considers the withdrawal as a necessity for the solution of the conflicts, said the minister while answering a question whether Fridays demonstrations by angry Palestinians would affect the ongoing political efforts aimed at stopping the violence.
Demonstrations broke out Friday as tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets at different places of the territories Friday to protest against Israeli air strikes Thursday at Palestinian targets in the West Bank city of Ramallah and Gaza.
Israel violated all signed agreements with the Palestinians by sending troops to the Palestinian territories and Egypt is concerned about such a very serious situation, said the Egyptian minister. Israel must stop killing the Palestinians, otherwise, the proposed summit meeting here on Monday will be overshadowed by the grave event, and in turn the whole peace process in the region will be undermined by it, he warned. Replying to a question about the influence of the large-scale Palestinian demonstration on the Mideast situation, Moussa said,We are very anxious. The whole region is protesting and is in a state of anger about what is taking place in the Palestinian territories.
Not only people in mosques and streets, we officials are also very angry, he noted, adding,We cannot accept what has taken place in the Palestinian territories, and that is why we have sent our invitations for the (summit) conference (to defuse the tension). The conference has one goal to achieve. That is to go back to normalcy which means the withdrawal of Israeli Army from Palestinian towns and cities and from around (Palestinian) areas totally, because moving Israeli troops into the (Palestinian) territories is a clear-cut violation of the agreements reached in the past several years within the activity of the peace process, he said. The Israeli action is indeed threatening the stability of the
whole region and the prospect of a just and lasting peace, he added. More than 100 people were killed, most of them Palestinians, and nearly 3,000 wounded in the two-week bloody clashes, the worst conflicts between the two sides since 1996.
(Xinhua)
Hezbollah Says It Captures Senior Israeli Officer
BEIRUT_ Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday morning in Beirut that his fighters have seized an Israeli colonel, Oriental radio
reported. Nasrallah said it was a gift for Palestinian intifada, the martyrs in the intifada and the detainees in Israeli prisons, he told an Arab and Islamic meeting. Hezbollah will release more details later, he said. Israeli radio reported the news, but an Israeli military
spokesman did not give confirmation, saying the military has begun to investigate the incident. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told the weekly meeting of his cabinet Sunday that Israel knew of no missing soldier as claimed to be captured by Hezbollah. Xinhua has learned that the Israeli colonel captured by the Lebanese guerrilla group was working for a security apparatus, no further details were available. Nasrallah stressed that the summit that will open Monday at Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will not have any result. The summit will not save the peace process and the Palestinian lands are still a place full of bullets, bombs, bayonets and suicide actions, he said, it will not bring about any benefit for our people.
Meanwhile, Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss on Sunday said the best way to support Palestinian people is to cut diplomatic and any other kinds of relations with Israel. He voiced strong opposition to the coming Sharm el Sheikh summit, saying any agreement between Arabs and Israel is illegal. (Xinhua)

  Canon A Giant step Ridhwan Al-Saqqaf
Aden Bureau Chief
The Japanese Canon company organizes an exhibition in Canon Expo fair 2000 in the Louver museum in Paris from the 30th Oct – 1st Nov 2000 to display the new high-tech devices produced by the company. The exhibition will be attended by businessmen, investors, representatives of the European countries and representatives of the international press.
In a statement to the Yemen Times Mr. Khalid Abdul Wahid , the director general of Abdul Wahid establishment, representatives of Canon in Yemen, says amid these dramatic and technological changes, Canon, the pioneer keeps on developing its products in different fields to meet the forthcoming needs of people. The company has been able to change from Hardware Manufacturer to Hardware & Software Manufacturer to present integrated, satisfactory solutions to users of the networks. Since 1999 the company has added another statement to its slogan: Imaging across networks which implies that Canon have developed the facility of creating pictures and let images , documents and information to flow through the networks to anywhere in the world instantaneously.
For this purpose Canon has made partnerships with other international companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Hewelett Packard , Axis communications , Atlas, Software metrics, winlink Software integration and Bitstream Inc presenting a wide range of programs that support the digital hardware and can give integrated solutions.
Those products are mainly digital with all the components of programs , network linking devices ,Servers, Boards, Routers. Those products are multi-function laser digital photocopying machines, the color jet and models IP, IR, GP, CLC, CLBP, document management systems, high speed light surveyors, dims product, multimedia projects, digital cameras and camcorders, laser and color computer printers, multifunctional laser and bubble jet facsimiles. All the above mentioned products can be connected with PCs , routers, HUBS, servers, interface cards and supplied with developed programs by Canon to create systems that make different solutions available. The solutions are as follows:
-Video Conference Solutions/ Cano Media.
-PDF Workflow Solution/Capture.
-Document Distribution Solution/Multi SPOT.
-Printer Account Management Solution /Printing Accounting Server.
-Document Security Solution/ Secure Print.
-Document Management Solution/ Cano Bureau
-Network Device Management Solution/(Web) Netspot.
-Mainframe Printing Solution/ Form Scape.
 

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