A review of the Arab press.
Review of the Arab press for December 15
The London-based Azzaman daily reported on Wednesday that Iraq's Higher Elections Commission has warned the media against violating the rules relating to coverage of the Iraqi polls on January 30. The independent Iraqi-owned newspaper said that the commission had warned it would sue offenders. It said that the threat prompted a "wave of surprise and displeasure among Iraqi journalists due to the lack of any honest party that would have the right to diagnose violations".
Another Iraqi daily, Al-Nahdah, published in Baghdad, reported that Iraqi church leaders had decided to cancel Christmas celebrations "to protest against the destruction of mosques and churches" in the country. The newspaper, published by the head of the Iraqi Independent Democratic Movement, Adnan Pachachi, said that the churches had also decided to cancel holiday celebrations "for fear that holidays might be exploited to attack places of worship". Several churches have suffered bombing attacks in the past year. The newspaper said that church leaders had "affirmed their desire to participate in building peace in Iraq and to enhance unity and solidarity".
Writing about Syria and Lebanon, Kuwait's Al-Qabas quoted an unidentified American official as saying that UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls on foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon, allowed for the use of military force to enforce the resolution. The source told the pro-government Kuwaiti daily that the permanent members of the Security Council - America, Britain, France, Russia and China - "expect Syrian forces to withdraw completely from all the Lebanese territories before next spring", when Lebanese parliamentary elections are scheduled. The US official added that if the elections were to be held while Syrian military forces were present in the country "there will be a return to the Security Council to consider the elections null and void and as being against the will of the Lebanese people".
The London-based al-Quds al-Arabi commented on calls by Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Mahmoud Abbas - Abu Mazen - to disarm the Palestinian intifada, saying that it was "a big risk" for the Palestinian struggle for statehood and independence. The independent Palestinian-owned daily said that demilitarizing the intifada "meets Sharon's conditions and is like sleep-walking in a mine field". The newspaper said that it was "not practical" for Abu Mazen to talk about returning to a peaceful intifada because its militarization "has come a long way, making it impossible to go back to its peaceful beginnings when the military has developed its tools and has become a culture and way of life". It insisted that the most recent Palestinian attack in Rafah against Israeli forces was "close to being a military miracle in terms of planning, organization and execution, and the same is true for... developing Qassam missiles in terms of their range and accuracy". The daily asked whether Sharon and the US would "respond with appreciation" if the uprising "returned to its peaceful beginnings". It wondered whether resorting to unarmed resistance would be reciprocated with a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, implementation of international resolutions concerning the return of Palestinian refugees or the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Qatar's Al-Watan commented on the same issue in an editorial, saying that Abbas' call - without reciprocation from Israel - showed that the new Palestinian leader was "starting the road of the presidency with a concession without a price". The daily said that the Palestinians were forced to resort to armed resistance against the Israeli occupation because the 10-year experience of the Oslo option [the 1993 Palestinian-Israeli interim peace deal] did not lead to what the Palestinians and the international community had aspired to - a durable, peaceful coexistence in the region - but to a "policy of aggressive settlement expansion". The pro-government Gulf daily insisted that the continuation of armed resistance was a legitimate right of the Palestinian people, but one that needed "understanding, coordination and Palestinian dialogue to protect Palestinian national unity, the unity of the objective and to protect Palestinian red lines [demands for rights]".
Arab press roundup for December 14
Arab newspapers focused on Marwan Barghouti's withdrawal from the Palestinian presidential elections, an assassination attempt on a Hamas member in Syria, PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas' apology to Kuwait.
Jordan's independent newspaper Al Ghad on Tuesday defended the incarcerated Palestinian Fatah leader in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti, for having sought to run in the Palestinian presidential elections, saying that his decision to withdraw from the race a second time had come as a relief in regional and international capitals.
The newest daily on Jordanian newsstands said that Barghouti's aim in re-nominating himself was to send the message from his prison cell that "we cannot abandon the option of resistance, and that nominating Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] - who is internationally accepted - does not mean an open authorization to the new leadership to submit to the Israeli-American conditions".
The paper said that his message was in response to the American-Israeli position, which it said had received Arab support, and that Barghouti's agreement to the candidacy of Abu Mazen meant the end of resistance.
It argued that when he returned to the race, there was uproar "as if Israel was on the verge of ending the occupation and that Barghouti had come to destroy the opportunities of achieving a just peace for the Palestinians".
The daily, owned by Jordanian investors of Palestinian origin, criticized what it described as the "blatant regional and international interference in moving the Palestinian election according to its whims". It asked whether all the [international] fears created by Barghouti's moves were "because a Palestinian leader succeeded, from his cell, to remind the world of the bankruptcy of a fake peace process that has not put an end to settlement activities and has deepened racial discrimination".
The paper said that Barghouti could not be the president of the Palestinian Authority in the coming phase "because it is a phase that will attempt to tame the Palestinian people".
Syria's official daily newspaper, Al Thawra, commented on the failed assassination attempt against a Hamas member in Syria on Monday when a booby-trapped car exploded in Damascus, saying that it was a "well-studied escalation that Israel has adopted with the Palestinians and aimed at killing the peace process". The newspaper, published by the ruling Baath Party, said that the military option, and brutal force, "is a policy that Tel Aviv's rulers have excelled in using to cover up" Israel's own internal crises and failure to contain the Palestinian intifada.
It criticized the international community's "neutrality" and its "failing to take an initiative, sufficing with the role of the mere observer and false witness to what is happening". It said that the "world's complicity cannot be forgiven, and is a big crime that can only leave its destructive effects, not only on the region, but on the stability and security of the world".
Egypt's Al Ahram saw PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas' apology to Kuwait for Palestinian support of the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as an important step that should have been taken a long time ago. The government-run mass-circulation daily said that Abbas' move would contribute to "providing a positive regional atmosphere that supports the Palestinian cause at this historic moment". It said that it would also contribute toward ending Arab rifts caused by the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait "especially after the Iraqi-Kuwaiti reconciliation steps and attempts by Abbas to develop Palestinian-Syrian relations".
The paper argued that Palestinian-Kuwaiti polarization since 1990 and the "Palestinian freeze in relations with any of the Arab countries" had not benefited the Palestinian cause.
The United Arab Emirates' Al-Khaleej quoted official sources in Washington as saying that the American administration was about to start intensive contacts to persuade Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Pakistan to send forces to Iraq after the Iraqi elections in January.
Unidentified sources told the pro-government daily that an official American request would be made to these countries after receiving approval from the new Iraqi government emerging from the polls.
They added that Washington expected these four countries to agree to send up to 95,000 troops, adding that Pakistan had already agreed in principle to the American request. The sources said that Jordan had refused to send its soldiers to Iraq.
Arab press roundup for December 13
Arab newspapers focused on PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas' apology to Kuwait for Palestinian support for Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi blasted Abbas for apologizing, saying that the Palestinians did not commit a mistake that required an apology. The independent Palestinian-owned newspaper, insisting that Abbas had not been authorized by the Palestinian people to make such an apology, said the PLO's position 14 years ago was "similar to hundreds of thousands of Arabs who stood, and continue to stand, against American military intervention in Arab issues, an intervention aimed at destroying an Arab country and killing hundreds of thousands of its people".
The pan-Arab nationalist-leaning daily said that it had hoped that Abu Mazen would have searched Kuwait to find the "dozens of missing Palestinians who were killed at the hands of Kuwaitis in broad daylight and were buried in mass graves in Kuwait".
It said that it wanted to remind Abbas that until his death, Yasser Arafat had resisted Kuwaiti and Arab pressure to apologize to Kuwait "because he did not make a mistake at all".
Kuwait's Al-Rai Al-Aam praised Abbas' apology as a "courageous step", saying that he had opposed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait from the beginning.
The pro-government daily said that his apology drew "optimism that it will be followed by other positions requiring similar boldness" in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. It added that Abbas' position was "based on the idea that occupations must end and that any [peaceful] settlement cannot but take into consideration the international and regional balance of power and the need to restore Palestinian-American relations".
The newspaper said that in the past the US administration had proposed a framework for a "practical and acceptable settlement that would give the Palestinian people their rights within an independent state, and one for Palestinians to return to - a proposal that really embarrasses Israel".
It argued that the only things providing comfort for Israel at this time were the Qassam rockets being fired at Jewish settlements in Gaza and the suicide attacks.
The Kuwaiti paper opined that seeking a Palestinian leadership that represents all factions "leads to paralysis in taking a free and bold decision".
Another Kuwaiti daily, Al-Watan, quoted Kuwaiti legislators as saying that an apology from Abbas for the PLO support of the Iraqi invasion of the emirate was not enough. The pro-government paper quoted MP Musallam Al Barrak as demanding a Palestinian apology through an official statement "and not a personal apology given to the press". He said that Abbas "cannot trick us with simple words".
The paper quoted another legislator, Khaled Al Adwa, as saying that Abbas' apology was a step toward opening a new page in relations, but that it was not enough on its own. He said that the apology should be "accompanied with practical steps and an official media campaign by the Palestinian Authority that would confirm it is standing with Kuwait in supporting its sovereignty, independence and sanctity of its territories".
Review of the Arab press
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