One-sided welcome From Morning Star

US President George W Bush welcomed the election of Mahmoud Abbas as the Palestinian people's new president, asserting US readiness 'to help the Palestinian people realise their aspirations.'
However, he went on to detail the critical tasks facing the new Palestinian president and his cabinet as 'fighting terrorism, combating corruption, building reformed and democratic institutions and reviving the Palestinian economy.'

The one task that he omitted is the basis on which Mr Abbas was backed by the electors to succeed Yasser Arafat.

That task is to secure an end to Israel's occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land and to build a sovereign Palestinian state in line with the pre-June 1967 borders and with its capital in east Jerusalem.

Mr Abbas also recognised that there could be no lasting solution without a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee question, with five million Palestinians forced to live outside their homeland as a result of nearly 60 years of ethnic cleansing and the military occupation's refusal to allow them to return home.

Combating corruption, building reformed and democratic institutions and reviving the economy are all worthwhile aspirations - and not solely in Palestine - but their relevance is weakened if they are expected to flourish under a brutal colonial regime.

And, while 'fighting terrorism' is high on the list of both President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, they refer only to the activities of Palestinian resistance.

Israel's state terrorism, with its use of aerial power, tanks and armoured bulldozers against overcrowded refugee camps, is regarded either as normal policing arrangements or legitimate self-defence by Israel.

Messrs Bush and Sharon referred to President Arafat as an obstacle to peace, but, since this obstacle was removed with the president's death, 75 Palestinians have been killed by the occupation.

Is this the 'peace' that the Palestinians have to accept as normal?

The fact that neither the US nor Israel can accept is that the fundamental cause of violence in the West Bank, Gaza and in Israel itself is the ongoing zionist occupation of Palestinian land.

The occupiers attempt to pass themselves off as victims of irrational hatred, but there is nothing irrational about a people's determination to cast off oppression and to exercise their inalienable national rights.

The Palestinians know what they have been fighting for and their newly elected president understands that they will not accept the current Sharon scheme, already backed by President Bush, of evacuating a small number of illegal settlements, mainly in Gaza, in order to annex most of the West Bank to Israel.

The British government's previously clear support for a two-state solution, based on 1967 borders, has been muted since the US president backed Mr Sharon's 'disengagement' plan.

It must be pressed to find its voice and, in the event of no response from Israel, to push for suspension of Israel's trading preferences with the EU, as proposed by the War on Want campaign.