MARRAKESH: A meeting of Arab and Muslim foreign ministers held here, convened as part of the Al Quds Committee, stuck to a call on the UN Security Council “to shoulder its duties and adopt a resolution for the immediate deployment of a multinational force for the protection of the Palestinian people.”

A final statement adopted by the Committee urged the Security Council to “work towards the implementation of its resolutions so as to preserve its credibility as a UN Organ, and called on the US, sponsor of the peace process, “to take immediate and firm action to oblige Israel to halt its aggression against the Palestinian people.”

But, observers like Nouha Awamleh, a Morocco-based Palestinian journalist, deplored the little gain Palestinians can get from such meetings.

“No great expectations were in fact pinned on the Committee’s meeting to come up with tangible actions in favour of the Palestinians,” she said, adding “Successive meetings have been held, but to no avail.”

For Ahmed Iraqi, a Moroccan political analyst, “nobody expected any kind of measure like declaring an Arab war against Israel.

But the moral backing expressed towards the Palestinians can at least attract the world’s attention to the serious situation in the occupied territories.”

“The rulers of the region hold conferences and call for backing the Palestinian struggle, while in reality they only act on orders coming from the west,” Awamleh said.

She laments; “Palestinians are being killed and their houses destroyed almost on a daily basis, while our Arab brothers ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations as if we were terrorists.”

The Marrakesh meeting was marked by the absence of Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestinian National Authority, besieged by Israel in Ramallah.

The leader, however, sent a message to the meeting, decrying ”the Israeli barbarous war” and appealing to the Committee to intervene for an end to the situation of siege.

King Mohammad VI of Morocco criticized the siege imposed on Arafat and warned that the Israeli “aggressions grew into intolerable limits.”

“The Israeli aggressive practices can longer go unheeded,” he said in a speech at the meeting. “The impact of this situation will not be confined to the Middle East only but may spread well beyond,” he warned.

The Marrakesh meeting lost much of its impact, as key Arab and Muslim countries, members of the Committee, did not send their foreign ministers, dispatching rather low profile delegations.

These are Egypt, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Only Morocco, the host country, Senegal, Guinea, Bangladesh and Mauritania were represented by their foreign ministers.

The low level of participation in the meeting raised, once again, talk on the efficiency of the Al Quds Committee in handling the thorny issue of the holy city.

Countries like Iraq, Iran and Syria, who oppose the Moroccan permanent chairmanship of the body, want a rotating presidency for better action.

The future of Al Quds is the most intractable and sensitive of all issues in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. The city arouses passions because of its nationalist and political resonance to both Palestinians and Israelis.

In its Marrakesh Declaration, the Al Quds Committee warned that “Israel’s behaviour is likely to trigger reactions at a time of global consensus reached in the aftermath of the criminal acts perpetrated on Sept 11 against innocent civilians and institutions in the USA.”

It renewed “support to the resistance of the Palestinian people and their blessed Intifada” and decried “the destruction war waged by the government of Ariel Sharon.”

According to a document of the Palestinian Health, Information and Policy Institute, more than 900 Palestinians and 25,000 others were wounded since September 2000 when the 2nd uprising broke out in the morrow of a controversial visit by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the Al Aqsa Mosque.

The Israeli occupation troops uprooted 40,000 olive trees and destroyed more than 4,500 houses, says the Institute, adding, thousands of Palestinians are held in Israeli jails.

Israel, which controls 80 per cent of water resources in the West Bank and Gaza, gives Palestinians no more than 80 cubic meter per capita a year, while an Israeli settler consumes more than 1,400 cubic meters for the same period.

The Institute deplores that 55 per cent of Palestinians are unemployed and more than 50 per cent live under the line of poverty with less than $2 a day.

Al Quds has been at the heart of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. According to Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements, the status of Al Quds is to be decided through negotiations.—Dawn/InterPress Service.