| JOHANNESBURG--The
Palestinian issue is a sore point which is blocking
progress at Johannesburg -- or not. It depends
on where you sit, almost literally. At
the Sandton Center, the experienced, official, diplomats
meeting at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development
are able to talk about development without waiting
for a solution to the Palestinian problem, which
may be a long time away.
But
about a half hour's drive up Jan Smuts
boulevard, at the nongovernmental
organization meeting at the National
Recreatiion and Exhibition Cednter (NASREC)
scores of pro-Palestinian NGO delegates
have said without a free Palestinian
state there can be no sustainable development,
not only in Palestine, but in the entire
region.
And besides say, the NGOs, the government
diplomats are, well, diplomatic and never
solve anything.
In an
interview with The Earth Times, Carol
Khoury of the Palestinian Nongovernmental
Organization Network said "the problem
is that we feel that delegates are talking
at delegates who are talking at delegates.
It is not always the case that they are
speaking in our discourse and in our
demands and the conference is set in
a different political discourse. They
are trying to use certain words like
demilitarization instead of the actual
issues."
This in a conference where the checkered
kafir of the style favored by Palestinian
president Yassar Arafat, is maybe the
second most commonly seen around the
premises, right behind the landless peasants'
t-shirts.
When
a reporter asked specifically Thursday
at NASREC,, "Why are we talking
about politics in a conference on sustainable
development?", Isaat Abdul Hadi
of the Palestinian Nongovernmental Organizations
Network said "promoting sustainable
development in Palestine requires action
by those who have social development
control in the area." He was talking
about Israel.
Khalid
Dhorat, a member of the Council of
Muslim Theologians told the Earth
Times that freedom for Palestine was
linked to sustainable development because
only "by freeing Palestine can you
create a zone of peace in the world where
you can promote the ideas of sustainable
development."
Dhorat
said, "in order to achieve
sustainable development, a country (must
be) free of war, (and) stable which has
no economic exploitation, then only can
you achieve sustainable development."
If being free of war and stable are
prerequisites to sustainable development
Dhorat must know that that applies to
Israel as well.
And there is optimism on the premises.
In an
interview with The Earth Times, Lubna
Budeiri, also of the Palestinian
Nongovernmental Organization Network
said "We feel that maybe in Johannesburg
something can happen, and we feel that
by bringing it to South Africa where
Nelson Mandela changed the regime of
apartheid, our issues will appeal to
their own situation."
Up the road the diplomats approached
the situation differently.
In a
press statement Wednesday the League
of Arab States promoted a "comprehensive
regional approach which aims at developing
a regional program for sustainable development."
It limited
reference to Palestine by mentioning,
in a single phrase, the need
to stop " the continuation of foreign
occupation in some Arab lands."
And it
stressed the importance of developing
the region, without losing its cultural
values, and called for the support of
partnership initiatives between "developing
and industrial countries and between
the states and the organizations of Civil
Society and the private sector."
Shafqat
Kakakel of the UN Environment Program,
a professional international
bureaucrat described the plan as an "integrated
approach to sustainable development."
The plan
calls for "peace and security,
institutional framework, poverty alleviation,
population and health, education, awareness,
scientific research, technology transfer,
resource management, production and consumption,
globalization."
These, of course, would help Palestine
-- too.
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