President in Gaza Strip for ‘Historic’ Day, Vote

GAZA CITY —  With the emotional issue of Palestinian statehood hanging in the haze, President Clinton spent eight hours Monday in this dusty strip of refugee camps and dashed hopes, the first American chief executive to visit territory under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

Clinton witnessed a crucial vote by Palestinians renouncing clauses in their charter that called for the destruction of Israel. The vote satisfied an Israeli demand and cleared the path for a meeting of Clinton, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this morning.

U.S. officials hope the three will establish a structure ensuring that political obstacles in Israel and among Palestinians do not derail the peace process.

In the confused and bitter history of the Middle East, where symbolism often counts as much as substance, Clinton’s visit marked a historic moment after half a century of U.S. efforts to bridge the violent gap between Israelis and Palestinians struggling to hang on to the same land squeezed against the Mediterranean Sea.

Arafat, who is still scorned by many Israelis and Americans as a terrorist, was at Clinton’s side from the moment the U.S. president arrived at midmorning in Gaza.

“This is a historic day,” Clinton said.

“Stunning,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said.

Palestinians have argued that a vote two years ago removed the clauses calling for the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state. But Israel insisted in negotiations at Wye Plantation in Maryland seven weeks ago that a new vote be taken.

Arafat presided over the vote, with Clinton at his side, in the Shawa center, a modern convention hall rising incongruously from a community of half-finished buildings, rubble-strewn lots, and small shops selling fruit and slabs of meat hanging from hooks in open doorways.

At a news conference, Netanyahu later welcomed the vote as acceptance of Israel’s right to exist. But he then listed additional steps, including the confiscation of illegal weapons, that he said the Palestinians must take before he will continue withdrawing troops from the West Bank.

Netanyahu Praises ‘Important Step’

Earlier this month, the Israeli government suspended the Wye accord, in which it agreed to withdraw from an additional 13% of the West Bank, because of a surge in Palestinian violence. Israel made an initial withdrawal Nov. 20, but a senior U.S. official said the United States can no longer realistically expect Israel to resume the hand-over of land until after Netanyahu faces a no-confidence vote expected next Monday. Originally, the next deadline for an additional withdrawal was this Friday.

“An important step was taken today,” Netanyahu said at his office in Jerusalem. “It’s the first time that every Palestinian home and every Palestinian child hears about this and knows about this.

“Before today, things were whispered in secret, spoken in English in foreign capitals,” Netanyahu said. “Today, for the first time, the Palestinian leadership stood up and said to the world--but first and foremost to the Palestinian people--that these clauses are null and void.”

After the vote, Clinton told the assembly: “You did a good thing today in raising your hands. It has nothing to do with the government in Israel. You will touch the people of Israel.”

Encouraging the Palestinian leaders to press ahead with the peace process given birth in Oslo five years ago, revived at Wye and faltering since then, the president said that “it takes determination and courage to make peace, and sometimes even more to persevere for peace.”

Clinton said Netanyahu had introduced him in Israel to children whose fathers had been killed in conflicts with Palestinians, and Arafat had presented to him Palestinian children whose fathers are in Israeli prisons.

“If they had all been lined up in a row and I had seen their tears, I could not tell whose father was dead and whose father was in prison, or what the story of their lives were, making up the grief that they bore,” the president said. “We must acknowledge that neither side has a monopoly on virtue.”

For his part, Arafat embraced Clinton as “a great friend of the Palestinian people, an exceptional statesman and a distinguished leader in peacemaking in our world.”

But pressing for the release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, Arafat said those who led the struggle should be among the first to “enjoy the blessings of peace.”

Throughout the three-day Middle East visit, Clinton has sought to assuage the fears and distrust that permeate the Israeli and Palestinian societies.

Israeli Fighters Roar Through Gaza Sky

The establishment of a Palestinian state is a most sensitive issue in the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. What any future Palestinian entity would look like is a matter reserved for what are called “final status” talks.

The inauguration of Gaza International Airport three weeks ago was portrayed by Arafat at the time as “preparation for the declaration of a Palestinian state.” Israeli authorities blocked its opening for 18 months, yielding only during the negotiations at Wye.

But Israel maintains control over the airspace. As a reminder, its jet fighters pierced the air over Gaza moments before Clinton arrived.

Clintons Take Low-Key Marine One Helicopter

The White House had, at one point, considered a dramatic scenario in which Clinton would fly here aboard Air Force One, the blue-white-and-silver symbol of the reach and power of the American presidency. But that was too much symbolism for Israeli officials. The lower-key, and more convenient, Marine One was substituted.

The olive-drab helicopter with the distinctive white top and presidential seal appeared from the northeast through a haze of sand stirred up by preceding aircraft.

Arafat greeted Clinton with a handshake and Hillary Rodham Clinton with a kiss on the hand as they stepped from their helicopter at 10:32 a.m. after the roughly half-hour flight from Jerusalem.

A Palestinian honor guard struggled to form a straight line, and a band played “The Happy Wanderer,” an allusion to the wandering of Palestinian refugees seeking a homeland after they were ejected from the territory that became Israel 50 years ago.

The American flag and the Palestinian banner--broad stripes of green, white and black intersected by a red triangle along the staff--were hung from the airport control tower, catching a steady breeze.

Arafat, dressed in a keffiyeh, the traditional Arab headdress, and a dark-green military tunic, flashed a “V” sign with two fingers of his right hand and held a red ribbon as Clinton snipped with a pair of scissors to ceremonially open the airport terminal. After one snip, Arafat, grinning broadly, picked up the ribbon and commanded Clinton to cut it again. And again. And again. A half-dozen times, in all, as the American president helped the Palestinian leader collect souvenirs of the day.

But Arafat’s tenor of almost playful joy was absent in the impoverished camps to which Palestinians first fled half a century ago.

In the teeming Jabaliya camp near Gaza City, Abdul Jalil Freih, 55, sat with several other men outside an unfinished building.

“Clinton will not do anything for us,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to us whether he comes or goes.”

Samir Oweis, 35, agreed. “The Israelis did not listen to him at Wye. You think they’ll listen here? They only understand the language of force, not of peace.”

Clinton Greeted With Affection and Hope

Such comments reflect a skepticism about how much the Americans will follow through--and more important, how much Palestinian autonomy Israel will agree to.

Indeed, in the five years since the Oslo peace accord was reached, Jewish settlements have sprung up throughout Gaza. They have been established behind electrified fences, eating up land in one of the most densely populated neighborhoods on Earth. Israeli soldiers guard armored checkpoints, a constant reminder to Gazans of the unresolved status of the territory.

But Clinton was also greeted with affection and hope. Oversized pictures of the president and Arafat were displayed from signposts with the words “We have a dream. Free Palestine.” And crossing the crowded streets, white banners with red letters proclaimed un-grammatically: “Welcome With President Clinton to Palestine, the land of love and peace.”

Jihad Wazir, a key Palestinian organizer of the Gaza events, said: “I think the right of self-determination is an American concept. Woodrow Wilson invented it, but for now the American president has come here, and even though it’s not stated, tacitly, he’s saying we recognize your needs--and your day is coming.”

Clauses ‘Fully, Finally and Forever’ Revoked

For the meeting at the Shawa convention center, members of the Palestine National Council, who made up roughly half the several hundred Palestinians present, were placed in the middle seats so they could be seen easily. At Arafat’s command, they raised their hands to vote in favor of canceling the specific charter clauses, then jumped to their feet and applauded. Clinton applauded steadily from his seat, saying later that he considered the clauses “fully, finally and forever” revoked.

“The president made everybody feel we are on an equal footing in American eyes with the Israelis, for the first time,” said Youssef Radi, a national council member who is the Palestinian ambassador to Ethiopia.

Khalid Kidrah, a member of the Fida party, a small faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said: “We have never heard an American president speak like this about Palestinian rights and asking the Israelis to respect these rights, even as he asked Palestinians to respect the security of Israel. He made a balance between us.

“By coming here, he helps encourage us to continue in the path of peace, and in this way, to reach our state,” he said.

Times staff writers Rebecca Trounson in Gaza and Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

View video excerpts of President Clinton’s speech to the Palestine National Council on the Times Web site: http://161.35.110.226/middleeast.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What Palestinians Deleted

Following are portions of some of the clauses in the 1964 Palestinian National Covenant considered offensive by Israel. Monday’s vote in Gaza City reaffirmed a previous Palestinian declaration voiding this language.

ARTICLE 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. . . .

ARTICLE 15: The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine. . . .

ARTICLE 20: . . . Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

ARTICLE 22: Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and a geographical base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, unity and progress. Israel is a constant source of threat vis-a-vis peace in the Middle East and the whole world. Since the liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East, the Palestinian people look for the support of all the progressive and peaceful forces . . . .

ARTICLE 23: The demand of security and peace, as well as the demand of right and justice, require all states to consider Zionism an illegitimate movement, to outlaw its existence and to ban its operations, in order that friendly relations among peoples may be preserved, and the loyalty of citizens to their respective homelands safeguarded.

ARTICLE 30: Fighters and carriers of arms in the war of liberation are the nucleus of the popular army which will be the protective force for the gains of the Palestinian Arab people.