Racism delegates savage Israel

DURBAN - Israel was branded a "racist apartheid" state yesterday by thousands of non-governmental organisations meeting in South Africa.

The harsh anti-Israeli language in the NGO Forum's final declaration injected new Middle East tensions into the parallel UN World Conference Against Racism attended by 153 Governments in the Indian Ocean port city.

Worsening Israeli-Palestinian violence has cast a shadow over the racism meeting despite pleas by Nelson Mandela to seize the chance to end the contagion of racial discrimination.

The forum accused the Jewish state of "systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing".

It called Israel "a racist apartheid state in which Israel's brand of apartheid as a crime against humanity has been characterised by separation and segregation ... and inhumane acts".

The declaration, adopted by 3000 NGOs in 44 regional and interest-based caucuses, shocked Jewish groups.

Jewish delegates walked out.

But a lawyer with the Association of Palestine NGO, Tawfiq Jabareen, said: "We want the Governmental conference to adopt these documents. The Palestinian people have a right to self-determination".

The Israeli Government delegation to the UN conference blasted the language as an incitement to hatred of Jews.

"It adds fuel to the attempts that are being made to demonise Israel," delegation spokesman Noam Katz said.

Resolutions at NGO forums have no binding authority, but they increasingly influence the final declarations adopted at the UN governmental meetings they precede.

The United States, Canada and Israel sent only junior level delegations to the UN racism conference, attended by about 6000 delegates, in protest at what they see as anti-Israeli bias.

Washington had already warned it might withdraw before the conference closes on September 7 unless offending language is removed from draft texts.

The NGO Forum's declaration further reduced the prospects for agreement at the UN meeting.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, one of the most prominent figures at a conference which drew only a handful of senior Western politicians, again branded Israel as racist on Saturday.

"The ugliness of these Israeli racist policies and practices against the Palestinian people has become manifest and obvious during the Intifada," he said.

He was referring to the 11-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation in which at least 548 Palestinians and 157 Israelis have been killed.

Mandela, the father of South Africa's multi-racial democracy, made an impassioned call for delegates to put aside differences and act to rid the world of a disease that was an "ailment of the mind and the soul".

"It kills many more than any contagion. It dehumanises anyone it touches," the 83-year-old former South African President said in a recorded speech to delegates.

* Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians in gun battles in the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron yesterday, providing a violent backdrop for efforts to arrange talks on ending the bloodshed.

As well as the Palestinian casualties, the Israeli army said, a soldier and an eight-year-old Israeli boy were wounded.

- REUTERS

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