Newspaper
Rio Negro
General Roca, Rio Negro – Thursday, April 30 of 1998
According to the Palestinian representative, it is the day of the “great catastrophe” (view)
According to the Ambassador of the Palestine National Authority in our country, Suhail Hani Daher Akel, the 50th creation anniversary of Israel is not a day for celebrations. For him, it represents the beginning of the “Palestinian Holocaust”. It also represents the exile and disintegration of his family, taking into account that he has been a refugee since 1948.
“While some people celebrate the creation of the Israeli State with a great happiness, we regard it as the day of the Palestinian catastrophe”, he pointed out to Rio Negro newspaper.
In times in which the Palestinian-Israeli peace plan will have to sort out one of its toughest tests in London next Monday, Akel assures that the declaration of the Palestinian independent State with East Jerusalem as its capital city will be carried out on May 4, 1999.
In 1948, Palestinians were victims of the unnoticed consequences and guilty conscience of central nations which wanted to remedy their faults with regard to the ominous Nazi Holocaust by means of a new holocaust, which has not been highly divulged: the Palestinian Holocaust”, he said.
Akel is going to inaugurate a diplomatic see in Buenos Aires in June and Carlos Menem’s government has granted this see. According to Akel, “this terrible act of creating a State above another State has made thousand of people become refugees”. Yet, the diplomat assured that “today there is a new reality in the world: there are new State and people. We do not want to commit the same injustice which was committed against us. That is why we have fostered a peace process which allows both Israeli and Palestinian people to live with dignity”.
Sticking to the peace policy fostered by Arafat’s administration, he has assured that “we are not claiming for the destruction of the State of Israel, we are not interested in war, we are not interested in hate. We are interested in the fulfillment of the UN partition resolution in those 27,009 kilometers where the Palestinian land has existed since millenary times. That is, a free, sovereign and independent State with East Jerusalem as its capital city. A neighboring State of an independent Israeli State”.
Personally, Akel said that the creation of the State of Israel has meant: “becoming a refugee expelled from my land and having my family dispersed. We became part of a great battalion of people in exile. It was very painful, especially having lost contact with my family, being able to go back to my country after 46 years and finding out that most of them had died”.
Nevertheless, Akel has stated that “I -as a refugee- or my brothers -who became refugees after the 1967 war- do not keep into our souls hate, a wish to seek revenge or a wish to despoil those people who have despoiled us. We just have the need to enjoy the same right than the one who occupied our territory”.