Israel's Right-Wing Demonstrators Rally Against BarakHundreds of thousands of Israeli right-wing protestors rallied Sunday evening at Rabin Square in the center of Tel Aviv to protest against the ongoing Camp David summit.Organized by various settler's organizations and the opposition Likud Party, the protestors also expressed their opposition to the government's intention to withdraw from large areas of the territories and dismantle some Jewish settlements in the territories. The organizers hired more than 1,000 buses to transport the protestors from all over Israel to the rally, and expected over 100,000 to show up. But participants are in fact less than the expectations. Scheduled speakers at the rally include representatives of the settlements of the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley and the West Bank, Likud leader Ariel Sharon, Yisrael Ba'aliya leader Natan Sharansky, National Religious Party leader Yitzhak Levy and others. The Israeli right-wing political parties and settler's organizations strongly oppose Prime Minister Ehud Barak's possible territorial concessions to the Palestinians at the summit, which was called by U.S. President Bill Clinton and also attended by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The summit, which started at the Camp David near Washington on Tuesday, is aimed at solving the key issues such as Jerusalem, borders, refugees, settlements and water, and reaching a framework agreement on all these issues ahead of a September deadline for a final peace accord. The organizers proclaimed that the rally would be "the mother of all demonstrations" against the summit. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/english/ |