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ADC Press Release: |
April 16, 2001
Washington, D.C., April 16 –The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee (ADC), the nation’s largest Arab-American membership
organization, strongly condemned the Israeli air strike earlier today on
a Syrian radar station at Dahr al-Baidar, twenty-two miles east of
Beirut, Lebanon. The Israeli raid, the first direct attack against
Syrian forces in Lebanon since 1996, killed three Syrian soldiers and
injured six others.
ADC President Hala Maksoud said, “The Israeli strike is a
serious violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of
Lebanon and a dangerous military escalation that threatens the security
and stability of the whole region.” Maksoud characterized the Bush
Administration’s urging of all parties to exercise maximum restraint
as “confused and inadequate.”
ADC firmly believes that there is no moral equivalence between the right
of people to resist foreign occupation of their country and the
provocative use of military force by the occupying power to justify its
aggression. Raanan Gissin, a spokesperson for the Israeli Prime
Minister, warned that “Syria and the Palestinians must understand that
there is a new government in Israel and the rules of the game have
changed.” Therefore, ADC calls on the U.S. administration to
become fully engaged in putting an end to this escalation and military
attack by Israel, which is likely to have dire repercussions for the
whole region.
ADC also rejects Israel’s rationale for its raid as defensive in
nature and not aimed at broadening the conflict. The Sharon government
cannot achieve peace and security for its people through acts of
military aggression and intimidation against its Arab neighbors. “Real
security,” according to Maksoud, “emanates from the achievement of
comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region which ends all forms
of aggression and occupation, whether in Lebanon, Palestine or the
Syrian Golan Heights.”
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ADC is the largest Arab-American grassroots organization in the United
States. It was founded in 1980 by former Senator James Abourezk. To
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