Yasir Arafat has sent a letter to Pope John Paul II, asking the pope to intercede with the United States to prevent the “Judaization” and Israeli annexation of Jerusalem in any Middle East peace settlement.
In the letter, sent last week, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization impugned the Jewish religion as a usurper of Jerusalem, playing up to issues that have impeded the Vatican from establishing ties with the Jewish state.
He accused the Jews of trying to remove all but Jews from Jerusalem.
Arafat also asked the pontiff’s help in overcoming Israel’s refusal, with U.S. backing, to allow PLO representatives to attend the Middle East peace conference the United States and Soviet Union hope to host in October.
“Your Holiness, we find ourselves facing an attempt to impose Judaism and the annexation of Jerusalem with the exclusion of any representative of East Jerusalem in the negotiations of the peace conference set for October,” he wrote.
Dwelling on inflammatory concerns between Rome and Jerusalem, Arafat wrote that an imposition of Judaism “on the holy places without their community of faithful would be reduced merely to the status of museums and tourist attractions.”
He appealed to the pope’s “high prestige the world over,” to “intercede with the administration of the United States so that President George Bush does not become responsible in the eyes of history for the Judaization of Jerusalem and for the resulting evacuations of its Christian and Moslem inhabitants.”
He wrote that this “would be a step toward emptying out the entire Holy Land.”
The pope has met more than once with Arafat, much to the dismay of Jewish groups and Israeli officials.
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