SUMMARY

The Voice of Palestine continued its policy of leading its news shows with the details of the burial of “martyrs” and the listing and counting of the injured. VOP continues to go into detail about the funeral arrangements in an effort to maximize crowd size.

The two next important items in the headlines (Oct 21 eve and Oct 22 throughout the day) are, respectively, continued demands for investigation of human rights violations and “wicked crimes” committed by “occupation forces” as well as analysis of the outcome of the Arab summit.

TONE

The strident militaristic tone that re-emerged strongly on the eve of the Cairo summit has remained, appearing not only in the news programming but also in musical programming, historical features and phone-in shows and interviews.

Almost every news show is preceded by strongly patriotic and/or Islamic songs speaking of “breaking down the gates to Jerusalem” or “returning to the Galilee.”

QUOTES OF THE DAY

(The fourth and fifth headlines in 8AM and 9AM VOP news)

“The Italian delegate to the United Nations says that Israel (deliberately) sent its two soldiers into Ramallah a week ago knowing full well what would befall them — as a means to gain favorable public opinion.”

(The use of this item-through the mouth of a foreign source– is significant and subtle because the PA’s own police captured the Israeli soldiers outside Ramallah and brought them into a police station inside Ramallah. Some PA officials reportedly apologized privately to Israel counterparts at the time, but the above item can be seen as a public retraction of the reported apology. Furthermore, the Italian government had itself-more than 12 hours before the VOP broadcast– said that the Italian delegate’s comments did not reflect government policy.)

“The Executive Committee of the Arab Orthodox (Chutch) Council in Palestine calls on the masses of our people to come out of the churches at 11:30 to express refusal to accept Israel’s international terrorism in all its forms.”

SUMMIT

The Palestinian Authority, through its ministers interviewed on VOP, is pleased with the tough tone of the Cairo summit and the call to stop contacts with Israel. At the same time, the PA seems genuinely disappointed that the summit did not act even more strongly. “The Intifada of the Palestinian people has left a strong impression on the Arab street and in each Arab country,” declared Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo in a morning interview. “We haven’t seen this kind of Arab stance for some time,” said Abed-Rabbo, who, along with Arafat himself, seems proud to have united the Arabs against Israel once again, including Iraq-which threatened to attack Israel.

“The holding of this summit-including the attendance of Iraq and all the Arab countries-was the first Arab summit in more than ten years,” declared Development Minister Nabil Sha’ath in an afternoon interview.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR