JERUSALEM, Israel

For at least 12 hours after the murderous terror attack on the nightclub in Tel Aviv last weekend, Sawt Felasteen, Voice of Palestine radio, the official voice of Mahmoud Abbas, told its listeners a rather interesting tale fit for the 1001 Arabian Nights.

Beginning at least at 8 p.m. in the evening Saturday night February 26 (I say at least, because I couldn’t check earlier that same day) and through the Sunday morning major news round-up, Voice of Palestine spun a tale turning the nightclub into a mysterious cave where evil-doers gathered to plot.

That may have looked like a nightclub, said V.O.P., but it was anything but innocent. Rather it was a high-level Israeli military target.

“An elite unit of the occupation army” was meeting in the nightclub, said Voice of Palestine, adding that “a very senior Israeli officer” was “the target of the operation. To give added power to the fantastic assertion, V.O.P. attributed its scoop to unnamed Israeli sources.

As for the name of the man or organization who carried out the attack, Voice of Palestine was not saying anything.

All the Palestinian newspapers and the members of the Palestinian regime referred to the attack as amaliyya tafjeeriyya-an “explosive operation”-or as amaliyya istish-hadiyya-an “operation of heroic martyrdom.”

Two days later, Al-Hayat al-Jadeeda, the newspaper directed by Abbas’s own Fatah members, ran a front-page picture of the terrorist with a caption calling him a “martyr.”

Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera Arabic satellite television service showed a pre-filmed video where the terrorist, a member of Islamic Jihad, bragged about his upcoming attack on Tel Aviv.

At the same time that Arabs around the world watched Al-Jazeera, Dr. Mahmoud Abbas, successor to Yasser Arafat, told reporters that some sinister “third party” was trying to “sabotage Palestinian interests.” He never called the nightclub attack “Irhaab”-terror in Arabic, even though the attack on the nightclub murdered five people (two of them women) died and wounded more than 70.

More would have died, if not for the nightclub guards who prevented the bomber from getting inside the club where the explosion would have been far more deadly.

What about the members of the Islamic Jihad organization, reporters asked PLO Chairman Abbas. Could they have done it?

No, impossible, said Dr. Abbas. Islamic Jihad, like HAMAS, like my own Fatah “Martyrs Brigade” have all agreed to a “hudna.” [This is a term in Arabic that can be translated as ceasefire, but it actually means more than that, and we’ll explain later.-MW]

Abbas did not go out on a limb like Farouk Al-Shara, the foreign minister of Syria [which hosts and encourages Islamic Jihad leaders], who said the whole attack was likely carried out by “an Israeli hand”-perhaps even the Mossad itself.

Suggestions of sinister “third parties” or “Israeli conspiracies” to attack its own nightclubs and buses-as suggested by the Syrian foreign minister and by Abbas himself-are nothing new. We used to hear this kind of thing regularly from Yasser Arafat, who, along with his sainted wife, Suha, would accuse the Israelis of using poison gas, radiation weapons and even AIDS, against peace-loving Palestinians.

Abbas does not do this. Instead he sends messengers-spokesmen, his radio, his tv and his three newspapers-to suggest regularly that Israeli officials and Israeli soldiers enjoy killing Palestinian children in cold blood.

When a young Palestinian school girl, Nuran Deeb, was shot in her school yard on Jnuary 31, the Palestinian press and regime blamed Israel for three days, turning the affair into a classic atrocity story/blood libel. This happened even though the Palestinian authorities knew the girl had been accidentally killed by a Palestinian man firing celebratory shots in the air after his return from the pilgrimage to Mecca.

One can easily see why we, who built such hopes around Abbas, are disappointed.

After all, Dr. Abbas, despite his claims to be just like Arafat, looks and acts so differently. He does not holster a gun at the UN, nor wear a military uniform at all times, nor even the kaffiyeh head cloth of the Fedayeen fighters. He wears a Western-style suit. Abbas does not yell “Jihad” at us with drool coming from his mouth. He is soft-spoken and even somewhat-wimpy-looking, covering his face and mouth with a scarf even when the temperature dips below 50 Fahrenheit. He is so unlike Arafat. And as John Kerry once said of himself: he even has good hair-especially for a 70-year-old.

Could we, perhaps, have been fooling ourselves with the cosmetics?

After the latest wave of Palestinian terror attacks [a huge car bomb was intercepted the next day], it is fair to ask some tough questions of Mahmoud Abbas, the reputedly “moderate” successor to Yasser Arafat.

Are you really trying to stop terror or only to get Israeli concessions? Are you really interested in a lasting peace that will require compromises on both sides or do you want a deal that leaves you on the job? [After all, Abbas, we now know, rigged the recent Palestinian elections of January 2005 much like Arafat did with the “elections” of January 1996. Even Jimmy Carter says so.!!!]

But getting a straight and reliable answer from Abbas may be even tougher than it was from Arafat.

Like a veteran baseball pitcher who keeps opponents and fans guessing by mixing fastballs, curves and sliders, Mahmoud Abbas continues to perplex observers who try to read his intentions.

On the night of his election a few two weeks ago, Abbas spoke of peace while urging the Palestinians forward towards their “biggest Jihad”-a term that commonly means “holy war” in Arabic.

As Abbas completes his second month in both shoes of Yasser Arafat- both as President of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the PLO-he has already amassed a formidable repertoire of mixed messages, among them:

  • Calling for peace, while calling Israel “the Zionist Enemy”;
  • Declaring a need to end “weapons anarchy,” while he and his top aides openly advocate attacking Israeli civilians and soldiers in “occupied territory” as acts of legitimate “resistance”;
  • And urging an end to the “militarization of the Intifada” while offering jobs to the most militant “militarists” within the Palestinian community-the Islamic terrorists of HAMAS and the “Martyrs Brigade” of his own Fatah organization.

“Our stance is very clear,” asserted Ahmad Abdul-Rahman, the Palestinian Cabinet secretary appearing on Palestinian state television last month.

“Any resistance has to be in Israeli-occupied lands,” said the dark-haired Abdul-Rahman who has been one of the two or three closest advisors both to Abbas and Arafat.

When the Palestinian state television anchorman seemed confused by the words of Abdul-Rahman, who regularly sits at the elbow of Abbas at public meetings, the cabinet secretary explained: “Within the occupied territory, we can use any means necessary to get Israel out.”

Mr. Abbas did not make any public comment scolding Mr. Abdul-Rahman for his remarks, and both Palestinian television and several Palestinian newspapers showed Mr. Abdul-Rahman sitting alongside President Abbas the following day at a public meeting in Ramallah.

So, when we try to figure out why Voice of Palestine would suggest that the Tel Aviv night club was a military target, all we have to do is remember that attacking Israelis with a military connection is actually “a resistance operation” which Abbas and his Fatah comrades specifically supported in their February 6meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council. This was only two days before the fabled Sharm al-Sheikh summit that was supposed to end all the Palestinian-Israeli violence.

Abbas called this both “hudna” [ceasefire] and tahdiyya-a cooling-off period. But Hudna actually means more than that.

“Hudna” [pronounced Hood-nah, first syllable accented] means a temporary truce by a Muslim with a non-Muslim. In practice, it means a time for Muslim extremists to heal their wounds and re-arm.

Since the “hudna” went into effect, the Islamic terrorists have enjoyed the release of some of their convicted colleagues from jails as well as easier access to Israeli targets.

For some Israelis, the hudna has brought a more permanent peace-especially those in the Tel Aviv nightclub.

Dr. Michael Widlanski teaches political communication at the Rothberg School of Hebrew University. His doctorate, “Palestinian Broadcast Media In the Palestinian State-Building Process: Patterns of Influence and Control,” was based on eight years of research involving more than 7,000 hours of monitoring Palestinian radio in Arabic as well as television and newspaper surveys. Widlanski was The New York Times campus correspondent at Columbia University, 1974-1976, a reporter-researcher in the NYTimes Jerusalem bureau, 1980-82, Middle East Correspondent for The Cox Newspapers/Atlanta Constitution/Boston Globe, 1982-89. He subsequently served as Middle East editor of the Jerusalem Post and as an advisor to Israeli negotiating teams at the Madrid Peace Conference and talks in Washington.

30 Midbar Sinai Street,
Jerusalem 97805
Local Phone: 02-5322-868/ 5322-582
Local Fax. 02-5322-657 Mobile: 050-214-3191
International phone-011-972-2-5322-868/ 011-972-2-5322-582
International mobile-011-972-50-214-3191
E-mail: mikewid@netvision.net.il

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR