[On Wednesday, March 16th, the Israeli Knesset Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee heard testimony from a senior IDF official that there had been a reduction incitement in the sermons delivered by senior clerics in the Palestinian Authority. What the senior IDF official did not tell the committee was that Israel Defence Spokesman’s office had removed the senior Israeli intelligence official from his position in which he was monitoring such incitement. Meanwhile, the senior official assigned by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs to monitor incitement in the Palestinian Authority told our news agency that intelligence officials of the Israel Ministry of Defence were simply not giving him data from the Palestinian Authority, making his task impossible to perform.
The following report on today’s sermon by a senior religious cleric in the Palestinian Authority speaks for itself – David Bedein, Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency]

Palestinians warn of al-Aqsa attack in mosque incitement, Qreia briefing, while pushing tough line

In a fiery official sermon on Palestinian State Television Friday (March 18, 2005), Palestinian preacher Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris declared that the Jewish government was hatching plots together with extremist religious Jews to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem or to invade the blessed Al-Aqsa mosque with thousands of extremists, Jews.

Sheikh Mudeiris, who spoke in a mosque in Gaza, warned Israel that millions of Muslims would come to the defense of Al-Aqsa,and similar comments came in the other official mosque address on Voice of Palestine radio from Sheikh Youssef Abu-Sneina at the Aqsa mosque itself in Jerusalem.

Both addresses featured anti-American elements, too, comparing Palestinian martyrs with those in fighting the U.S. in Iraq.

The speeches themselves were only the latest signs that the Palestinian Authority (PA) headed by Mahmoud Abbas had not really carried out its promise to stop all violence and incitement to violence against Israel, while Israeli officials have actually downplayed or hidden obvious Palestinian violations.

“All official mosque speeches are now being censored”, asserted two days ago Maj. Gen. Youssef Mishlab, the head of Israel’s coordination team with the Palestinians.

But General Mishlab’s remarks were belied by Sheikh Muderis as he periodically jabbed the air with his finger and readjusted the white skull cap on his head which had been jarred loose by his emotions.

In his speech in Gaza, Sheikh Muderis, asserted that the plots against Al-Aqsa, the silver-domed holy mosque that sits on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, had come to light a month ago but were part of an ongoing and organized planô that was still liable to be carried out.

We ad our voices here. We say to all Muslims. We say that we here in Palestine, that we have tolerated many things, but we will not tolerate this, warned Sheikh Mudeiris, a past known supporter of Osama Bin-Ladens Al-Qaeda organization.

We have suffered poverty and we have suffered destruction, martyrdom, and we have suffered assassinations of individuals and groups, asserted Sheikh Mudiris who draws a salary from the Palestinian National Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas which had promised Israeli officials and reporters that Mudeiris would be taken off the air and that other mosque speeches would be censored.

We have suffered martyrdom and the destruction of our houses, but we will not tolerate two things but we will not abide the taking of our land and the destruction of our holy sites–ever,ô proclaimed the young mosque speaker.

We have suffered five thousand martyrs and a hundred thousand wounded to stop Sharon enering our mosque, declared Mudeiris, referring to the visit by Ariel Sharon (now prime minister but then leader of the Israeli opposition) to the Temple Mount area in September 2000.

The Sharon visit was seized on by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died last year, and Muslim extremists, to launch a four-year-long war of attrition which the Palestinian have nicknamed the óIntifada of Al-Aqsa.ô

Intifada, which means “shaking-off” in Arabic, was also the name given by Palestinians to the widely televised anti-Israeli riots and demonstrations that began in December 1987 and lasted more than a year before they also turned into isolated incidents of terror and thuggery.

The remarks of General Mishlab, an Arabic-speaking member of Israelòs Druze community, whose members serve in the Israeli army, were widely aired on Israeli radio and television, and they were quoted in the Israeli press.

Other Israeli security officials, including Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, have told reporters that PA leader Abbas is trying hard to crack down on terror even after Abbas declared earlier this week that he was going to release two notorious Palestinian terror leaders from British custody in Jericho:

  • Ahmad Sa’adat, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which assassinated Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavòam Zeevi in a Jerusalem hotel in October 2001;
  • Fuad Shoubaki, the man who organized many of the secret weapons transfers for Yasser Arafat including the Karinne A weapons ship captured by Israel in early 2002.

Abbas’s comments, which were carried by the Palestinian newspapers in Arabic, led to an outcry from Israeli parliamentarians, even on the Left, not to hand over Jericho to Palestinian control, and it, in fact, was only turned over to the PA after Abbas recanted his public pledge.

At the same time, however, there is evidence that Abbas and his prime minister, Ahmad Qreia (nicknamed Abu Ala) have actually stepped up demands on Israel, calling for the total release of all Palestinian security prisoners, including those convicted of murder.

Indeed, there are signs that the fiery Friday mosque speech actually reflects PA policy at the highest levels÷a real fear that Israel is involved in plotting against Al-Aqsa or that such charges help solidify the Abbas-Qreia regime that has succeeded Arafat.

Less than three hours later Sheikh Mudeiris’s mosque speech, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister essentially reiterated the same warnings against Israel (Friday 3 p.m. Jerusalem time) as PA Television broadcast remarks Qreia made to reporters last evening.

“We warn the Israeli government and we warn the international community about any aggression on Al-Aqsa, no matter of what kind”,asserted Prime Minister Qreia.

Qreia remarks, Abbas’s desire to release the Jericho terrorists, and the airing of the Sheikh Mudeiris sermon were clear indications that the Abbas-Qreia regime is playing a much tougher line than the Sharon Government has been telling the Israeli public.

Israeli officials have told the public that PA incitement has declined sharply, but for weeks, the Palestinian media have continued to refer to Palestinian terror attacks on Israel÷such as the recent bombing in Tel Aviv÷as “explosive operations”, calling the suicide bombers “heroic bombers” =mustash-heedeen – in Arabic.

Israeli officials have contended that Chairman Abbas had unequivocally condemned anti-Israeli violence and the continuation of the “Intifada”, yet Abbas’s interviews in the Arab press show that he actually “reserves the right” to resume attacks if Israel does not make concessions fast enough.

Israeli officials and reporters have also been telling the Israeli public that official Palestinian state television would not allow Mudeiris, the charismatic young and somewhat rotund bearded cleric, back on the air.

Indeed, the mosque address in Gaza came only hours after a much-heralded meeting in Cairo Egypt calling for a pseudo-ceasefire against Israeli targets, known in Arabic as a “tahdiyya” or “cooling-off”.

The term “tahdiyya”, which has become a bit of a buzz-word in Israel has rarely if ever been heard in diplomatic parlance, and it apparently came into use because the HAMAS and Islamic Jihad terror groups were unwilling to agree even to use the term “hudna” an Arabic term for a temporary cease-fire between a Muslim and a non-Muslim.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon publicly applauded the Cairo conference as a step forward, but there are many signs that it was actually a hardening of Palestinian positions.

During this week, Israeli broadcast reporters blitzed viewers and listeners with reports that PA leader Abbas was going to table a proposal for Palestinian compromise on the highly controversial issue of Palestinian refugees÷the “right of return”,but this has not materialized as well.

Indeed, at the Cairo conference yesterday on the “Palestinian national dialogue”, conducted between the Abbas-led PLO and PA and the rest of the Palestinian groups, a statement emerged reinforcing the Palestinian demand for refugee “return to their homes” i.e, to dislocate what would today constitute the entire State of Israel.

Dr. Michael Widlanski is a journalist who specializes in Arab politics and communication, whose recent doctorate dealt with the Palestinian broadcast media.

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