Jerusalem – “Fleeing Gaza to Israel was our last resort from the purge operation Hamas launched against us,” a fleeing member of the Fatah-alligned Hilles clan told the Voice of Israel Radio after having crossed the border into Israel.

The activist, who sustained light injuries from mortar-shell shrapnel, was taken to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon for treatment in advance of his transfer to the West Bank.

“Members of Hamas’ military wing raided us at dawn and began to massacre us,” he recounted. “We tried to resist, but in the end we were forced to surrender and, so that they wouldn’t kill us, we fled to the border with Israel, after we were given messages from Palestinian Authority representatives that Israel would permit us to cross through it.”

The activist said that the Egyptians also played a role in mediating between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

“We need to ask for help and to place our faith in the Israelis and the Egyptians to save us, while our own Palestinian brothers are butchering us, claiming that we’re trying to destabilize the Hamas regime in Gaza,” he said.

“If we thought that the Israeli conquest n was killing the Palestinian people, today we were given official confirmation that we were wrong.”

He accused the rival faction of trying to bring the annihilation of the Palestinian people, not Israel.

“They have no qualms,” the Fatah activist said. “We’re talking about a benighted and primitive people who butcher their fellow kinsmen.”

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com. His Web site is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com

©The Bulletin 2008

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David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

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