http://imra.org.il/story.php3?id=64019

“Cold-Blooded Murder” or a War on Terror?
Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi
Jerusalem Issue Briefs Vol. 14, No. 18 June 9, 2014
http://jcpa.org/article/cold-blooded-murder-or-a-war-on-terror/

-Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, claims that all the Palestinian “victims” since the beginning of the negotiations in August 2013 were killed in cold blood” by Israel.
-A check of the names of those killed reveals a completely different pictur e and refutes Erekat’s allegation.

-Almost all of those killed were combatants from radical and Islamic terrorist groups, including Hamas. Hamas has never renounced its Covenant and vows to destroy Israel.

Saeb Erekat, a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, has blamed Israel 1 for the failure of the diplomatic negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, and among the reasons he gives are the “killings.” Erekat al leged that Israel had “killed 66 Palestinians in cold blood,” implying that t his had occurred throughout the period of the negotiations up to the day he mad e his statement.

B’Tselem’s website names 43 Palestinians who were killed by IDF forces in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from August 2013 to the end of March 2014. According to a check of Palestinian sources by this author, the casualty list includes:

  • Eight operatives of the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad
  • Seven operatives of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the military wing of Fatah
  • Six operatives of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas
  • Three operatives of Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen, which is ideologically associated with Al-Qaeda
  • Two operatives of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
  • One operative of the Mujahideen Brigades
  • Five operatives of Fatah (opening fire, stabbing, disorderly conduct)
  • Two Hamas operatives (attempting to damage the Gaza border fence)

As for the nine who did not belong to an organization, three were killed as they approached an IDF outpost at the Gaza border fence, three were shot while taking part in violent disorders, one was killed after firing a pisto l at an IDF force, and one, a woman, was killed by return fire from the IDF a t a source of fire in Gaza.

Erekat’s rewriting of history, ignoring of Palestinian terror, and presentation of all the Palestinian casualties as innocent victims are of the same fabric as his description of Hamas as a legitimate political organization and his assertion that it has never engaged, nor engages today, in terrorist activity against Israel.

At an April 2014 conference in Ramallah on the “resistance strategy,” E rekat said: “I declare before everyone, and this in the name of President Abu Mazen and of the Executive Committee [of the PLO], that Hamas is a Palestinian movement, and that it has not been and will not be a terrorist organization.”2

Erekat reiterated the same message in an April 27 interview to the Israeli news site Ynet, in which he said that “we [the Palestinian Authority] do not regard Hamas as a terrorist organization,” and that in the Palestinian Authority’s view “Hamas is a political organization.”3

In another interview to the Al-Shams radio station on May 8, Erekat said that “Hamas is a political, not a terrorist movement.”4

* * *

Notes

1. http://www.wafa.ps/arabic/index.php?action=3Ddetail&id=3D175417

2. http://www.alquds.com/news/article/view/id/497742

3. http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4513537,00.html

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dm5EY559_K3g#t=3D1254
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
About Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi is a senior researcher of the Middle Eas=t = and radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He is a = co-founder of the Orient Research Group Ltd.
http://jcpa.org/article/cold-blooded-murder-or-a-war-on-terror/#sthash.1p26 =Jn35.dpuf

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