This  most incisive piece misses a crucial detail. The PLO and PA never ratified the OSLO accords
As subscriber the now defunct newspaper  Al Hamishmar, published by Mapam, it is hard to  forget their headline in October 1993, from special correspondent in Tunis, Pinhas Inbari.
Inbari provided an eyewitness account that Arafat and his PLO executive council would not ratify the DOP, the Declaration of Principles of the  Oslo accords, which contained a commitment to recognize Israel and stop terror.
Then-Foreign Prime Minister Shimon Peres ignoring the scoop, dispatched Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin to fly to Tunis thanked Arafat for ratifying an accord which the PLO never ratfified.
Colette Avital, then  Israel consul in New York, also spread the word that the PLO had indeed ratified the DOP which it never did.
The Israel Government Press Office  would not issue such a statement, which it knew to be false.
The headline of Al Mishmar of Arafat/PLO non approval of the DOP might have remained a secret.
However,  I gave MK Hanan Porat a  copy of Al HaMishmar with its banner headline.
Hanan proceeded to flash the headline from the rostrum of the Knesset.
Prime Minister Rabin disrupted Porat and asked him why he was reading Al HaMishmar
Inbari proceeded to write for many months about how Arafat and the PLO were proclaiming about  Oslo, which for them meant the sanctification of their claims to lands lost in 1948,& the right of return
After Al HaMishman ceased publicationInbari went on to become the top research analyst for Peace Watch, which tried to keep the peace process honest.
The Peace Watch reports are now posted at:
Peace Watch no longer functions.
Inbari’s Tunis PLO non ratification scoop has been ignored.
The only news outlet to pick up on it was the Winnipeg Jewish Review, edited by Rhonda Spivak, co-founder of Canadians for Peace Now.

1 COMMENT

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Previous articleWater solutions: Lessons from UAE to Israel
Next articleNew Movie, shot on location in Gaza – “The UNRWA child soldier”
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.