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Summary and Analysis
VOP chose to highlight economic issues in its morning news program, featuring four items on the deprivations forced on the Palestinian people by the Israeli closures. The news bulletins continued to lead with detailed coverage of the deaths and funerals of martyrs joining “the stars of the intifada” (i.e. earlier martyrs now in paradise).
The main morning news interview featured PA Information Minister Yasser Abd Rabbo, detailing PA efforts to achieve international condemnation of Israel: not only international condemnation of specific Israeli actions, but broad-based condemnation for all Israeli policies as well as the dispatch of an international protection force. VOP features these diplomatic efforts as “ways to stop Israeli aggression.”
Interview with PA Information Minister Yasser Abd Rabbo: “My visit to New York centered first around a meeting with the international investigation commission headed by the former American senator George Mitchell, and the former Turkish president and the Norwegian foreign minister and his excellency the European (Community) representative Salana. This meeting dealt directly with the duties of the commission in our region…Naturally, the commission has been delayed, and we clearly criticized this delay, and it is also clear that this delay was caused by pressures and tactics taken by Israel to prevent the commission from dealing immediately with its task….
It was assumed that the commission would begin its duties after the Sharm al-Sheikh summit….We therefore believed it should reach the region immediately and that the center of its activities should be here and not outside the region-but here meeting all the parties. Its importance is linked to the Security Council decision condemning Israeli aggression and condemning Israeli violence and calling for an investigation of the crimes committed against the Palestinian people.
Also, we expressed our belief…that the commission mandate was… also on the basis of the Fourth Geneva Convention which has clear provisions protecting a civilian population against acts of war under occupation. That dovetails with the Palestinian situation….And therefore the commission should investigate all Israeli violations -all the aggression and the killing on a daily basis against the Palestinian people-as well as all the forms of the economic blockade practiced three million Palestinians….”
