Following any negotiation, when the principals do not come out and meet the press at the end of an event, that is an indication that no agreement was reached.

Avi Pazner, acting in his capacity as press spokesman for the Prime Minister of Israel said, “They will declare quiet. They will not sign anything. Sharon will not sign anything. The important thing is the ‘quiet.'” He said this to more than 100 reporters who got off the plane at Sharm El Sheikh in the Sinai Peninsula to cover the summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen), Jordanian King Abdullah and Egypt’s President Mubarak.

“At this summit, we will see calls for a cessation to violence” repeated Gideon Meir, a spokesman from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “There will be no cease-fire proclaimed here today.” This was told to reporters as they arrived at an improvised press center established in small villas and tents next to the Movenpick Hotel conference center at Sharm El Sheikh.

In other words, the consistent message in what the official Israeli government spokespeople told the media was a generalized call for an end to violence. However, the summit participants held no press conference. Reporters could not ask the principals at the summit what they meant by an end to violence. Journalists were allowed to follow the summit through video monitors only.

Israeli government officials were quick to point out, during the many hours reporters waited in the press center for a press statement to be released, that the Israeli government expected Abbas to dissolve terrorist organizations and to collect all their weapons, and to arrest any and all wanted terrorists. For this Israel was prepared to make sweeping humanitarian gestures and free more than 500 Palestinians who had been convicted in Israeli courts of law of murder or of attempted murder.

And what if Abbas does not deliver on his promises? Israeli government spokespeople at Sharm could not answer that question.

Israeli government officials were quick to say, however, that Abbas has not arrested or disarmed one single Palestinian terrorist since his election, which took place exactly one month before the Sharm summit.

Israeli government spokespeople did note that Abbas had only ordered that terrorists be “apprehended”, and he released the terrorists after their arrest.

Israeli government officials in Sharm did report to the press that there had been a “reduction in Palestinian incitement” in the official Palestinian media.

Indeed, on the previous Sunday, Feburary 8th, Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom told the Israeli cabinet that there had even been a “reduction of incitement” in the Friday mosque speeches that were broadcast and telecast on the airwaves of the “Voice of Palestine” network of the Palestinian Authority, which is under the direct control of Palestinian leader Abbas.

At the summit, I showed officials of the Israel Foreign Ministry and Israel Prime Minister the text of the mosque speeches from the previous Friday, as reviewed by Dr. Michael Widlanski, who holds his Ph.D. on the subject of the official media of the Palestinian Authority electronic media.

Israeli government officials were surprised when they perused these texts of Friday’s official Palestinian Authority mosque speeches, which called for the violent liberation of all of Palestine, once again this time under the aegis of the new Palestinian leader.

Israeli government officials also did not know that the Fatah organization, also under the leadership of Abbas, had issued a written statement the day before the summit which limited their call for to an end to violence to civilians who live within Israel’s pre-1967 lines, meaning that anyone could be killed in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, or that anyone who dons an IDF uniform in a Tel Aviv bus or coffee shop was fair play for murder.

Israeli government officials also did not seem to know that the official web site of the Palestinian Authority, on the day of the summit, continued to showed cartoons of Prime Minister Sharon eating little Palestinian Arab children for breakfast.

Before the Sharm summit, I interviewed the expert retained by the Israeli government to monitor incitement in the Palestinian Authority.

That expert indicated that he was not being given any administrative framework within which to operate, and that the Israel Ministry of Defense, which was supposed to be supplying him with raw material on Palestinian incitement was simply refusing to share information at this time with the Israeli government officials who are supposed to report about the state of incitement to the media.

After Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz also issued a statement that there had been a “reduction in Palestinian incitement”, I dispatched the text of the mosque speech from Friday and the latest material from ABU MAZEN WATCH to his office, to which our news agency received no response.

Meanwhile, Israeli government officials at the Sharm summit were asked about the legal ramifications of what it meant to free those convicted of murder or attempted murder.

I showed Israeli government officials pictures and descriptions of 25 Israelis murdered over the past two years by convicts who were released by the Israeli government as a gesture of good will, along with lists of more than 1000 Palestinian terrorists who had been freed from Israeli jails in political deals over the past 11 years, and who had returned the terrorist activity.

I asked if the Israeli government would bear criminal responsibility, if any of the new suggested list of convicts were released were then to perform acts of murder.

On this questions of the legal ramifications of the Sharon Plan, the Israel Foreign Ministry officials referred questions of this nature to the officials of the Israeli Prime Minister, who were present at the summit.

Officials of the Israeli Prime Minister referred legal questions of this nature to officials of the Foreign Ministry, who were also present at the summit.

It turned out that the Israeli government retained no legal personnel at the summit, and no Israeli government official would relate to either the moral or legal implications of amnesty for convicted terrorists.

While no Israeli government ministers besides the Prime Minister were present at the Sharm summit, five Palestinian ministers were present.

Two of the Palestinian ministers fielding questions of the press — Saeb Erekat and Nabil Shaath — both indicated that they would not settle for anything less than the unconditional release of Palestinian Arabs who sit in Israeli prisons.

As indicated above, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was not available for questions in Sharm.

And despite repeated statements of all Israeli government officials on tape and on the record, that no ceasefire had been agreed to in Sharm, the public relations firm that works with the prime minister of Israel reported to every possible media outlet that a cease fire had been achieved.

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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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