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Should Daniel Kurtzer Be America’s Next Ambassador to

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

There are hopeful signs regarding the Bush administration’s policy toward Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Unlike his predecessor, President Bush refrained from interfering in the Israeli election and has said that he will not impose deadlines on the Arab-Israeli negotiating process. He has called upon Yasir Arafat to publicly condemn anti-Jewish terrorism, in Arabic, to Arab audiences. And he has used the U.S. veto at the United Nations to block an anti-Israel resolution.

At the same time, there are troubling signs coming from the State Department–it has criticized Israel’s counter-terrorism tactics; it has pressured Israel to give funds to the Palestinian Authority, even though the PA is waging war against the Jewish State; it has implied a moral equivalence between Palestinian Arab aggression and Israeli self-defense; it has not yet offered a single reward for information leading to the capture of Palestinian Arab killers of Americans, even though it routinely offers such rewards to capture terrorists who kill Americans elsewhere around the world.

There seems to be a struggle underway between competing views within the administration regarding Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. In this context, the selection of America’s next ambassador to Israel is especially important. The ambassador’s reports to Washington play a crucial role in shaping the administration’s policies.

That’s why it is so disappointing to hear that veteran State Department official Daniel Kurtzer is a leading candidate for the post of ambassador to Israel.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with someone who has had considerable personal experience with Kurtzer: Yitzhak Shamir, who served as prime minister of Israel for most of the period from 1983-1992. Mr. Shamir told me: “Kurtzer frequently pressured Israel to make one-sided concessions to the Arabs; he constantly blamed Israel for the absence of Mideast peace, and paid little or no attention to the fact that the Palestinians were carrying out terrorist attacks and openly calling for the destruction of Israel.”

In fact, Kurtzer’s bias goes all the way back to his graduate school days. In his Ph.D. dissertation (Columbia University, 1976), Kurtzer said Israel’s counter-terror actions were the “catalysts to interstate violence,” and blamed Israel for “the radicalization of the Palestinians to violence” (p.253). Throughout the dissertation, Kurtzer referred to Palestinian Arab terrorists as “guerrillas,” not as terrorists–even though he was discussing the groups that carried out such horrific massacres as the Lod Airport massacre of Puerto Rican tourists and the slaughter of Israeli athletes (including an American) at the Munich Olympics.

After joining the State Department, Kurtzer had the opportunity to put his opinions into practice. According to the New York Times (January 13, 1989), during 1988, when the PLO was engaged in constant terrorism against Israel, Kurtzer was insisting “that the PLO under Yasir Arafat was moving in a moderate direction.” Kurtzer became “a key figure in the process of formulating” the U.S. decision to recognize the PLO in December 1988. (Kurtzer’s claim of PLO “moderation” proved to be completely mistaken, because the PLO continued its terrorism and in early 1990, the U.S. broke off its dealings with Arafat.)

In 1992, syndicated columnist Douglas Bloomfield revealed (Washington Jewish Week, December 17, 1992) that in a recent meeting, Kurtzer “lectured Israeli negotiators” that “they should make additional concessions to the unresponsive Palestinians. Kurtzer and the other Jewish State Department officials told the Israelis they were speaking to them as ‘family’ and in their best interest. The Israelis were outraged and the session got very heated.”

Background Analysis: The Proposed Appointment of Daniel Kurtzer as US Ambassador to Israel

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

WASHINGTON – An Orthodox Jew who was a leading member of former President Clinton’s peace negotiating tream looks set to be appointed ambasador to Israel this week, angering powerful supporters of the Jewish state in the Bush administration.

Daniel Kurtzer, who has kept a kosher kitchen in Cairo as U.S. ambassador to Egypt, is expected to be announced this week as the next U. S. ambassador to Israel. He will be the second Jew to hold that post, following his longtime associate and friend Martin Indyk, who held it twice under Clinton.

Kurtzer’s apointment is a victory for Secretary of State Colin Powell and his director of policy planning Richard Haass.

Powell has sought to maintain continuity as much as possible with the policies of Clinton and the first Bush administration around the world. He has also sought to promote to key policymaking veterans of the U.S. foreign service, which Kurtzer is.

Kurtzer has also worked closely with Haass on promoting the Oslo Peace Process and on advocating continued strong U.S. support of Egypt. He is expected to work closely and well with William Burns, the U.S. ambassador to Jordan whom Powell has chosen to run Middle East policy at the State Deparmtent as head of the Bureau of Near East Affairs.

But Kurtzer’s expected appointment has angered hawkish, strong supporters of Israel in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. He is seen by them as one of the key champions architects of the Oslo Peace Process in the Clinton administration, and as an integral part of the tiny, close-knit team led by former peace envoy Dennis Ross and Indyk who energetically pushed U.S. hands-on paritcipation to further that process.

These figures include Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his powerful and influential deputy Paul Wolfowtiz and key figures in Congress in leading and shaping Republican attitudes on foreign policy, especially Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Rep Chris Cox in the House of Representatives. Kurtzer’s appointment will have to be confirmed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Helms chairs. Helms is expected to go along with the appointment publicly in order not to defy or anger the new president of his own party. Burt he is not an admirer of Kurtzer.

The distrust of Kurtzer is rooted in his refusal to pressure Egypt over the increasingly blatant anti-Semitism in its government-influenced media.

He himself was often the butt of anti-Semitic caricatures in the Egyptian press over his own strict adherance to Orthodox Jewish practice. Kurtzer has been a Foreign Service Officer, or career diplomat, of the United States for a quarter of a century and has focused on the Israel-Arab peace process. But he has been much more high profile, poltiiczed and cotnroversial than most career service officers.

Seen as a popular and likable team player at the State Department, he was an early, and outspoken adocate of Israeli negotiations with the Palestine Liberaiton Organization.

In 1989, three years before the Oslo Peace Process began, Kurtzer was a major contributer to a then-highly controversial speech by Secretary of State James A. Baker III to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that called on then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and other right wing Israeli leaders, including currrent Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to abandon the “unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel” that included the West Bank and Gaza.

Kurtzer remains controversial. This month, he angered many congressional Republicans who want to reduce America’s $2 billion a year aid to Egypt by describing the U.S.-Egypt relationship as “rock solid.”

He told the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt in a speech, “Egypt and the United States continue to share fundamental interests in common, and our governments continue to value this as a strategic relationship.”

Republican leaders found the speech particularly infuriating because they were still seething that Egypt had refused to allow the crippled destroyer, USS Cole to sail the short way into the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal after it was the victim of a terrorist attack last year by Islamic suicide bombers in the Yemeni port of Aden.

Kurtzer is expected, if confirmed, to act on behalf of Secretary Powell as a restraining influence and counterweight to the pro-Israel Pentagon hawks.

But so far in Washington, the hawks, backed by Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, have won major policy battles on North Korea, Russia, China and Iraq at Powell’s expense, even though Powell has had a free hand to make key diplomatic appointments, such as Kurtzer’s, in State.

Washington Times — March 27, 2001

“Voice of Palestine” claims Shalhevet murdered by her mother

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

For a full week, following the sniper slaying of 10-month old Shalhevet Pass in Hebron, the official Palestinian Authority press made no mention of the killing.

On April 2, 2001, the morning after Shalhevet’s funeral, journalist Michael Widlanski, completing his PHD on the subject of the official media of the Palestinian Authority, provided the following excerpt from the radio commentary of senior Voice of Palestine commentator Youssef al-Kazaz, broadcast on the Palestinian Authority flagship radio station, Voice of Palestine, on 2 April 2001 at 8:39 a.m.:

“On the matter of the baby settler who was killed in Hebron a few days ago, we already said that her death was a fishy action and there is information according to which this baby was retarded and it was her mother who killed her in order to get rid of her.”

Gideon Meir, deputy director-general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs division of public affairs commented that: “The things that were broadcast on Voice of Palestine are testimony to just how low the Palestinians are willing to go in order to win world public opinion. It would be bad enough if they used false material in their propaganda but to stick Israel with such a lie is such insolence and gall that it raises the contempt of any human being.”

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director of IMRA , “Independent Media Review & Analysis”, provided the Gideon Meir comment.

A “Sane” Visit by Amnesty International in Jerusalem?

By
David Bedein
-

The secretary general of Amnesty International, Mr. Pierre Sane (pronounced Sa-Ney), gave a press conference this week during his visit.

Sane reported about his visit to Arab homes that had been shelled in Gaza, to Arab homes that had been shelled in Beit Jalla, about his meeting with Arab victims of violence from the past few months, about his meeting with PLO leader Yassir Arafat and his meeting with the director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Mr. Avie Gil.

Sane presented a human rights agenda for the peace process in which Amnesty International endorsed the PLO position for the Right of Return to homes lost in 1948, which Sane defined as a “fundamental human right that politicians have no right to negotiate”.

I asked Mr. Sane if he would be visiting Jewish victims. He had no reply.

I asked Sane if he would visit Gilo in addition to visiting Beit Jalla. He again had no reply.

I showed Mr. Sane the PLO map of the Right of Return that the PLO sells at the PLO Orient House headquarters in Jerusalem, where the 531 Arab villages are “returned” to replace Israeli cities, collective farms and woodlands.

In light of this map, which essentially obliterates Israel, I asked Sane if he still supported the Right of Return.

Sane said that he did, because Amnesty supports the right of return of ALL populations who were dislocated by war.

I asked if that applied to the three million Germans who were forced out of their homes and villages after 1945, only three years before 650,000 (the highest UN estimate) of Palestinian Arabs fled their homes in 1948. Sane would not answer.

Sane described his meeting with Arafat concerning legal reforms and human rights in glowing terms, however.

In that light, I asked Sane if Amnesty would ask Arafat to reverse his policies of granting asylum to wanted killers who committed crimes in Israel and escaped to the safe haven of the PA. I also asked Sane if Amnesty would ask Arafat to stop releasing convicted killers from PA jails. Sane had no response to either question.

Sane did express his disappointment that he was not being warmly received by the Israeli government.

I wonder why.

Exchange of Letters Between Imra and Amnesty International

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

IMRA sent two notes with questions to Amnesty International:

First message:

Dear R Campbel of Amnesty International, Further to our telephone conversation, the following is our question:

The following line appears in your report “Israel/Occupied Territories: Amnesty International condemns state assassinations” of 21.2.2001:

“International humanitarian law prohibits the targeting of civilians. A Fatah member of the Palestinian Legislative Council told Amnesty International delegates that settlements, being built in Occupied Territories, were considered by Fatah as military targets. Amnesty International stressed that the houses and those living in settlements who were not carrying arms could not be considered as military targets.”

Does this mean, in the view of Amnesty International, that settlers who carry weapons for protection when they drive on the roads in the territories can be considered a military target?

By the same token, if a family of settlers keeps a weapon in their home does Amnesty International consider their home a military target?

Best regards,

Dr. Aaron Lerner – IMRA
Tel 972-9-7604719
Fax 972-3-5480092
imra@netvision.net.il
www.imra.org.il

Second message:

Dear Rachel Campbel,

I look forward to receiving the reply.

Three additional questions:

1. According to page 29 of your report “Armed Palestinians who directly participate in hostilities for example by shooting at Israeli soldiers or civilians – lose their protected status for the duration of the attack.. Because they are not combatants, the fact that they participate in an armed attack at an earlier point cannot justify targeting them for death later on.”

By Amnesty International standards which of the following groups qualifies as “civilian”?

  • Members of the Palestinian Authority security services
  • Members of (Yasser Arafat’s) Fatah militias
  • Members of Hamas and other militias not formally associated with the PA or the PA leadership

2. The same page of the report states that “there are no Palestinian objects in the Occupied Territories that meet the criteria of military objectives. Certain objects may be attacked while they are being used for firing upon Israeli forces. But they revert to their status as civilian objects as soon as they are no longer being used for launching attacks.”

By Amnesty International standards, are the Palestinian Authority armed security forces and their facilities to be considered “civilian?”?

By Amnesty International Standards, how how much time must pass for an object to gain the status of “no longer being used for launching attacks”? An hour? A day? A week?

Best regards,

Dr. Aaron Lerner – IMRA

Reply from Amnesty International
From:
To:
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 7:02 p.m.
—– Forwarded by Rachel Campbell/I.S. / Amnesty International on 03/04/01 17:58 —–
To: Liz Hodgkin/I.S. / Amnesty International@Intsec 03/04/01 17:44
Subject: answers for Aaron Lerner(Document link: Rachel Campbell)

Dear Dr Lerner,

Thank you very much for your e-mails with your questions concerning our report. Here are some answers to your questions. Please note that our standards in the questions you raise are based on the UN Basic Principles for the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials which state that “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”

1) Relating to the status of settlers.

We consider that settlers, like Palestinians, even when bearing arms, are not legitimate targets and that they should not be targeted with lethal fire unless they are placing other lives in imminent danger.

2) Re “Civilians”.

All the groups you mention (ie members of PA security services, members of Fatah militias, members of Hamas etc) can be considered civilians. There is no Palestinian state and there are no Palestinian armed forces, so the members of these groups remain civilians under international humanitarian law. However, we do consider that they have obligations under fundamental principles of international humanitarian and human rights law and we have repeatedly called on them to adhere to these standards (and not to target civilians, etc). We consider that, as with settlers above, they should only be targeted with lethal fire if they are putting other lives in imminent danger.

Re the time frame to gain status of “no longer being used for launching attacks”: We don’t have a particular time frame. You could look at the ICRC commentary of Protocol I additional to the Geneva Conventions for guidance which is what Amnesty would do.

I hope you find these answers helpful.

Explosives Found in “Red Crescent” Ambulance

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

A surprise roadblock manned by reservists near Ramallah exposed a Tanzim attempt to smuggle a ten kilo explosives belt hidden inside a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance.

Despite sweeping denials by the head of the Red Crescent in Ramallah, who described Israel’s allegation as “lies of the occupation,” officials in Israel from the Red Cross — the organization also sponsors the Red Crescent — admitted that they were shown information corroborating Israel’s allegations.

On Wednesday morning reserve soldiers at a roadblock on the road leading to the Kalandiya intersection from Nablus noticed a Red Crescent ambulance. The soldiers ordered the driver to stop, but he continued driving and was stopped only after he was pursued. The driver behaved strangely and after a short time admitted to the soldiers that an explosives belt was hidden inside the ambulance. The soldiers immediately took out a mother and her children who were also inside, and the woman was taken for questioning.

It turned out that the driver was a Tanzim activist wanted by the GSS. In his interrogation he admitted that he had agreed — for a sum — to bring the explosives belt in the ambulance and to bring it to Tanzim activists in Ramallah. The woman in the car was his sister-in-law and the explosives belt, comprised of 16 pipes and containing ten kilo of explosives, was hidden under the stretcher on which one of her children was lying. “The belt was ready for a terror attack. All that needed to be done was to hand it over to a suicide bomber,” a senior security source said, who also praised the soldiers’ conduct and their alertness.

Israeli security sources said that there has been information for several months on the use of Red Crescent workers to pass weapons and armed men in ambulances almost freely through IDF roadblocks, exploiting the fact that there are clear instructions to try not to hinder medical teams in the territories from operating.

Only a few months ago it was learned that a Red Crescent woman volunteer in Ramallah named Wafa Idris transported a very large bomb into Jerusalem in a Red Crescent ambulance. [… ] At the time, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent said there was no proof to Israel’s allegations. But the picture changed around on Wednesday and the Red Cross expressed great regret at the use made of the Red Crescent ambulance to smuggle an explosives belt from Ramallah.

Israeli security sources believe that Tanzim-Fatah leaders, including Marwan Barghouti, intended to give the belt to a suicide bomber from the El-Aksa Martyrs Brigades to carry out a terror attack inside Israel. This attack may have been scheduled to take place during Passover in Jerusalem.

This piece ran in Maariv on March 29, 2002

Does the New PLO Entity Recognize Israel?

By
David Bedein
-

At a staff meeting in September 1993, our news agency, whose purpose it is to provide continuing factuql coverage for the foreign media, made a policy decision: to find out firsthand how the new Palestinian Arab entity would view Israel, and to determine if their recognition of Israel would indeed be real. We raised funds to hire Palestinian journalists and Arabic-speaking Israelis.

Over the past seven years:

We covered all of Arafat’s speeches, some of which we filmed;
We monitored public statements of the PA;
We watched their new TV station and listened to their new radio station;
We bought their new (revised) maps and their new school textbooks;
We attended the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo in (’94?)
We made it our business to make timely visits to the UNRWA refugee camps;
We followed the PA”s new religious leaders and participated in Islamic-Jewish dialogue;
We visited PA military bases and interviewed PA security officials;
We covered the PNC meeting in……, which met in special session to cancel the PLO Covenant.

Seven and-a-half years later, we can now answer the question of whether or not the new PLO entity recognizes Israel, based on our hands-on coverage in each of the foregoing areas.

1. Arafat’s Speeches: The theme that Arafat has consistently preached throughout the past seven years revolves around the liberation of “all of Palestine”. When Arafat mentions his commitment to “the peace of the brave”, it is in terms of “the right of return” for five million Palestinian Arab refugees to flood Israel and to take over all of Jerusalem. He never mentions “East Jerusalem”.

Arafat has never made a statement to his people in the Arabic language which even h ints at recognition of the State of Israel, nor has he ever asked for a cessation of terror. In November 1996, I asked Arafat when he would ever speak in Arabic about recognizing Israel or denouncing terror. He replied that he does so all the time, to which I responded that we have no record of such. I asked Arafat the same question in November 1998 at a U.S. State Department briefing as I held a thick booklet of his words in praise of terror, following the Wye Conference in 1998. His unfazed (unblinking, immediate) reply was that he “loved the Jews”.

2. Public Statements of the Palestinian Authority: We have subscribed to the position papers of the Palestinian Authority since its inception in 1993, and followed the Fatah website since it was inaugurated in 1998. Seeing these reports, one prominent Israeli peace leader observed that what bothered him was not the themes of war that one might expect in the intermediate stages of a rock peace process, but rather that they were so entirely devoid of peaceful sentiments.

3. Palestinian Authority Radio and TV: Since its inception in the Fall of 1995, we have followed PA radio and PA TV. Indeed, a laboratory that monitors the PA radio and TV – not connected with our office – now operates full time. Although the air waves for both PA radio and TV were provided by the IDF and the initial funds for the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation came through the U.S. government and visiting UJA groups, the official Palestinian Authority electronic media regularly calls for Israel’s destruction, the liberation of Palestine, and praises terror. In 1997, I arranged for a colleague in the peace movement to meet with Radwan Abu Ayash, the head of PBC, to ask him why the official media of the PA was devoid of any program for peace. Ayash responded that the Palestinian people were not ready for any such program.

4. Maps: On the maps of the new Palestinian state sold at the PLO headquarters at Orient House in Jerusalem, the name “Israel” does not appear. The new Palestine replaces the State of Israel. All 531 Arab villages that were abandoned in 1948 are returned to their locations within Israel proper while hundreds of Jewish communities have been obliterated. The current tourism map of the P.A. Ministry of Tourism, financed by the United Nations Development Program for Palestine, simply wipes Israel off the map and shows all of the Old City of Jerusalem under PLO control, with no mention of Israel whatsoever. On May 15, 2000, our agency brought Arafat spokesman Dr. Walid Anad (sp?) To speak. Anad said in his defense, “Well, your Israeli maps make no mention of Palestine,” at which I whipped out the new Israel Ministry of Tourism map, which clearly delineates the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

5. School Books: In September 2000, our agency bought copies of the new school books of the Palestinian Authority, and submitted them for translation and evaluation by professional agencies in Jerusalem. These new school books were supposed to recognize Israel. No such luck. The maps and the curriculum portray all of Palestine as one great Islamic state while the old school books that specifically instruct school children in the art of “jihad” and holy war remain in the school curriculum.

6. Nobel Peace Prize: At the much-celebrated Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo in December 1994, I asked Yassir Arafat if this prize meant that he would indeed crush the Hamas and cancel the PLO covenant. He responded very matter-of-factly that he made no such commitment.

7. UNRWA Refugee Camps: One of the great hopes of the peace process was that the new Palestinian entity would absorb the Arab refugees who have been held in the UNRWA camps for more than 50 years under the premise and promise of the right of return to the l948 homes that no longer exist. Our hands-on reporting for the past seven years has conveyed the opposite reality: the PA has disenfranchised the UNRWA camps, depriving the Arab refugees of millions of dollars of health, education, welfare and construction assistance, since the PA with its ideology of the right of return does not subscribe to the notion that Palestinian Arab refugees should be repatriated to the West Bank or to Gaza. Imagine the shock that one of my staffers experienced when she witnessed a Palestinian doctor in an UNRWA clinic refusing medical service to Arab refugee patients on the grounds that they can go back to where they came from – which is now the city of Ashkelon.

8. Islam: When Arafat appointed new clerics to man the mosques under his control, the initial press reaction was hopeful -perhaps this would provide a balance to the preaching of terror by Hamas clerics. Little did we know that the Arafat-appointed clerics would launch calls to JIHAD against the Jews with greater ferocity. As a participant in Islamic-Jewish dialogue, I was struck by the dissonance between the genuine grass-roots Palestinian Moslem interest in reconciliation and the incendiary messages they were receiving from the Palestinian Authority.

9. Palestinian Security Services: The reason why Israel, the U.S., Canada and the E.U. provided weapons and weapons training for Arafat’s security services was based on the assumption that Arafat would use his forces against the Hamas. It was therefore surprising for us to report the PBC news item in May, 1995 that the PA was going to supply Hamas with weapons; and the Al Aharam December, 1995 news item that reported a PA-Hamas military and tactical agreement. Any visit or interview with Palestinian Authority security officials reveals that their goal is to liberate all of Palestine, despite any interim security co-operation with Israel

10. The PNC Council: We dispatched a TV crew to cover the historic meeting of the Palestinian National Council in April, 1996, a meeting which was reported to have cancelled the PLO covenant calling for Israel’s destruction. The United States Congress had mandated that Arafat would not be allowed into the U.S. unless that covenant was cancelled. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk misinformed President Clinton when he reported that Arafat had cancelled the covenant. Our video, which we sent to Indyk and later screened in the Knesset and the U.S. Congress, told quite another story when it revealed that the PNC had, in fact, merely voted to establish a committee to CONSIDER amendments to the PLO covenant.

In short, although the Israeli government has used the past seven years of a peace process to prepare the Israeli people for peace, the PLO and its nascent Palestinian Authority have oriented the Palestinian Arab people to the continued non-recognition of Israel while preparing their people for war.

The logical question would be whether Israel has made any significant changes in its academic currriculum during this negotiation process. Senior Hebrew University Education Professor, Amos Yovel, a founder of Peace Now, was commissioned by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace to conduct an exhaustive survey of Israeli school books, to see if peace is being taught, and to determine if Arabs are being demonized in the Israeli school curriculum.

On January 8, 2001, Professor Yovel presented his study of 200 Israeli school books which he had culled from both religious and secular Israeli schools. He declared that he had found no evidence of racism or demonization of Arabs in the curriculum that is being taught in the Israeli school system, and he expressed satisfaction that the Israel educational system was preparing a new generation of Israeli Jewish students for peace and reconciliation.

(Studies of the portrayal of Israelis in PA school books, and of Arabs in Israeli school books both appear on the same website: www.edume.org)

It takes two to dance the tango of mutual recognition and reconciliation. Only one of the parties is dancing.

Canada’s role in the ‘right of return’

By
David Bedein
-

Jerusalem – A cardinal principle of the Arab information campaign against Israel since the inception of the Jewish state 53 years ago has focused on the plight of Palestinian Arabs who left their homes and villages while seven Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state.

Following the 1948 war, United Nations Resolution 194 was enacted to assure Palestinian Arab refugees that they have the “inalienable right of return” to the homes and villages they left in 1948. Under the premise and promise of the inalienable right of return, the United Nations and neighbouring Arab countries have confined Palestinian Arab refugees to the squalor of UN refugee camps to this very day.

Indeed, a UN refugee aid agency, UNRWA, was created, whose purpose is not to rehabilitate and resettle refugees, but instead to prepare them for the return to their homes of 1948, whether they still exist or not.

This principle has even been adapted by the Palestinian Authority, which has forbidden Arab refugees from moving into homes and villages in the West Bank or Gaza because that would violate their right to return to Jaffa, Haifa and more than 500 villages inside pre-1967 Israel.

In December, 2000, the Palestinian Authority issued a new 56-page illustrated brochure, Witness to History: The Plight and Promise of Palestinian Refugees, with an introduction by PLO spokeswoman Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, promoting the right of Palestinian Arab refugees to repossess the 531 villages they lost in 1948, even if those villages have been absorbed by Israeli cities, collective farms or woodlands.

That the PA would issue such a brochure calling for the implementation of UN “right of return” Resolution 194 is not surprising.

What is surprising is that the brochure was funded and distributed by the Canadian government, through its Canadian Representative Office in Ramallah. This office, which I have had the opportunity to visit, acts as a de facto Canadian embassy to the Palestinian Authority. Last May, when I met with Tim Martin, the chief representative and his assistant John Laine, they both indicated they understood the Palestinian commitment to the idea of the “right of return,” and they handed me the April 2000, booklet printed by the PA on the subject.

Mr. Laine went on to describe in great detail (and with great pride) how the Canadian government was actively trying to help with job training programs in these refugee camps.

A year later, it would seem Canada’s mandate has been expanded from helping reduce Palestinian refugee unemployment to helping fan the flames of a Palestinian refugee war to conquer all of Palestine.

The brochure, replete with pictures of suffering Palestinian Arab refugees over the years, calls Israel’s “denial of the right of return” a continuing breach of international law, while defining the entire history of the Middle East conflict in terms of the “Palestinian dispossession and will to survive.” The 1948 war is defined as if Israel’s purpose was to kick out Arabs, without mentioning that seven Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state with the support of local Palestinian Arab villagers.

UN refugee education is described in innocuous terms, “their lifeline to the future,” without any mention of the schoolbooks published by UNRWA that encourage a new generation to liberate all of Palestine.

Canada is the gavel holder for the refugee working group that was established to negotiate the future of Palestinian Arab refugees under the Oslo process in 1993.

By publishing “Witness to History: The Plight and Promise of Palestinian Refugees”, Canada appears to have taken a partisan PLO position that will compromise any constructive role the country may play in solving the tempestuous refugee issue of the Middle East peace process.

David Bedein is Media Research Analyst and Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem.

This article ran in the National Post of Canada on march 23, 2001

Canadian Officials Confirm: Their Government Financed “Right of Return” Brochure

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Montreal, March 25 (JTA) Canadian officials have confirmed that their government financed a brochure calling for Palestinians to realize the “Right of Return” by taking back homes and property lost inside Israel during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

An official with Canada’s Foreign Affairs department, however, denied charges that the Canadian government took a leading role in producing “Witness to History: The Plight and Promise of Palestinian Refugees.”

The brochures were printed by an nongovernmental organization run by prominent Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, which receives funding from the Canada Fund for Local Institutions, the official said.

The 56 page, illustrated brochure calls for Palestinians to repossess the homes they lost in 1948. The Palestinian insistence that refugees and their descendants of some 3 million to 4 million people in all have the right to return to homes lost in the fighting that surrounded the birth of the State of Israel helped sink peace talks under the last Israeli government.

Israel sees acceptance of the Right of Return as demographic suicide, and the Palestinian insistence on the Right of Return as a veiled call to eliminate the Jewish state.

An article by that ran over the weekend in Canada’s conservative National Post newspaper, claimed that the brochure was “published and distributed by the Canadian government.”

According to Bedein, the inside page of the brochure states that the Canadian government was responsible for publishing and distributing the document through its Canadian Representative Office in Ramallah. The brochure features an introduction by Ashrawi calling for the Palestinian return to 531 villages lost during Israel’s War of Independence, many of which no longer exist.

Carl Schwenger, a spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Ottawa, stressed that “our take is different” than Bedein’s.

Schwenger noted that Canada has been a consistent backer of U.N. Security Council Resolution 194 which recognizes the Palestinians’ “inalienable right of return” yet supports attempts to solve the Palestinian refugee problem by settling them elsewhere in the world.

Canada remains the gavel-holder for the working group established under the Oslo process in 1993 to negotiate the future of Palestinian refugees, Bedein notes.

“To imply that this office” in Ramallah “handed the brochure out is incorrect,” Schwenger said. “And they also did not advocate the positions in the brochure. In fact, the Foreign Affairs Minister” John Manley “was burned in effigy by pro-Palestinian protesters for suggesting that some refugees might wish to come to Canada.”

The brochure was published by Ashrawi’s Palestinian Institute for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, Schwenger said, which received “between $1,000 and $10,000” toward publishing costs from the Canadian fund.

Ashrawi’s stated proposal was to promote UNRWA, a U.N. agency established after the 1948 war to care for Palestinian refugees – as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, Schwenger said.

Canadian legislator Irwin Cotler, a noted human rights advocate, said he had recently returned from a visit to the Canadian Representative Office in Ramallah, which acts as a de facto Canadian Embassy to the Palestinian Authority.

Cotler met there with the office’s chief representative, Tim Martin, and an assistant, John Laine. In his article, Bedein accuses the pair of “helping fan the flames of a refugee war to conquer all of Palestine” through their backing of the Palestinian cause.

During his March 9 meeting with Martin and Laine, Cotler said, he saw a book on IsraeliPalestinian peace negotiations.

“There was but one copy and I asked them if I could borrow it,” Cotler recalled. “They gave it to me, but were concerned that they might be seen as distributing it.”

In addition, Cotler said, “they referred as well to another booklet – the one in question, I assume, which they also stressed they did not publish or distribute.”

According to a source close to the issue, however, Martin and Laine’s Palestinian sympathies are so pronounced that they likely will be replaced by the summer.

This story ran on the March 26, 2001 wire of the JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Palestinians Deny Killing Jewish Infant in Hebron

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Excerpts From Jordan Times:
Palestinians deny killing Jewish infant * Israel Journalists ejected from Arab summit * Arab League ineffective and bankrupt.

Headlines:
“Israel blockades Hebron to punish Palestinians after death of baby.”

Quote from Text:
“Palestinian cabinet minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, in Amman for the Arab summit, told Reuters there was `no evidence’ the baby was killed by Palestinians.”

Excerpts:
Israel blamed the Palestinian National Authority for the death of a Jewish settler infant in Hebron and decided to impose a blockade on the city to punish the Palestinian population of the city.

The PNA said there was no evidence the child was killed by Palestinians and blamed the violence on Israel’s ocupation of Palestinian territories.

The occupation army also ordered the evacuation of the Abu Sneinah Arab district in the city [IMRA: Which overlooks the Jewish area.] ahead of a possible military response to the death of the baby, a radio report said.

After the baby’s death the Israeli army opened fire on the Abu Sneinah district injuring at least on Palestinian, according to Palestinian sources.

Palestinian cabinet minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, in Amman for the Arab summit, told Reuters there was “no evidence” the baby was killed by Palestinians, and blamed the violence on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, blaming the Palestinian Authority for the killing, decided to impose a blockade on the city. Colonel Noam Tivon, brigade commander in Hebron, said a Palestinian sniper had opened fire on the baby and her father who were standing in front of their home in the illegal Jewish settlement of Avraham Avinu in the divided city.

[IMRA: Tivon did not say the settlement is “illegal”.]

This piece was researched, located and distributed by Dr. Joseph Lerner, Co-Director IMRA

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