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Orient House Orients the Visitor to the Palestinian State

By
David Bedein
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The Orient House, which serves as the PLO headquarters in Jerusalem, provides the visitor to Jerusalem with an understanding of how the PLO conceptualizes a Palestinian state.

The Orient House, with a complement of diplomatic vehicles that are usually parked outside the building, is located just off of Nablus Road, a block away from the American Colony Hotel, three blocks from the US consulate in East Jerusalem, and only a twenty minute walk from Jaffa Road in downtown West Jerusalem.

The “visiting dignitaries” department of the Orient House provides the visitor with a complimentary poster entitled. “The Dehieshe Refugee Camp” that pictures a little girl in a hut in the UNRWA Deheishe refugee camp, located just south of Bethlehem. Under the the picture of the little girl is an appeal,“Let her return home:UN RESOLUTION #194”, with a list of Arab villages that are now inside or nearby Jerusalem that were abandoned in 1948 on the left side of the poster, and a statement, “The Refugees who live in Deheishe come from these villages”. Rounding off the poster is a quote from Pope Paul II from his March 2000 visit to Dehieshe, when he declared that “No one should forget the tragedies that hgave marked your history and your sufferings”.

The Orient House pr office also provides the visitor with an very informative multicolored 37 page brochure published in April, 2000 by the PLO on the subject of the 3.5 million Palestinian refugees, which presents the PLO position on the refugees, which is hat all refugees must have the right to return to their homes and villages from 1948.

The manager of the Orient House press office, Nabel Aweidah, together with Khalil Tafakji, a department director of the Arab Studies Society headed by Faisal Husseini, provide a map reprinted only three weeks ago of the Palestinian state for a fee of fifteen shekels.

That map, incidentally, which was originally published in 1988, includes all of Palestine, makes no mention Israel, and features every Arab village that was abandoned in 1948.

A new addition to the Orient House that Tafakji is pleased to show his guests is the special computer map room of Orient House where computer operators run five state of the art computers that locate Arab owned homes from before 1948, and connect them to the deed-owners of these homes who have been living in UNRWA refugee camps since 1950. The Orient House’s chief computer operator has been focusing lately on Arab-owned homes from Talbia, Katamon, Bakka. Tafakji says that he will soon turn his attention to locating Arab-owned homes throughout Israel and connecting them to UNRWA refugee camp residents.

All in all, a visit to the Orient House provided the visitor with insight into the official Palestinian perspective of the peace process at this time.

Anti-Barak Rhetoric in the Egyptian Media

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Since the collapse of the Clinton-Assad summit in Geneva, both the government and the opposition press in Egypt have been increasingly critical of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The criticism takes the form of typical anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic rhetoric. The common theme holds that Barak is worse than Netanyahu. While this could be merely a matter of political tactics aimed at prompting a change in Israel’s policy, it still marks a serious change in the attitude towards the present Israeli government. Following are two examples:

Barak is like Nero

In the government daily Al-Akhbar,[1] Dr. Said Al-Kurdi compares Barak to Nero:

“The Roman emperor Nero, whose [reign] was characterized by despotism and cruelty, set fire to Rome in 64 AD. The Israeli emperor Ehud Barak, whose reign is characterized by deceit and light-headedness, has begun setting fire to Lebanon and plans to torch the entire Middle East…”

“Comparing the two arsonists is valid [and] uncovers the similarities between the goals of the Romans and the Israelis…”

“Nero burnt Rome claiming that the city was ‘dirty.’ He shifted the blame to the Christians and persecuted Christianity. We emphasize the word ‘dirty’ and move to Israeli emperor Ehud Barak, who, like other Israelis, thinks Israel is ‘an island of cleanliness in a sea of dirt.’ [Former Israeli Prime Minister] Shimon Peres said this at the Davos conference. Therefore, the Middle East must be completely burnt…beginning with Lebanon, while blaming Hizbullah and the Palestinians fighting for the liberation of their land from…a state that seems more like a gang of robbers in the heart of a civilized region.”

“The Middle Eastern Nero thinks in terms of the double standards that prohibit a Jew from harming his fellow Jew, but allow him to harm a non-Jew….”

“The Christian Holy Book…warned us that the heretics from amongst the Israelites are a ‘rebellious [sect]’….The Koran warned us, in Allah’s words: “Thou shalt certainly find the bitterest of people in enmity against the believers [Muslims] to be the Jews.’[2] …Jews do not fulfill the treaties they sign, and they should not be trusted because they are a nation of vagabonds filled with hatred toward the entire world. Therefore, the world must know the psychological nature of the Israeli emperor before he explodes in anger, setting fire to the entire Middle East.”

“It seems that Israel has forgotten the lesson it was taught by the Egyptian army in October [1973]… Although Israel is now ‘burning’ on a low flame — the flame of hatred of the Arabs and the world — the Arab summit must not be delayed and it must examine new methods. [For] when the fire breaks out, it will devour its entire surroundings indiscriminately.”

Barak — Worse than Pharoah

‘Abbas Al-Tarabily, editor of the opposition daily Al-Wafd, which is affiliated with the secular nationalist Wafd party, writes[3]:

“Because of what former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did to us for over three years, we cursed him and prayed that Allah would remove him from our path — the path of peace. The early elections in Israel gave us a chance from heaven to make use of Israel’s democracy…we hoped for his [arrival], we wrote articles and songs of praise…”

“We all wanted Netanyahu’s downfall because of his rigidity, his hostile policy, his objection to the peace process, and because he ruined every opportunity [to promote peace]. Everyone who attacked Netanyahu said that no Israeli could ever be worse.”

“However, it turned out that all the Arab hopes were misplaced. Time has shown that Barak is worse than Netanyahu; he is more hostile to peace than Netanyahu. He supports the extremist settlers as if he were their leader. [Barak], who we thought would be Moses, turned out to be Pharaoh. In fact, even Pharaoh was not as despotic as Barak. It is enough to recall that in his nine month reign, he has built more houses for settlers than Netanyahu did in three years.”

“However, Barak is not satisfied with disrupting the peace process, like his predecessor did. He has torn up all the agreements signed by his predecessors. It has reached the point where he dashed the agreement he himself had signed. Moreover, he ignores those who witnessed the signing, like Egypt and the US.”

“What else can be said?”

“In the past we spoke of hawks and doves in Israel, and about one hand covered with a silk glove, and another which is an iron fist. But they are all Zionists from head to toe; there is no difference between the extremists who founded the Zionist state, and those who followed them and protected it, or those who made a commitment to ‘expand’ its borders.”

“In the past we heard [Arabs] who promised to cast Israel into the sea, and who referred to it as the ‘so-called state,’ or as the ‘state of gangs.'”

“Today…we try to regain the land like beggars, one meter after the other… Will we get to the Sea of Galilee, where it had been since the dawn of history? Will the sovereignty of sister Syria reach its northeastern shore? Barak is determined to prevent Syria from getting there…even though we speak of only one quarter of the lake.”

“It proves that they are all Zionists, from Ben-Gurion to Barak. It is just happenstance that they belong to this or that political party. Their faces have changed, but their strategy is one and the activity for its completion is at full speed…”

“What happened with Barak, who we prayed to take Netanyahu down, brings us to call him ‘Barahu’ [i.e. Barak-Netanyahu]. It is sufficient to remember that it was Ehud Barak who wore prostitute’s clothes, painted his face, and put on a wig when he led in the murder of Kamal ‘Adwan and his comrades in Beirut.”

“What will we do now, after it has turned out that they are all thieves, that is to say, Zionists?”

[1] Al-Akhbar (Egypt). April 12, 2000.

[2] The Koran, Suran Al-Malidah, verse 82.

[3] Al-Wafd (Egypt). April 17, 2000.

Why Do Children Learn the Art of War During the Peace Process: Review of the Palestinian Authority’s Teacher’s Guide

By
David Bedein
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On the day that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was en route to Washington to meet with President Bill Clinton to revive the peace process with the Palestinian Authority, the “Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace” issued a study of the new Palestinian Authority’s teacher’s guide, which serves as the new official guide that PA teachers are required to use in their schools.

(The Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, located in Jerusalem, translates Arabic language newspapers and textbooks, posts this and and its other reports at www.edume.org, and provides data for the trilateral American-Israeli-Palestinian commission that was formed to monitor allegations of incitement.)

The Center’s premise is that without peace education, you cannot have peace. For that reason, Israel pioneered a curriculum for peace, a program now in its seventh year, reaching Israeli pupils from all walks of life.

The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, has maintained a rigid curriculum that continues to call for liberation of all of Palestine, while describing Israel, Jews, and Zionism in the most demonic of terms. PA officials say in their defense that these are the books that they get from Jordan and from Egypt.

What PA officials forget to mention is that Israel had deleted the “offensive” sections of the Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks when Israel ruled the west bank and Gaza, and that the Palestinian Authority has reinstated those deletions.

Many people held out hope that all this would change.

In the words of senior Israeli cabinet minister Shimon Peres, who addressed the International Conference of the Jewish media this past February, “We look forward to seeing a new textbooks for peace in the Palestinian Authority”.

Not so, according to Itamar Marcus, the research director of the center that issued this comprehensive nineteen page study of the Palestine Authority’s Teacher’s Guide, which reads more like a war manual than an educator’s tool.

Some Selections From the PA Teacher’s Guide

PA teachers are required to prepare their students for a Jihad (holy war) to liberate all of Palestine and to “cherish the Jihad fighters who quench the earth of Jerusalem with their blood”.

Palestinian Authority students are to asked to emulate the efforts of Saladin, who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders conquest.

PA teachers are to refer to Israel as the “Zionist occupier”, in the context of “racism and Nazism”.

PA teachers are to instill in their students with the idea that “Jews are dangerous enemies of Allah, Islam and the Arab nation”.

PA teachers are to teach Zionism as an example of European imperialism, whose aim is “the elimination of the original inhabitants of Palestine”.

PA teachers are to distribute a text entitled “The Jewish danger in Palestine”.

PA teachers are asked to define Jews in terms of their racial and religious zealotry, and to explain that this is why Jews were persecuted over the years by the Christian world.

Meanwhile, the new historical texts of the Palestinian Authority, define Israel as a “thieving conquerer”, while the only map of Palestine in the new textbooks of the Palestinian Authority eliminates the state of Israel, while Israeli cities like Haifa, Jaffa, Beersheva, and the entire Galil and Negev are termed Palestinian cities.

After our news agency received this Palestinian Authority teacher’s guide, I visited the Palestinian Ministry of Education near Ramallah, where I was received in a courteous fashion.

I asked a senior PA education official there if the PA would delete material that Israel considered to be offensive. The answer, delivered in a soft, firm tone by a senior official of the PA was clear: “We are sovereign and we will determine what we will teach our children, without any interference”.

Meanwhile, the US consul in Jerusalem, Mr. John Herbst, announced that the USAID would increase its support of Palestinian education with an additional $10 Million of assistance.

The question remains: How does this kind of education jive with a peace process?

Syria, Lebanon Trying to Stymie UN Help in Israeli Pullout

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Lebanon and Syria are trying to stymie United Nations cooperation for an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

Lebanon and Syria have set tough terms for an expanded UN peacekeeping presence in Lebanon in the wake of any Israeli pullout. The terms were relayed in a letter to U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan from Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.

Among the conditions set in Lahoud’s letter were that U.N. forces help in disarming Palestinian fighters and that the world body guarantee Lebanon’s sovereignty. In a meeting with UN coordinator for the Middle East peace process Terji Larsen, Lahoud demanded that the UN help to prevent Israel from violating Lebanese airspace and waters.

Israeli officials said Lahoud’s demands were dictate by Syria, which has 35,000 troops in Lebanon. On April 6, Larsen met Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk A-Shaara on Israeli plans for a withdrawal.

Annan has expressed his intention to cooperate with an Israeli withdrawal during a meeting in Geneva with Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy. This could include bolstering UN forces in southern Lebanon.

In Beirut, Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss said he did not believe Israel’s intentions to withdraw from Lebanon. “We will be wary regarding this new situation because we don’t trust Israel and its conspiracies, as we are used to its deceptions,” Hoss said.

In Damascus, the Syrian A-Thawra daily on April 6 said the Israeli plans to withdraw from Lebanon is a “maneuver meant to continue occupation.”

The Iranian-backed Hizbullah has refused to rule out attacks on Israel even after it withdraws from Lebanon. Hizbullah deputy secretary-general Naim Kassem raised the prospect that the Shi’ite militia would seek to defend the Palestinians.

“Even in the case of a total Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon,” Kassem said, “there will not be either guarantees, or security arrangements because the enemy continues to drive the Palestinians from their land and occupy the Golan and Jerusalem.”

Hours later, Hizbullah gunners opened fire on Israeli and South Lebanese Army positions in southern Lebanon. The shelling continued for much of Wednesday. No casualties were reported.

Assad, Mubarak Again Discuss Suspended Peace Talks

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has discussed the suspended Israeli-Syrian negotiations with Syrian President Hafez Assad for the second time in less than a week.

Mubarak telephoned Assad in what diplomatic sources said was a U.S.-inspired Egyptian initiative to persuade the Syrian president to resume peace negotiations with Israel. The sources said President Bill Clinton urged Mubarak to urge Assad to reconsider his refusal for a compromise on his demand for control of the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River, two waterways now under Israeli rule.

The Syrian news agency SANA reported that Assad and Mubarak discussed on the evening of April 4 “the Arab situation in general and the latest developments in the peace process.”

Diplomatic sources said the flurry of phone calls was part of Mubarak’s plans to meet Assad in Damascus over the weekend. The sources said Assad appears to have withheld his agreement for such a meeting.

The preparations for the summit have been mired in confusion. The Egyptian Information Ministry announced that Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk A-Shaara would visit Cairo Wednesday.

At first, SANA confirmed the report. Later, the agency said the visit was being postponed. On Wednesday, Egyptian officials verified that A-Shaara cancelled the visit.

U.S. officials are monitoring Mubarak’s efforts. In Amman, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen expressed Israeli and U.S. disappointment over Assad’s refusal to resume peace efforts.

“[Israeli] Prime Minister [Ehud] Barak was obviously disappointed,” Cohen said. “President [Bill] Clinton has been disappointed because they had hoped that President Assad would in fact respond positively and that did not occur. So it was a great disappointment. I think there is still hope, that somehow others can persuade President Assad that this is an opportunity he should take advantage of, but as President Clinton has said, the ball is very much in the Syria’s court today.”

In Jerusalem, several senior Israeli officials acknowledged that they were too optimistic over Assad’s willingness to make peace with Israel. “Nobody knows what is in Assad’s mind,” Regional Cooperation Minister Shimon Peres said.

Eye on Syria a Timely Review of the Official Syrian Media
Week of April 10, 2000

Syrian Blames Israel for Death of Peace Process

Damascus is blaming Israel for a halt in the peace process.

Official Syrian newspapers and radio stations blamed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for the failure of the peace negotiations between the two countries.

“There was never such a gloomy atmosphere in the Middle East because of Israeli policy,” the Al Baath daily said on April 12.

Earlier, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk A-Sharaa did not issue a similar assessment during a visit to Madrid. But Syria’s official media changed its tone following the Barak meeting with President Bill Clinton in Washington on April 11.

“We didn’t consider the option that Barak would come to the Washington summit with an olive branch but no one thought that he was bringing with him an end to peace while he beats on the war drums,” Al Baath said. “He has fired the lost shot in the peace process. By increasing the settlements on the Golan, Israel is beating on the war drums. Don’t expect Syria to appease Israel.”

On April 13, Al Baath daily said Syria could wait years to ensure that its rights are achieved. This, the newspaper said, includes territorial and water rights to the Sea of Galilee.

The Syrian media also blamed the United States for towing the line of the Israeli propaganda and not being a fair intermediary.

“The United States must avoid the collapse of the peace process before it’s too late,” the Al Thawra daily said on April 12.

Damascus Radio criticized Israel for escalating attacks on southern Lebanon. “Israeli policy is placing the Middle East in a position of facing dangerous alternatives and the responsibility will fall on the United States and Israel if the peace process fails,” a commentary said.

The radio said that Clinton’s meeting with President Hafez Assad in Geneva on March 26 was a failure. “The ideas brought by the American side to Geneva summit were humiliating,” the radio said.

Bashar Tries to Lead Syria on Internet

The son and heir-apparent of Syrian President Hafez Assad wants to be a pioneer of the internet in one of the most closed societies in the Arab world.

Bashar Assad has agreed to participate in a Lebanese-Syrian symposium on the development of the Internet and data technology. The seminar is being organized by the Bashar-headed Syrian Scientific Association for Data.

The government daily Tishrin reported on April 10 that the cosponsor is the Lebanese Assembly for Data. Syria has pressed Lebanon, which has 35,000 Syrian troops, to cooperate on all infrastructure programs. Lebanon is far more advanced than Syria in Internet usage.

The seminar will be held in both Damascus and Beirut starting on April 25. At the same time, Damascus will convene an exhibition Sham 2000, which will deal with technology and data.

Officials said the symposium will discuss data technology and communications, the computer industry and training for young Lebanese and Syrians.

Syria Admits to Halt in Economic Growth

Syria plans to establish industrial zones in major cities as part of the new government’s economic reform policy as officials have acknowledged to a halt in growth.

Officials said the industrial zones will be funded and established in Damascus, Aleppo and Homs. They said the zones are meant to increase investment in Syria, which has decreased over the last five years.

The most drastic decline was in 1998 when private investment decreased from 17.4 percent to 8.5 percent. Syrian newspapers said on April 6 that said this led to a halt in economic growth.

Officials have urged Syrian expatriates to invest their money in the new zones. They pointed to a free trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates as well as the launching of free trade zones with Jordan. The zones will be located along the border of the two countries.

A-Shaara Rules Out International Court With Israel

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk A-Sharaa has ruled out the prospect of taking the dispute with Israel over the Sea of Galilee to the international court in the Hague.

A-Shaara termed as “media delusion” reports that the issue between Syria and Israel over the Golan Heights would be taken to international arbitration. Instead, he said Israel must withdraw from the Golan Heights.

The Syrian Arab News Agency said on April 1, in remarks reported in all Syrian newspapers the following day, that A-Shaara urged Arab ambassador to Damascus not to fall into the “trap of media delusion launched by some newspapers over turning the subject to the international law court. Israel’s full withdrawal from occupied Golan Heights until June 4 borderline is an Arab and just request as well as a legitimate right ratified by the Arab summits and the international legitimacy. Syria is still committed to full rights in accordance to these resolutions and principals and will carry on efforts to reach to the just and honorable peace that would guarantee the legitimate right to restore Syrian territories.”

Israeli Society Immature to Make Peace

Damascus radio Israeli society is not sufficiently mature to achieve just and comprehensive peace decision.

The radio, in an April 1 commentary, said the government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak is unable to make peace.

“The peace that is based on justice and comprehensiveness requires a total Israeli withdrawal from Golan and south Lebanon as well as the occupied Arab territories in addition to full adherence to the international legitimacy resolutions,” the radio said.

In its daily commentary, the radio said the Israelis were delaying, playing games while asking others to concede over land, water and security. The radio said this would doom the peace process.

The radio pledged Syria was still honest in seeking peace as a strategic choice but that would be only when its land and rights are restored.

“The international community bear total responsibility atop of it comes the United States in order not to waste the historical peace chance just because Israel does not want to make the just and comprehensive peace,” the radio said.

Syria Admits to Failure of Geneva Meeting

Syria has admitted that the March 26 summit between President Hafez Assad and U.S. President Bill Clinton was a failure.

Mohammed Khair Jamali wrote in the Al Thawra daily that the summit fell short of hopes. Still, he wrote, the summit was still important for Syria. Damascus still clings to peace as a strategic choice while clinging to its rejection of any haggling of land or rights.

Jamali said on March 31 that Israel demonstrated its escape from peace. He cited Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s evasion of a Syrian demand for a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

“The Israeli governments including Barak’s one seeks to exploit these pretexts on the expense of the Arab national security and rights,” the newspaper said.

Jamili said Barak should have supported his optimism of the summit by declaring “his frank commitment to the total withdrawal from Golan to June 4,1967 borderlines. He would also declare his acceptance of the borders demarcation according to the principle included in the international law. If Barak did so during the talk phone with the American president, Bill Clinton from Geneva after the first prolonged session of the Syrian-American summit, peace would be at two bows length or less from the realization if not actually started its first steps.”

Israel, Jamali said, shoulders alone the responsibility of the results of the summit, which don’t create optimism of the peace forthcoming to the region. The cause beyond this matter was due to the fact that the expected shift in the Israeli policy hadn’t realized yet to produce a change in the Syrian-American summit.”

Al Thawra editor Amid Khouli said Syria expected that Clinton would carry a U.S. guarantee to implement an Israeli frank statement with no doubt or political equivocation about the withdrawal to June 4 border. Instead, Assad found himself facing Israeli rejection of Syrian positions.

“We didn’t have delusions about the possibilities of the ideological change in the Israeli mentality, but we didn’t expect also that there is nothing new in the Israeli mentality,” Khouli said. “Moreover, we didn’t expect that the American stance didn’t deal with this Israeli stubborn and disgusting case by such hesitation to the level of disability to reject the Israeli arrogance in regard of refusing the American peace.”

Senior PA Official Warns of Violence

GAZA [MENL] — A senior Palestinian Authority official has warned of an armed uprising unless Israel grants the Palestinians their rights.

PA Cabinet secretary Ahmed Abdul Rahman told a forum in Gaza on April 10 that Israel faces a new and more dangerous intifada, or uprising, if the Palestinians are denied their national rights. He pointed to a deadlock in final status talks between Israel and the PA on such issues as the future of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements.

Abdul Rahim, speaking to the Palestinian Legislative Council’s political committee in Gaza, said a new uprising would “not just be with rocks,” a reference to the 1987 Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Instead, he suggested that the violence would be similar to the 1996 PA-led unrest in which hundreds of Palestinian police officers participated.

Nearly 100 Palestinians and 15 Israeli soldiers were killed in the clashes.

Israel and the PA set a May deadline for concluding the framework agreement of a final status accord. But PA sources said the target date would not be met.

PA Reduces Power of Courts

The Palestinian Authority is whittling away the power of the judiciary and is establishing special courts on both security and civilian issues.

PA sources said cases meant for the civilian court system are being routed to the special State Security Court directly controlled by PA Chairman Yasser Arafat. This includes disputes regarding land ownership taxation, drugs and debts.

Arafat, the sources, has failed to heed appeals by Palestinian legislators, Western diplomats and human rights groups to disband the security court. Instead, the sources said, the security court has become the leading arbiter of justice in the PA.

Sessions of the court are held in-camera and cannot be appealed.

LAW, the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and Environment, expressed concern over what it termed the “poor conditions of the judicial authority.” The group said PA governors have been examining cases that are supposed to under the jurisdiction of the courts.

“Moreover, a committee has recently been established in the Bethlehem district for examining land dispute cases,” the group said. “It has issued a number of rulings not subject to appeal or contest. No such committee has ever been established anywhere else in the world.”

LAW warned that the Palestinian judiciary is in danger of collapse, particularly in the West Bank. The group said judges are divided into those who support either the PA or the court system. West Bank judges, angered by the transfer of many of them, have been on strike for more than two months.

For his part, PA Justice Minister Freih Abu Medein has appointed inexperienced prosecutors and has failed to announce the move, LAW said. The group said some areas of the West Bank are understaffed with court personnel and prosecutors. One example is in Hebron, which only has one prosecutor for a population of 500,000.

In contrast, the Ramallah court has six prosecutors and Jericho — with a population of 40,000 — has three judges.

PA Turns Down Offer for Refugee Settlement

The Palestinian Authority has rejected a reported offer by Canada to resettle 15,000 Palestinian refugees.

But Canadian diplomats said the offer was never presented.

PA sources said the offer was made by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien during his talks in Israel and the PA this week. The sources said the offer was rejected and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat insisted that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel.

An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said Chretien had agreed to absorb the refugees as part of an international effort to resolve the refugee problem. Chretian was the first leader to make such an offer.

The aide said Barak said Israel would refuse any resettlement of the refugees in the Jewish state.

On April 13, the PLO official responsible for refugees, Assad Abdul Rahman, said the Palestinians reject the Canadian offer. He said that the Palestinians should be able to return to Haifa, Jerusalem and Jaffa according to UN General Assembly resolution 194.

Canada is host to multilateral talks on refugees. On April 13, Canada’s envoy to the PA, Tim Martin, denied that Chretien made such an offer.

“Canada has not presented any ideas for a settlement of the refugee problem,” Martin told PA radio. “We believe that that should come from the parties themselves.”

PA Plans to Wage Fight Against New Israeli Housing

The Palestinian Authority said it plans to oppose Israeli attempts to construct new housing in the West Bank.

PA officials said they will recruit domestic and international support to stop plans to build a new neighborhood in Efrat south of Bethlehem as well as in Har Gilo south of Jerusalem.

On April 13, PA Information Minister Yasser Abbed Rabbo told the Voice of Palestinie he could not report any progress in current negotiations with the Palestinians near Washington. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are discussing interim and final status issues in sessions sponsored by the United States.

In Hebron, Palestinian sources said Israeli military authorities have informed Arab residents that they plan to demolish the homes of eight families near Beit Omar. The authorities said the homes were built without a license.


PA Introduces New Rules on Charities

The Palestinian Authority has issued new regulations regarding the administration of charities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Under the regulations, the PA must approve any donation of more than 1,000 Jordanian dinars, or $1,420. Another rule requires that the charities must give the PA 10 percent of all donations.

Charity committees, or zakat, have been established in every town in the PA territories. They are used to maintain mosques and help the poor and ill.

PA officials suspect that the charity committees help fund Islamic terrorist attacks and the infrastructure of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Opposition sources said Israel has urged the PA to restrict the committees.

PA Chairman Yasser Arafat has asked donor countries for hundreds of millions of dollars to improve social services.

PLO Reviews New Elections

The PLO is under barrage from opposition groups that want new elections for the Palestinian National Council before Yasser Arafat declares statehood.

Palestinian opposition groups have warned that they will not honor any Arafat declaration unless it is preceded by new elections at the PNC and a discussion of Palestinian goals.

Hamas said it will oppose Palestinian statehood declared by Arafat unless a reconstituted PNC can set the terms for a declaration of independence. Hamas spokesman Abdul Aziz Rentisi said any Arafat declaration would be stem from the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian agreement at Oslo, an accord opposed by the Islamic group.

On April 13, PNC chairman Salim Zaanoun was scheduled to convene the ruling Fatah movement and opposition groups to discuss elections to the council. Zaanoun said many members are either dead or no longer active.

It is unclear how many groups will attend the session in Ramallah. Hamas said it was not invited.

Arafat has pledged to declare a state on Sept. 13 regardless of Israeli consent.

Palestinian Children Face Rising Poverty

The Palestinian Authority says Palestinian children face increasing poverty.

A PA report reported in Palestinian newspapers and radio on April 7 predicted that 3.2 million Palestinians are living under the poverty line. Of this figure, 53 percent are under 18.

The PA Central Bureau of Statistics 63 percent of the poor live in Gaza. The bureau cited rising a Palestinian birthrate — from 3.97 percent to 4.18 percent.

At the same time, the PA reports increased educational enrollment.

“The ideas brought by the American side to Geneva summit were humiliating,” said Radio Damascus, according to Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) Tuesday. They have “represented a retreat from [former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin’s deposit,” to theoretically withdraw from the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights to the lines of 4 June 1967.

In Geneva summit between President William J. Clinton and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad on March 26, that position has “constituted an obstacle before the summit’s success as to push the peace process forward.”

The Israeli Arabs and the Palestinian Authority Ultimatums in Perspective

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

A troubling poll result

Instead of telling you what I think Israeli Arabs think, I would like to share with you what a representative sample of 500 Israeli Arabs told pollsters last November in a survey carried out by Dr. Assad Ganem of the Institute For Peace Studies at Givat Haviva.

Which of the following options would you choose as a solution to the problem of the Arabs in Israel?

24.8% Replace Israel with a Palestinian state.

62.2% Israel ceases to be a Jewish Zionist state and the Jews and Arabs will be recognized as different groups.

8.2% Israel will continue to be a Jewish Zionist state and Arabs in Israel will enjoy democratic rights and receive their relative share in the budgets and manage their educational, religious and cultural institutions.

That’s right. The overwhelming majority of Israeli Arab REJECT Israel continuing to be a Jewish Zionist state EVEN if they enjoy democratic rights and receive their relative share in the budgets and manage their educational, religious and cultural institutions. This in no way means that the Israeli Arabs should not enjoy democratic rights or their fair share. The survey however does indicate, and I say this with a heavy heart, that this will not satisfy them.

The five “Nos”

In the official negotiations taking place in the States, the PA has presented a document laying out it’s five “red lines,” an apparent response to recent statements by Barak in support of annexing settlements. The document was described in the Palestinian press as the “Five Nos” – a play on the infamous “three nos” after the 1967 Six-Day War. The PA demands that Israel withdraw to the June 4, 1967 borders, including from east Jerusalem. The PA will not accept any Jewish settlements, nor will it put off discussion of any of the final-status issues like Jerusalem and refugees, or accept a partial framework deal. The document also rejects any solution that would accommodate Palestinian refugees outside their homeland, and rejects any Israeli military presence inside the Palestinian state (eg. No Israeli presence on the Jordan River).

The Palestinians complain that there has been no progress in the talks because Israel hasn’t bowed to the 5 Nos.

The Palestinians make it clear that if they do not get what they want via negotiations that they will pursue other goals via other means.

And the Israeli response? Israel recently transferred another 200 assault rifles to the PA and another 100 are on the way.

The Palestinians speak with a clear voice and all I hear from our government is mumbling about “hard sacrifices” and “difficult decisions”.

When it comes to domestic policies, Barak’s clumsy poor planning and administration is plainly obvious because our economy and society in general is already paying a dear price in the form of crippling stupid job actions, unemployment and a mindless series of emergency measures – some of which will actually increase rather than decrease unemployment.

In many ways the fog that surrounds negotiations with the Arabs makes it a far more friendly environment for the incompetent since the glaring mistakes may only really become known to the public at the end of the talks. As long as the ball is still in the air there is always room for the benefit of doubt that maybe – just maybe – what may be reckless stupidity is actually a carefully designed maneuver.

One thing is certain: That it is incumbent on the Barak Administration to get the message out that the PA’s Five Nos are the true obstacles to peace. President Clinton should understand that all the American bridge proposals in the world can’t deliver Arafat even one of his Five Nos.

Dr. Aaron Lerner,
Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
P.O.BOX 982 Kfar Sava
Tel: (+972-9) 760-4719
Fax: (+972-9) 741-1645
imra@netvision.net.il

This Hallowed Ground: Personal Insights Into the Golan

By
David Bedein
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At a time when the Golan Heights is so widely discussed, I decided that the time has come to discuss the Golan Heights and Israel’s security in clear, human terms. So here are some of the “Golan” selections from the diary that I have kept since I arrived in Israel as a student tin 1970.

Kibbutz Merom Hagolan. Summer 1971. My first kibbutz experience. My friend Shaul Weber from the Hebrew University, a founder of the Kibbutz, had invited me to join him on the Kibbutz for a few weeks. After each day in the field, Shaul took me walking – through the abandoned Syrian Army camp in Kunetra, which was adjacent to the nascent kibbutz. And we went riding in the Kibbutz jeep, from one bunker to another. The Golan, barely four years after being wrested from Syria, still looked like one great abandoned Syrian army camp.

My first night on Kibbutz was my longest. I was treated to my first artillery barrage. Shaul was up in a guardpost somewhere. I will never forget the night in the Kibbutz shelter, listening to the Israeli record “Ish Chasid Hayah”, and sitting with Shaul’s wife Yael and their three little kids. Yael, who had grown up in a kibbutz at the foot of the Golan, mentioned to me that she had grown up listening to hasidic records in her shelter, which she would listen to whenever the Syrians would let loose a barrage on her kibbutz in the Galilee. Now, Yael told me, her kibbutz “down there” was out of range, and Merom Hagolan was in range. And until the cease-fire that Israel signed with Syria in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Merom HaGolan remained within range of the Syrian gun.

On my last day on the Kibbutz, Yehudah Fichtman, the kibbutz secretary, spent some time with me, explaing why he had come to live in the Golan Heights. What Yehudah said to me has remained with me ever since. He explained that he had fought for the Golan, and that he wanted to raise a family in the place where he had risked his life. “We fought for it. Now we will live for it”, said Yehudah. Yehudah was killed in an artillery barrage while he was working in the field a few months after I left. His wife and three children never left the kibbutz. His grandchildren now serve in the IDF on the Golan.

The sudden attack on the Golan Heights in 1973 hit home for me in a strange way. I had been having terrible stomach problems my first few years in Israel, always quite nervous about the Israeli reality that I was living in.

On the first day of the Yom Kippur War, the man whom I called “my tummy doctor”, Dr Moshe Ramon, the former Dr. Murray Raymond of Seattle, lost his oldest son. I remember walking into his living room which doubled as a waiting room where I had been writhing in pain a few weeks before. I would never again feel the stomach pains that I had felt before. I said to myself, instinctively, that Moshe would have more pain than I ever would.

There were his son’s friends from their Nachal kibbutz describing the sudden Syrian attack, how the Syrian soldiers had scaled the fence of their settlement and mowed down the young and surprised Nachal soldiers, young men and young women, with automatic machine gun fire, snuffing out fifteen lives in a matter of minutes. To this day, by the way, it has never been publicized that the Syrians killed a group of young women soldiers.

After the initial ceasfire, I decided to hitch up to the Golan Heights and file a news story. It was there that I witnessed the enormity of the Syrian advance. Rows of Syrian tanks and ever possible vehicle stopped in its tracks, strafed and bombed and left for any photographer to use his imagination as to just close the Syrians had come to conquering the Golan Heights. Yet they had mysteriously stopped in their tracks. After visiting the Golan, I went to stay in the mystical city of Tzfat for a few days. It was there that I met a Rabbi HaLevi who told me a story that he later put in writing, which was that as soon as he had heard of the Syrian attack on the Golan Heights that he had organized a special group of women to chant from the book of Psalms and to invoke the memory of Channah and her seven sons, who martyred themselves rather than convert from Judaism.

By legend, Chana and her seven sons are buried on a slope just below the Old City of Tzfat.

We associate the act of Channah and her seven sons with the Chanukah story and the war with the Hellenists. Yet there is an additional part of the story that is mentioned in the talmud, which is that Channah and her seven sons ask God for a favor in their merit. They ask that, in the merit of their self-sacrifice, that God save a Jewish city under siege. Well, the first time that Rabbi HaLevy had asked for a group of women to invoke Channah and her seven sons was when the 2,000 member Jewish community of Tzfat was under siege in 1948 from an army of more than 12,000. The withdrawal of that army had no rational reason. So now in 1973 the women had prayed again. The Syrian army stopped in its tracks, for no rational reason. Why the Syrian army stopped its advance remains one of the unknown factors of middle eastern warfare that is discussed today in war colleges around the globe.

It was in February, 1974 that I offered the Jewish Student Press Service to write about the spirit of the people who returned to the Golan Heights after their kibbutzim had been overrun in the war. Kibbutz Ramat Magshimim, on the southern tip of the Golan, seemed to be a logical place to travel to. Their kibbutz had been the first to be overrun. After ascending to the Golan with the one bus that got there on a Friday morning, it took me seventeen different rides until I got to Kibbutz Ramat Magshimim, where my postcard had gotten arrived the day before. They had no way of calling me, but I knew that this was the nation of miracles and I hoped that it would work out. Moshe Ben Tzvi’s family with their four children welcomed me to their home. The kids seemed to be regular kids. During the Shabbat meal, two of the kids began to cry. Moshe called me aside and said that they had cried almost constantly every Shabbat, since that terrible Yom Kippur in 1973, also on a Shabbat, when the families had been told by the regional IDF commander in the middle of the night to suddenly abandon the kibbutz because of the sudden advance of a Syrian tank column. The family came back to a badly damaged home, and Moshe explained that the kids were still disoriented.

Possibly the nicest and calmest moments on the Kibbutz Ramat Magshimim was the gathering of many of the families in a modest, improvised “moadon” clubhouse on Saturday night. The children, all the children, sang popular Israeli folk songs at the top of their lungs, while a young mother, Esther Ben David from Los Angeles, was playing the accordian, and I left on the bus back to Bar Ilan University the next morning where I was studying at the time with a “song in my heart”, so to speak. Esther told me that she was determined to wipe the tears from every nervous kid on that kibbutz.

Now that is a good Kibbutz mother, I thought. On Monday morning, following one of my classes at Bar Ilan social work school, I walked by the Bar Ilan mensa cafeteria. I heard the lunchtime newsreel on the radio. An artillery bombardment had hit suddenly hit Kibbutz Ramat Magshimim. After the dust had cleared, Esther Ben David was found dead in a ditch near the baby clinic that she had just emerged from, where she was getting medicine for her baby boy, whom she was clutching in her hands.

Esther was struck with a direct hit, yet had the presence of mind to hold that boy so that no harm would come to him. No harm did come to that baby, who was found cuddled in Esther’s lifeless arms. Esther, who brought so much happiness to the children in her kibbutz, had saved the life of her little boy in those terrible seconds of an artillery barrage. That little boy, saved in a ditch on the Golan while his dying mother hovered over him, lived to marry a neighbor of mine last year.

It was only recently that I went to interview the man who was credited for persuading the Israeli government to capture the Golan Heights. Yaakov (Yankela) Eshkoli, the man who led the delegation of Upper Galilee residents to lobby Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and the Israeli government on the fourth night of the Six Day War.

Eshkoli, now 88, was elected four times to be the regional mayor of the Galilee, and served in his position from 1955-1971

Speaking with remarkable resilience and a clear memory after 20 years of severe heart disease, the aging Eshkoli, with his ninety year old wife Yaffa at his side, cannot keep repeating how pleased he is that he has lived to tell his story, while talks with Syria get under way and while the future of the Golan is indeed on the agenda.

Eshkoli says that he is always eager to relate the role that he played in persuading the Israeli government to take the Golan in the midst of the 1967 war.

As Eshkoli told it, by the fourth day of the 1967 war, it was clear that Israel had delivered a solid defeat to Jordan and Egypt.

That left Syria, which had been raining a steady stream of rockets into the Hula Valley below, leaving the residents of 31 settlements in the Upper Galilee region in Eshkoli’s jurisdiction to spend those glorious days of 1967 in deep underground bunkers, glued to their transistor radios.

Leaving his kibbutz in an army jeep, picking up Kibbutz leaders from other settlements in the region, while every kibbutz member was ordered into the shelters because of the continuing Syrian artillery bombardment, Eshkoli remembers that he had the feeling that his Hula valley was burning while the rest of the country was dancing in the streets

Eshkoli was given five minutes to speak to the Israeli cabinet. “The longest five minutes in my life”, Eshkoli remembers. His appeal was simple and clear, when he reminded Eshkol that he and every Israeli leader who had ever come to visit him in the Galilee after Syrian rocket attacks had promised them that if there would ever be another war, that they would use that opportunity to remove the Syrian threat, once and for all.

Eshkoli reported that there was one Israeli minister to oppose the idea: Moshe Dayan, the former Israeli commander in chief who had just been appointed to be Defence minister. Dayan had given the veto to his northern regional commander, “Dado” Elazar, whom he forbid to attack Syria on the Golan, “lest this cost us 30,000 dead and risk a war with the Soviet Union”, which had just pushed through a cease-fire in the UN Security Council. Dayan the war hero from the 1956 war with tremendous popular following, also made a great impression on the cabinet.

Eshkoli recalls that he then thought to himself: “Will I be responsible for world war”, and then said that ” I could only think of my wife and the children of the kibbutz who at that moment were in the shelters”. It was then that Eshkoli made a threat, which he says to this day that he meant with all his heart, which was that if the IDF does not remove the Syrians from the Golan then he would recommend that all Kibbutzim pack their bags and leave, and that the people of Kiryat Shmoneh would follow.

Silence followed Eshkoli’s emotional appeal to the Israeli cabinet.

As Eshkoli turned and began to leave the meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol grabbed his hand and proclaimed that “The words of Eshkoli have entered the heart of Levi Eshkol, and they will play a crucial role in what we decide to do on the Golan Heights”.

Eshkoli could not know when he left the government meeting, heading back north, whether he had succeeded in his mission. Would his words hold greater weight than Moshe Dayan?

Heading back to Kfar Giladi, Eshkoli stopped off at the bunker of the IDF Northern regional command. By then it was 5AM. “Dado”, General David Elazar, the northern regional commander, was slumped over his desk, next to a bottle of half-empty scotch.

Eshkoli reported to “Dado” what had happened at the government meeting. And while they were talking, “Dado” received a call from the Israel Defence Ministry.

Moshe Dayan’s resonant voice was on the line with an order – “Take the Golan and Succeed” were Dayan’s words, and they were repeated on the 6 a.m. Voice of Israel radio newsreel.

“Dado” loudly said to Eshkoli that Eshkoli had succeeded with Dayan where he, the IDF northern regional commander had not.

Indeed, Dayan’s vote in the government was the lone voice in the government to vote against the Golan attack….

Dayan never forgave Eshkoli for besting him at the government meeting. Eshkoli shows me a yellowing news interview from 1976 with Moshe Dayan with the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot, where Moshe Dayan could only recall Eshkoli and his delegation with anger and resentment, characterizing them as “Dado”‘s agents, claiming that, anyway, “the provocation’s of the Galilee farmers and fishermen in no-man’s land were the cause of the Syrian shellings”.

Eshkoli looks at the picture of Moshe Dayan and starts to yell at him “Right – All of my 31 communities provoked the Syrians from their shelters. Our provocation against the Syrians is that we live and prosper here in the Galilee, which the Syrians see as a province of their country”.

Asked about the current negotiations that might bring the Syrians back to the Golan Heights that face down on his kibbutz, Eshkoli could only raise a trembling hand and point to the hills and say that to “bring back the Syrians would be suicide for us”.

Returning on the bus to Jerusalem, I met another prominent Galilee kibbutz leader, Muki Tzur, from Ein Gev, on the shores of the Sea of the Galilee and meters away from the Golan Heights and what might again be Syria.

Muki reached into his briefcase and showed me an article that he had written In the Kibbutz magazine, the monthly publication of the Kibbutz movement.

Tzur, the 1967 author of the best selling book known as the Seventh Day: conversations with Fighters from the Six Day War, wrote in his article that Jewish and Israeli history have taught us that any peace process with Israel’s adversaries will be long, hard and complex, and that no decision can be made under the pressure of an immediate desire for peace. The price of a mistake in the peace process in the North would be guns in place once again on the Golan, trained on the 31 settlements of the Hula Valley in Israel’s lush Upper Galilee region.

That is why the guns in the Golan were removed, and that is why 33 Israeli settlements replaced 15 Syrian army camps on the Golan Heights.

When I covered the recent peace talks in January, 2000, in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, the state department spokesman James Rubin spoke kept referring to the Golan Heights as a piece of land that Israel would use to trade land for peace.

The word “land” has often been dismissed as if it it is only real estate that can be traded as a commodity. People forget that a piece of land can have a greater significance than “real estate” on the market.

Americans should know better. Not far from Shepherdstown, the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce guided some of the media to visit the battlefield of Antitem., where 25,000 American soldiers from North and South died in one day of fighting. That land is rendered “hallow ground” by the US National Parks Authority, and viewed with reverence by every American citizen who visits there. Americans paid for Antitem with their blood, and with memories of those who fell there.

That is how many in Israel feel about the Golan. It is the place where IDF soldier fell in two wars to protect Israel’s northern region. It is the place where Yehudah Fichtman and where Esther Ben David fell while they were raising their families.

There is an Israeli lullaby which was written in 1967 for the children of the Upper Galilee who had been sleeping most of their youth in the sheltters of their kibbutzim and moshavim.

That soothing children song goes:
“Rest my children, rest and relax. The flickering lights that you see on the Golan now are our lights…”

On the plane home to Israel from the Shepherdstown talks, I read a sensitive and touching feature in Newsday about children of the Golan and the psychological crises that they may go through if they are asked to leave their homes as the result of an Israeli pullout from the Golan Heights.

And what kind of psychological crisis will the children of the Galilee cope with if they are forced to live under the Syrian gun once again?

Or, as I asked the guide of the West Virginian chamber of commerce, “Would you trade the Blue Ridge Mountains for peace”?

NATO’s Campaign of Deception in Kosovo?

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
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Citizens of a free country ought to expect they won’t be burdened with the kind of propaganda barrage that has come to be associated with Nazi “interior ministers” such as Josef Goebbles or Soviet “media spokesmen” like Vladimir Posner. However, the more information that comes out about the NATO war in Kosovo, the more evident is the fact that NATO made an apparent “policy decision” to lie about Serbian atrocities. It seems the western democracies “stole a page from the play books” of their former totalitarian adversaries in Germany and the Soviet Union.

Writing recently in Liberty Magazine, David Ramsey Steele points out that in Kosovo we were told before the bombings that there was mass genocide occurring, the figure of “100,000 or more” was tossed around even though there was no evidence to back-up this claim. One media pundit suggested the number would be a quarter-of-a-million dead. NATO even gave a name to this “campaign of mass genocide,” it was dubbed “Operation Horseshoe” but, as Steele says, the factual basis for the existence of such a genocide is spurious at best. In fact, Steele likens it to the Bryce report that reported falsified claims of genocide in Belgium in World War I.

Later after the NATO bombs began dropping, the official NATO claim was dropped to around 10,000 as it became clear no mass graves or killing fields even existed. The actual number of people found in the reported mass-graves totals slightly more than 2,000, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands that we were told originally. The loss of 2,000 lives is a great tragedy, but there are more Americans than that killed domestically every year and it hardly warrants the kind of violent response we saw in Kosovo. In fact, Mr. Steele states that Kosovo was safer than any major U.S. city prior to the NATO bombing. Moreover, as Steele shows, it is hardly evident that each of those bodies was killed as a result of a campaign of genocide.

Finally, Steele points out that the stories about Kosovo came not only from NATO officers but also from officials of the United Nations as well as from our own government. However, a few sources closely followed developments and seemed to get the story about right. Pablo Ordaz of El Pais magazine, Audrey Gillan of the London Review of Books and even two members of an inspection team sent to Kosovo for the purpose of investigating purported mass graves all challenged the stories of the propaganda machine.

Steele also shows that while we were told of ethnic cleansing and Kosovars who were being forced from their homes, the truth of the matter is they were being forced from their homes because of the danger and destruction being caused by NATO bombing in the region. If anything, this so-called ethnic cleansing appears as a direct result of NATO action. In fact, as Steele states, now that NATO and the KLA have control of Kosovo there have been widespread reports that the people we were supposedly protecting, the Kosovars, are now engaged in a murdering spree against the Serbians.

Instead of hearing the truth from our leadership, we were fed emotional tales of mass killing that were entirely blown out of proportion in order to justify force and violence in the region.

The sad trail of lies in Kosovo merely reinforces two facts. The first is that our republic depends upon a press that will question the claims of our leaders instead of just accepting them. The second is that Congress has shirked both its Constitutional responsibility to declare war before U.S. troops are sent into battle and its oversight responsibility to closely monitor the administration in its carrying out of foreign policy.

Dr. Ron Paul represents the 14th District of Texas in the United States House of Representatives.

Pope’s Planned Visit to UNRWA Refugee Camp Portends Disaster

By
David Bedein
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The Pope’s planned March 21 visit to the UNRWA refugee camp of Deheishe, just south of Bethlehem, portends disaster.

The Pope’s intention in his visit to the camp is rooted in his genuine identification with any and all human suffering.

However, Palestinian Affairs correspondent Danny Rubenstein of HaAretz has written extensive reports on how the Catholic Church’s Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Michele Sabbah, in coordination with Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, has organized buses to transport thousands of Arab refugees to participate in a rally that will be held in the presence of the Pope that will call for the “right of return”.

Indeed, the PA has erected a three-story monument outside of Deheishe in the shape of the full map of Palestine, and dubbed it the Palestinian “Yad Vashem”, to equate the plight of Palestinian Arab refugees with that of the Jews who were murdered during World War II.

It is no coincidence that the Pope will visit the real Yad VAshem the next day.

The demand that Arab refugees return to their 1948 villages is in accordance with the biennally ratified UN resolution #194 that continues to confine 3.5 million Arab refugee camps to “temporary shelters” for the past fifty two years, under the premise and the promise of their “inalienable right of return” to villages which have been supplanted by Tel Aviv, Tzfat, Haifa, Ashkelon and more than two hundred kibbutzim and moshavim.

Interestingly enough, the Catholic Relief Agency helped to construct more than 1300 homes on a hill near Nablus for Arab refugees to move into during the mid-1980’s. That hill of homes stands empty, because of a 1985 UN resolution that forbids Israel from moving Arab refugees out of their temporary shelters, since this would violate their “inalienable right of return” to the homes that they left in 1948. UNRWA placed guards at the foot of the hill to prevent these homes from being taken by UNRWA refugee camp residents.

The hope and vision of the peace process was that the Palestinian Authority would absorb the refugees in their state-in-the-making.

Instead, the PA’s first act of legislation in 1994 was that UNRWA refugee camp residents must be absorbed in the pre-1967 boundaries of the state of Israel, and that the PA would deny any assistance to the UNRWA camps to help them in the improvement of their deteriorating housing, since all Arab refugees must be absorbed in the places that they left in 1948. The Palestinian Liberation Army has meanwhile established bases in each of the UNRWA Arab refugee camps, to prepare refugee residents to take back their homes by force, if necessary.

These preparations have been made with the logistical support and encouragement of the Palestinian Authority and the Latin Patriarch.

The campaign for the Palestinian Arab refugees to return to their homes will therefore be launched in the presence of the Pope, and convey the impression of sacred Papal endorsement for the Palestinian Arab program for the “right of return”.

In short, a genuine Papal Pilgrimage that was planned to express deepest empathy for human suffering will be used by Michele Sabbah and Yassir Arafat to advocate the dismemberment of the state of Israel.

Sermon on Temple Mount

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
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The International Conspiracy Against This Deen: The Pope’s Visit

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds, and may peace be upon prophet Muhammad, his family and companions.
Dear my respected brothers,
Allah says in the noble Quran “If Allah helps, you none can overcome you: if He forsakes you, who is there, after that, that can help you? In Allah, then, let Believers put their trust.” Al-Imran (3:160).
Allah is the protector and not the U.S.
Allah is the helper and not the Pope.
“Thou enduest with honour whom Thou pleasest”.

Dear brothers,
We should struggle against these corrupt rulers in the Muslim world. The Ummah should know their actions well because she should know how her deen is being fought by these agents to the imperialist infidels.
Allah says in the Noble Quran, “There is the type of man whose speech about this world’s life may dazzle thee, and he calls Allah to witness about what is in his heart; yet is he the most contentious of enemies. When he turns his back, his aim everywhere is to spread mischief through the earth and destroy crops and cattle. But Allah loveth not mischief. When it is said to him, “Fear Allah,” he is led by arrogance to (more) crime. Enough for him is Hell; an evil bed indeed (to lie on)!” al-Baqara (2:204-206).
These phrases of the Noble Quran match the description of our rulers today, their “aim everywhere is to spread mischief through the earth”.

Oh Muslims,
You should be like what Allah described in his book, “And there is the type of man who gives his life to earn the pleasure of Allah; and Allah is full of kindness to (His) devotees.” al-Baqara (2:207).
So you should work to change the status of your Ummah by changing these rulers. You should show your disapproval to their unlawful actions.

Oh Muslims,
Islam is deep rooted inside you. The infidels along with the hypocrites will not be able to remove it from your hearts.
I invite you to work to abort the current conspiracies against this deen.
I invite you to work against the ones who fight this deen.
I invite you to work against the rulers in the Muslim world, whom had sold their deen for the imperialist infidels, so they became like them and they had stood in the same side with them against the Muslim Ummah.
The rulers are the ones who had supported the existence of Israel. They put their hope in the U.S., Britain, France and other imperialist infidel forces.
The recent hope they have is the visit of the Pope to Palestine next month.

Dear brothers,
Not only did your rulers commit unlawful and secret military and non military treaties with the enemies of the Muslim Ummah, but they also had let them control the Muslims lands and the Muslims.
These rulers are applying on the Muslim Ummah the laws of the colonial forces as if this Ummah is not a Muslim Ummah.
As if this Ummah doesn’t have the only truthful laws in this world. When they did what they did Allah became angry and when we were silent against their actions Allah did not send us his victory so we became low amongst the nations of the world.
The rulers had continued to mislead this Ummah by raising slogans like: Dialogue between religions, the openness to the world, The Development Projects, The Global Peace, The International Communities,..etc

Oh brothers,
You have nothing but two choices to choose from: Either you stay silent against this imperialist attack against this Ummah from the imperialist forces along with the rulers of this Ummah. Or you may work with the workers to establish this deen by the establishment of the Islamic Khilafah State. This will result definitely, Insha’Allah, in our return of being the first and the greatest Ummah in the world.
We have no time left. Look how the Pope is part of the International conspiracy against this deen. He had visited Egypt in the last few days and he had profaned Al’Azhar Mosque and Al’Azhar Islamic University.
The political onsiderations of the Pope’s visit to Egypt are as follows:

  1. It shows how the Vatican and the Pope became part of the U.S. tools to implement her plans in the world. The Pope is visiting an influential American agent which is the Egyptian Regime.
  2. The U.S. had helped in creating Israel. She is the one who stands strongly next to her. The U.S. considers Israel the cornerstone in supporting her imperialistic plans in the middleeast.
  3. The Christians will never accept to let the Jews control their religious sites in East Jerusalem.
  4. This region of the middleeast will never accept the state of Israel. It is a strange creature that lives only by supporting devices. Once they are removed, this state will cease to exist. Look at Lebanon how the imperialist forces created her for the Lebanese Christian Minority by taking part of Syria and made her an Independent State. They made her for the same purpose that they made Israel; to be a dagger in the middle of the Muslim Ummah that forbids her from unity and from the establishment of the Islamic Khilafah State. The British planned since 1960s and even before that to make Israel a secular state for the Jews and the Palestinians in order to give her the possibility to live longer.
  5. The Americans bypassed the British plans and thought of creating a Palestinian state side by side with Israel. They had pledged to the Pope to accept the existence of Israel.
  6. The Americans pushed the Pope to recognize the existence of Israel. Not only he did that but he also acquitted the Jews from t he blood of Jesus which contradicts with what the Christians believe.

What was left for the Pope to do is to acknowledge the control of the Jews of the holy sites for the Christians which contradicts with the Christian religion that forbids that. One of the previous Popes said once to Hertzel (One of the founders of Israel) that Jerusalem should never be under the Jewish control. That was stated clearly in the recent “historical” agreement which was signed recently between Arafat and the Pope. But Israel refuses to give up East Jerusalem.
So how the imperialist infidels will solve this case?
Their plan is to make Jerusalem and the surrounding areas an International area under the control of the U.N. which means under the control of the U.S. That’s why the U.S. is using the issue of moving her U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem once a while especially whenever the U.S. elections get closer.

Oh Muslims,
I say to the Jews, I say to the western imperialist forces, I say to the corrupt rulers “agents”:
Israel will never be absorbed in this region because it is a vicious malignant plant that will be uprooted soon, Insha’Allah.
Look how the Crusaders had lived in this land for a hundred years but then they were kicked out. I expect, Insha’Allah, for the Jewish state that was created by the new Crusaders to live shorter. Her removal requires the determination of the sincere Muslims after they remove their corrupt rulers.

May Allah glorify us with Islam
May Allah glorify Islam by the establishment of the Islamic State.
Ameen.

Arthur Hertzberg: No Red Carpet for the Pope When He Lands in Israel

By
David Bedein
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Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, the Bronfman Professor of the History at NYU and the author of such seminal works as The Zionist Idea and The French Enlightenment and the Jews, who in the 1970’s served as the chairman of the conference of presidents of major Jewish organizations in North America. Now 79, Hertzberg looks back at a career in which he has distinguished himself as a pioneer in the field of interfaith relations and interfaith dialogue. Given Hertzberg’s career-long predisposition to keep a door open to non-Jews who relate to the state, people and land of Israel, it may seem surprising to some observers of the interfaith issues in Israel that Arthur Hertzberg would be the first major figure to raise doubts and difficulties with the impending arrival of the Pope, expected To arrive in Israel on March 21, on a day that coincides with the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Hertzberg took the podium of the World Assembly of Jewish War Veterans who were convening in Jerusalem this week to deliver a stinging lecture, in which Hertzberg observed that that there should be no euphoria or celebration in anticipation of Pope John Paul II’s expected arrival to Jerusalem.

Hertzberg’s position: there are too many unanswered questions and too many black holes that the Pope must respond to, beginning with the Pope’s own Polish background and the Pope’s advocacy of Sainthood for the pontiff of World War II, Pope Pius XII.

Rabbi Hertzberg remarked that he and the Pope are the same age, born only a few miles from one another in Poland. Although Hertzberg was brought up in the US, thirty seven of his close relatives remained in Poland and were murdered during World War II. As a scholar of modern Jewish history, Hertzberg has had the occasion to conduct scholarly research concerning the fate of Polish Jewry during the war, and he has recently been studying the activity of the Polish Catholic Church during those fateful years. “In the weekly reports of the Polish bishops filed to the Vatican during the war, there is not a single report on record that relates to the fate of the Jews”, said Hertzberg. When Hertzberg has asked to review the eleven volumes of records that the Vatican itself maintained concerning the mass murder of the three million Jews of Poland during World War II, the Vatican has denied access to those files to historians of that period.

Meanwhile, Hertzberg notes, Pope John Paul II will not say what he was doing during the war, when he was a young priest in Poland, except to say to TV producer Marek Halter that “I lived too quiet a life”. While the record showed that after the war the future pontiff indeed helped to bring some Jewish children out of hiding in monasteries back to their families, Hertzberg asks questions that the Pope should be addressing: What were his activities during the war? What did the future pontiff know of what was happening to the Jews of Poland? As Hertzberg commented on a recent TV documentary concerning the Pope’s life, “This pope will go to his death, wishing that he had behaved differently during the war”

Hertzberg raised another question: What was the current Pope’s relationship to Pope Pius XII, whose record of possible collaboration with the Nazis is still in question to this day? And what would inspire Pope John II today to launch a campaign to bestow sainthood on Pope Pius XII?

Hertzberg’s critique of the Pope’s visit was not limited to the past. Hertzberg asked why, for ecample, does the Pope insist on conducting a mass on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Hertzberg called this a “slap in the face of Jewish dignity”.

And although Hertzberg is a dove, a charter member of Americans for Peace Now and an enthusiastic supporter of the peace process, he doubts the appropriateness of the accord signed by the Pope and Yassir Arafat – only a month before the Pope’s visit – which challenged Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem.

In short, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg says that the Pope should be received by Israel with the respect due to a world leader, yet without the enthusiasm of any red carpet treatment.

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