wid/medialine: ANATOMY OF THE RISE AND FALL OF A PALESTINIAN CONDEMNATION OF
ARAB TERRORISM

By Michael Widlanski

Wednesday, May 22, 2002 11:45 PM

It was a long time coming, and it was too good to last.

On Sunday night, the Palestinian Authority, published a clear and probably
unprecedented condemnation of an terror attack, expressing its "loathing"
the "terroristic operation" carried out in public market of Netanya which
killed three Israeli civilians.

"The Palestinian Leadership asserts its condemnation and loathing for the
terrorist operation which targeted Israeli civilians in the Netanya market
Sunday afternoon," said an official PA statement issued through the WAFA
news agency.

It was clear that such a forthright condemnation of an Arab act of terror
was not easy for the "Palestinian Leadership"-in other words, Yasser
Arafat-to make, and it came well over four hours after the terror act: too
late to have the statement included in the Sunday night broadcasts of the
Voice of Palestine.

But surprisingly, the PA included the statement in its first two morning
broadcasts the following morning, calling on all Palestinian citizens to
"repudiate" such actions as the Netanya bombing that was carried out by a
member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The PA's condemnation was so unusual that it caught most of the Arab media
flatfooted and open-mouthed.

The Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera, based in the Persian Gulf state of
Qatar, did not mention the condemnation in its broadcasts. Nor did the Arab
satellite station of Abu Dhabi, and the item was not carried on Al-Jazeera's
Arabic-language website Aljazeera.net.

Perhaps even more interestingly, the PA condemnation was not carried in the
PA-owned newspaper Al-Ayyam published in the West Bank. Al-Ayyam used the
term "istish-haad al-munafiz" (Arabic: the heroic martyring of the
executor") to describe the act committed by the bomber.

The more independent (but still PA-subsidized) newspaper Al-Quds reported
the PA's "condemnation" without quoting it.

However, the unusually clear condemnation of Arab terror appears not have
been connected to any moral considerations, but rather to the fact that the
bombing was ordered by a political rival of Arafat, who obviously wanted to
embarrass Arafat.

The bombing was ordered by PFLP leader Ahmad Sa'adat who was in a form of
loose house arrest in one of Arafat's offices in Jericho, officially under
the custody of British authorities. Sa'adat had been sought by Israeli
authorities for planning the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister
last year, and Arafat had bargained long and hard to get Sa'adat a reprieve
from Israeli retribution.

But by ordering the Netanya bombing from Arafat's offices, Sa'adat did two
things:

*--He proved the Israelis were right in calling him a terrorist murderer;

*--And he badly embarrassed Arafat who had gone to great lengths to achieve
his "house arrest" under deluxe conditions.

Another sign that the Palestinian Authority (PA) had not really had a
complete change of heart regarding suicide bombers attacking Israeli
civilians was their condemnation of Israeli border patrolmen for killing an
Arab suicide bomber near Afula in Israel also on Sunday.

The difference was that the Afula bomber, who was shot before he could blow
himself up in a crowd of civilians, was a member of Arafat's own FATAH
movement, not the PFLP.

Another sign was given Wednesday night on Voice of Palestine radio.

"In the last few minutes we have gotten word that the Israeli occupation
forces have committed another cowardly assassination of three fighters from
the Brigades of the Martyrs of Al Aqsa," announced the Voice of Palestine
announcer, Khalid Sukkar.

The "Brigades of the Martyrs of Al Aqsa" is the name for the suicide bombers
in Arafat's FATAH movement.

The remarks by Sukkar, at 7:30 pm (Jerusalem time, 12:30 EDT) Wednesday were
another clear signal that the PA's state-run radio station had reverted to
its traditional stance extolling suicide bombers as heroes.

VOP radio and PA-owned WAFA news service have continued to refer to Israeli
forces as "racist," "Fascist," and "Nazi-like" while once again referring to
any Arab killed in an attack on Israelis as a "shahid" (Arabic: "martyr"), a
"Nadil" (Arabic: "struggler" or "warrior"), or even as a "baatil" (Arabic:
"a hero").

The PA's media continue to feature songs extolling "martyrdom" achieved
while attacking Israel.

This raises the question whether we were right in covering the PA
condemnation in the first place; or, perhaps, Al-Jazeera and the others were
right in ignoring the event as a strange aberration that was unlikely to be
repeated or to have any long-lasting effect.

© 2002 Michael Widlanski

Michael Widlanski is senior analyst at The Media Line and lecturer at The
Rothberg School of the Hebrew University. Fuller versions of his articles
are available at www.themedialine.org