widlanski/medialine:ARAFAT'S MEDIA WINK AT LATEST BUS BOM THAT KILLS 19,
CALLING VICTIMS 'COLONISTS'

By Michael Widlanski

June 18, 2002

A Palestinian terrorist blew himself up inside a civilian bus at a crowded
intersection inside Jerusalem, murdering at least 19 bus passengers. The
Palestinian state media almost immediately winked at the bombing as being a
legitimate attack on Israeli "colonists."

At least another 40 people were wounded aboard the number 32-A bus from the
southern neighborhood of Gilo which is just north of Bethlehem and the
Israeli Arab Avillage of Beit Safafa, and the Palestinian media used the
location of the bombing to justify the attack.

"It appears that most of the people on the bus were colonists from the
colony of Gilo which was built on land taken from our people in Bethlehem,"
asserted Nizar Al-Ghul, the head anchorman of Yasser Arafat's Voice of
Palestine state-run radio, summing up the attack.

This reporter, who was listening to VOP radio at the time, was in his car
not far from the scene of the blast at 8:10 am (Jerusalem time) as tens of
ambulances, sirens screaming, surged past traffic towards the Path
Intersection where the carbonized skeleton of the bus was left.

The attack occurred in the middle of Jerusalem's morning rush hour at a time
when Israeli security forces had gotten intelligence information and had
been on the alert for at least five different suicide bombers dispatched to
blow themselves up in Jerusalem.

Throughout the night before the attack, Jerusalemites heard police
helicopters circling the city in the hopes of spotting the remaining suicide
bombers.

One of the bombers was isolated last night (Monday) on the northern
outskirts of Jerusalem by Israeli border patrolmen, and he blew himself up
before he could be disarmed, but with no other casualties.

But the police themselves said that it was impossible for them to stop every
single suicide bomber.

"We cannot put a policeman on every meter of the 71 kilometers of the
perimeter of Jerusalem," asserted Jerusalem Police Chief Mickey Levi.

Voice of Palestine radio offered details of the attack-which was described
laconically as "an explosion"--and numbers of dead and wounded within
minutes-much faster than the Israeli media.

"An explosion occurred on a bus coming from the settlement of Gilo, and the
information we have from Israeli sources is that there are at least ten or
eleven dead on the bus," reported Muhammad Abd-Rabbo, the Jerusalem
correspondent of VOP.

Interestingly, the Israeli media did not start broadcasting death figures
for at least another fifteen minutes.

His remarks at 8:15 am were almost eagerly received by VOP anchorman Nizar
Al-Ghul who said, "so, most of the people on the bus were from the colony of
Gilo."

"Yes," said reporter Abd-Rabbo, "it was a bus from the settlement (Arabic:
mustawtanat) of Gilo built on land taken from Bethlehem."

The anchorman repeated the item several times stressing that Gilo was a
"colony" (Arabic: isti'mara), perhaps because Arafat's Palestinian Authority
(PA) has justified attacks on Israeli "settlers" even inside Jerusalem as
legitimate. (Note: see The Media Line reports for the last two weeks.)

There was no condemnation of the attack in the Arabic media, but at the same
time, Saeb Arikat told CNN television in English that the PA condemned the
attack.

In Arabic, however, all Palestinian officials kept up a tough line against
Israel and even against the Bush Administration which was reportedly
readying a major policy speech for this week.

"There is no solution except for Israel to withdraw from all our lands up to
the border of June 4, 1967," declared Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian
legislator and spokeswoman who serves as an advisor to Arafat.

She and other PA officials stressed today that they refused any American
plans short of complete Israeli withdrawal, and they condemned Israel's
building of a security fence to try to stop the penetration of its cities by
suicide bombers.

"The only way for negotiations to re-start is for Israel to withdraw
immediately from all our lands," asserted yesterday Ahmad Qreia (also known
as Abu Ala), the speaker of the PA Legislature and one of its most senior
negotiators.

But six hours after today's bus bombing, Yasser Arafat's personal spokesman
Nabil Abu-Rudeineh changed the official Palestinian line, at least for a few
mintues, when he said, "the only way to stop the violence is to return
immediately to the negotiating table."

This is something that Arafat and his aides have made it clear that they
refuse to do.

Indeed, even Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen), the man who signed the
first treaty with Israel (and generally termed a "moderate") said in an
interview last week with Al-Quds last month that the PA refused all talks
with Israel until it pulled back from the West Bank and Gaza entirely.

"The terrible sights we have seen today are stronger than any words,"
asserted Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as he visited the site of the bus
attack less than 70 minutes after the attack.

"I wonder what kind of Palestinian state people they (the Palestinians) are
talking about when they talk about a Palestinian state," said Sharon.

"This terrible thing we see is just a continuation of Palestinian terror,
and we will do everything to fight it," concluded Sharon in brief remarks in
Hebrew.

But it was not clear whether the Israeli "National Unity Government" could
agree on a plan to back up Sharon's words. Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin
Ben-Eliezer, who is leader of the more dovish Labor Party, has resisted
attempts for a full Israeli incursion into Palestinian territory.

Many Israeli officials indicated that the Sharon Government-which is divided
between the more hard-line Likud Party and the Labor Party which supports
talks with Arafat or his aides-could agree on a united military or
diplomatic plan.

"The inhabitants of no other city in the world would be able to withstand
terror attacks like this, and I salute the people of Jerusalem for their
fortitude and their vigilance," asserted Jerusalem's mayor Ehud Olmert.

"No Palestinian groups has yet taken credit for this redemptive sacrificial
operation," asserted Walid Al-Omary, the West Bank correspondent for
Al-Jazeera Arab satellite television.

He used the term "redemptive sacrificial operation" (Arabic: amaliyya
fida'iyya) to dexcribe the bus attack. Al-Jazeera and the other Arab
satellite networks habitually use that term to describe attacks on Israelis.

The Palestinian state media in Arabic continued to emphasize that the attack
was carried out against "settlers from the settlement of Gilo" in subsequent
radio and television broadcasts more than two hours after the attack.

Four hours after the attack, the Palestinian news agency WAFA published a
"condemnation" of the bus attack in Arabic on its web site, but the
Palestinian state media preferred not to read the text, using instead a
version that stressed that the attack was "against Palestinian interests."

None of the Palestinian statements referred to the attack as an act of
terror (irhaab, in Arabic).

© 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