The Sham of Sharm
By David Bedein
Israel Resource News Agency media@actcom.co.il

Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, February 9th, 2005

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

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

In other words, the consistent message in what the official Israeli
government spokespeople told the media was a generalized call for an end
to violence. However, the summit participants held no press conference so
that reporters could ask the principals at the summit what they meant by an
end to violence. Journalists were allowed follow the summit through video
monitors only.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so it was, the sham of Sharm

Hardly a cease fire.

EPILOGUE ONE

Upon returning to Israel, the headlines in every newspaper and every
newsreel in Israel proclaimed that "A cease fire has been proclaimed and
agreed to by Sharon and Abu Mazen". In a nation where newsreels seem to
play every hour on the hour on every public bus, private care, work place,
and coffee shop, the people of Israel tune in with great intensity and
interest to the news, and generally believe the newscasts that are
generated by the Israel Government Broadcasting Authority and the Israel
Defence Forces Radio network. In other words, the reality that unfolded in
front of the eyes of the media who covered the Sharm summit is not being
reflected in the news reportage which now emanates Israeli and foreign news
coverage of Israel.

One major international news reporter remarked to me on the plane from
Sharm that he and many of his colleagues would like to report the reality
of what is going on, which, in his words, "has nothing to do with peace,
and has everything to with the Palestinians and the Arab world positioning
themselves for more war with Israel". However, the reporter said, "that is
not what our editors want to hear from us".

EPILOGUE TWO

In the 36 hours that followed the Sharm summit, Palestinian terrorists in
Gaza fired more than 30 mortars on Israeli Jewish communities.

The Palestinian Authority did nothing to stop the attacks, which Hamas took
credit for.

I called the Palestinian Authority and asked them about stopping the
attacks, in the wake of the cease fire

The answer on the other end of the phone from the Palestinian Authority

"There is no cease fire".

A senior member of the Israeli Knesset parliament and member of the Israel
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, MK Danny Yatom, former head
of the Mossad, told me that the Palestinian Authority would have to take
action against Hamas. I asked Yatom, who was one of the architects of the
Oslo accords, as to why he expected that the Palestinian Authority would
ever take action against the Hamas, since they have not done so throughout
the entire eleven years of the Olso process.

MK Yatom could only answer in the form of a platitude, which was that "they
will have to do so". And if they do not do so? Yatom had no answer.