ABBAS ‘CONDEMNS’ ATTACK ON ISRAELIS

UPDATE TO:
ABBAS MEDIA LAUD MURDER OF ISRAELIS
AS RICE URGES ISRAEL TO STRENGTHEN ABBAS

By Michael Widlanski Sunday, July 24, 2005

Voice of Palestine radio opened its afternoon
newsreel show Sunday with a “statement from the
office of the president” of the Palestinian Authority
(PA) that condemned last night’s shooting murder of
two Israelis as being against Palestinian interests,
saying such actions would give Israel excuses not to
withdraw from Gaza.

The somewhat bland statement came more than 14
hours after the attack.

As has become typical of such seemingly pro-forma
statements from the PA, Dr. Abbas himself did not
appear personally or speak personally about the
shooting incident, nor did he call it an act of terror
[irhaab in Arabic], as the PA called the Saturday
attacks in Sharm al-Sheikh in Egypt.

Abbas and the PA also did not condemn the Islamic
Jihad organization which has claimed responsibility
for the attack that killed 56-year-old Dov Kol, a
public relations consultant, and 51-year-old Rahel
Kol, his wife, from Jerusalem.

Underlining the pro-forma nature of the
“condemnation” of the attack on the Israelis was the
fact that immediately after the statement from
Abbas’s office, VOP radio announcers again profiled
the terrorists as “heroic martyrs,” giving thumbnail
biographic sketches of their lives.

“Such operations, coming at the moment of the Israeli
withdrawal from Gaza do not serve our national
interest,” the statement said.

[EARLIER STORY]

JERUSALEM—JULY 24-- Voice of Palestine radio and
Palestinian state television applauded Sunday morning
the murder of two Israeli civilians in Gaza Saturday,
calling it an act of “resistance” [muqawwima] and
“holy martyrdom” [istish-haad], and hinting that the
murderers were carrying out their civic duty.

The Palestinian media outlets repeatedly referred
to the dead Israelis as “settlers” (even though they
were not settlers) while calling the Palestinian
gunmen “resisters” [muqawwimin—a positive term in
Palestinian Arabic] and “citizens” [muwattinin].

“The holy martyrdom of two citizens in a clash at
the Kisufim Junction,” announced Khaled Sukkar, the
VOP news bulletin reader at the top of the Sunday
morning news.

The remarks by the broadcast media stringently
controlled by Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority
came only hours after US Secretary of State Condoleeza
Rice urged Israel to “strengthen” the regime of Dr.
Abbas who, Dr. Rice said, was working hard to stop
acts of terror.

But the shooting murder of the two Israelis,
killed as they were driving out of Gaza, was not
described by Abbas’s media as “terror,” and it was
actually repeatedly called “an armed operation” and “a
resistance operation.”

“Israeli military sources report at least two martyrs
and three settlers dead and seven wounded in an
operation at Kisufim,” declared Nizar Al-Ghul, the
senior VOP radio anchorman, but he and other VOP
reporters said the exact numbers were not yet clear.

“Our Palestinian sources say that there were three
resisters who participated in the attack on a group of
Jewish settlers and an army checkpoint,” observed
VOP’s Gaza reporter, Adil Zaanoun.

US Secretary Rice reportedly also criticized the
Israelis for blaming Abbas for attacks that were
mostly carried out by the Hamas, apparently unaware
that Israel intercepted on Friday another Palestinian
would-be human bomber just across the Gaza fence
inside Israel—an 18-year-old member of Abbas’s Fatah
organization.

Within the last three months there has been a
dramatic increase in terror attacks in and around
Gaza, as well as suicide bomb attempts from there and
the northern West Bank—both areas from which Israel
is scheduled to make withdrawals next month.
At least 45 percent of the attacks and aborted attacks
were from Abbas’s Fatah.

At the same time, there is a marked increase in
the use of young human bombers—aged 11-17 years —who
might slip through checkpoints or over and under
fences and walls.

In the youth wing of Israel’s prison system there
are more than 130 youthful Palestinian terrorists
between the ages of 13 and 17, most of them from the
Fatah organization and 21 of them captured in the last
three months.

Muhammad Dahlan, PA Civilian Affairs Minister and
Abbas’s point-man in Gaza, said last week that “the
Palestinian resistance” was what had forced the
Israeli withdrawals.

Dr. Michael Widlanski is a specialist in Arab politics
and communication whose doctorate dealt with the
Palestinian broadcast media. He is a former reporter,
correspondent and editor, respectively, at The New
York Times ,The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution,
and The Jerusalem Post.