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Contents:
95.4% of Palestinian
ArabRefugees Assert their Right of Return
[English and syntax as distributed without change] May 31, 2003, - 95,4 % of respondents affirmed their clutching to the Right to return along together with the compensations while 4. 6% opposed. Meanwhile 91% affirmed their strong opposition to the principle of compensation in exchange of ceding their Right to Return, 84 % refused the establishment of a Palestinian state in trade of giving up their Right to Return, while 11 % in favor. At the same time, 88% of the respondents are against the settling motion including 66.2% strongly opposed and 21.7% opposed. 6.1% of the respondents are in favor of settling in the host countries. The abovementioned outfindings finalized by a poll conducted by Human Rights International Solidarity institute (HRISI) over the Palestinian refugee right of return. The sample included the refugees of northern refugee camps in the West Bank, which make up one-third of the Palestinian refugees in the West Bank. The poll showed the refugee opinion about the services provided by the United Nation for Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), and the living standard inside the camps. 82. 4% of respondents believed that UNRWA doesn't fulfill properly its duty while 13% believed in the opposite. As far as the refugees' opinion about the services provided by the UNRWA is concerned, 75% of them pointed out that the UNRWA sought recently to shrink its services, while 18% were in favor that UNRWA fulfilled its duties. Polled about the UNRWA to become finished with its services in the Palestinian territories in turn of a sum of money, vast majority of the respondents (85%) are against while 8% in favor. The outcome showed that 78% of the respondents are unsatisfied with the living standard in the refugee camps while 19% are satisfied. 82% of the respondents said that they have told their sons about their homes from which they were displaced in 1948 and 5% have never mentioned their displacement to their sons while 12% abstained. The poll concluded with a question about the proposed solutions to solve the refugees issue that embodied in any solution based on principally on a fair solution and bring absolutely an end to such crucible issue , which gives the Palestinian refugees a guarantee not forcing them to give up his/her political identity and the Palestinian citizenship. According to the (HRISI), the proposed solutions based on literal implementation of UN 194 resolutions. In its part, Israel have to compensate the Palestinian refugees and settle them. Rather, the moderate solution is embodied in giving the Palestinian refugees a theoretical right in return and to allow a limited return inside the "Jewish state", and allow those who willing to return to the Palestinian state with no restrictions and compensate and settling the remaining refugees. About the proposal to live in the Jewish settlements instead of their 1948 lands, 87% of the respondents opposed, while 4% in favor, 6% with no answer.
Column One: From the beginning of May until last Tuesday, the Palestinians carried out 323 terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. That is an average of 12 per day. These attacks include suicide bombings, penetrations of Israeli towns by gunmen, roadside shootings, grenade and anti-tank missile attacks, mortar shellings, rocket attacks, assaults, and stabbings. The navy's interception last Tuesday of the Hizbullah arms boat en route to Gaza was an indication that the Palestinians are not satisfied with the results of their aggression but are intent on improving their capabilities. It is also a sign that the Palestinians are not acting on their own; they are conducting their terrorist war with the direct military support of Iran, Hizbullah's boss, and Syria, Hizbullah's enabler. Over the past two weeks, rocket attacks on Sderot from the Gaza Strip have markedly increased. On Wednesday, Sderot was attacked twice with four rockets. Two rockets scored direct hits on private homes. Luckily, the residents were not present when their homes were destroyed, yet two women and a young girl were hospitalized for shock. Speaking in Holon last Saturday, Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal explained that while it seems as though the IDF's actions in the northern Gaza Strip have been unsuccessful in thwarting the rocket attacks, the truth is that were the IDF not operating in Beit Hanun, the home of the Kassam rocket industry, Sderot would be absorbing "not a few rockets a day, but hundreds." The cargo on board the intercepted boat showed that the Palestinians are intent on increasing the effectiveness of their attacks. The navy seized 36 CD-ROMs with instructions on how to make bombs, rockets, and various other types of explosives and how to maximize the kill rate of suicide bombers on buses. As well, the boat's cargo hold included five boxes of 122 mm. rocket fuses and other bomb making components, including a radio activation system and electronic delay units. In an interview with Yediot Aharonot on Thursday, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas repeated for the 1000th time that he has no intention of taking any action against the terrorist infrastructure. While he maintains that he is presently negotiating with Hamas to stop attacks on Israelis and states that once he has an agreement for a cease-fire, he will try to work out arrangements with Fatah and Islamic Jihad, Abbas will take no military action against any of the terror networks. "We will never have a civil war," he said. He also indicated that Israel must help him to convince terrorists to agree to a work stoppage by "releasing prisoners and avoiding military operations." For his part, Saeb Erekat was even more succinct. Speaking with the Associated Press on Wednesday, he explained that Abbas is aiming to get Hamas and Islamic Jihad to agree to wait until after a Palestinian state is declared before attacking Israeli targets. In his words, Abbas "will insist on this declaration [of a cease-fire] because that's the key . . . for him to go out and tell the Palestinians, 'Look, we've got the Israeli government to recognize the Palestinian state, [so] we need two years in a peaceful, meaningful peace process." With all this taking place before our eyes, the government Sunday agreed to accept the Quartet's road map plan for the swift establishment of a Palestinian state. Unbelievably, the cabinet ministers who voted in favor of the road map stated that they were doing so even though the plan is antithetical to Israel's national interests. Naively, they excused their behavior by mentioning that the Bush administration has agreed to consider Israel's qualifications to its agreement during the implementation stages of the plan. These 14 qualifications, which the government was too cowed to even release officially and therefore simply leaked to reporters, would, if accepted, mitigate some of the dangers inherent in the road map. But there can be no consolation in this, because the Bush administration has made clear that it rejects these qualifications. Secretary of State Colin Powell said flat out that there would be "no changes" to the road map. It is necessary to point out that the road map forces Israel to accept at the outset the establishment of a Palestinian state ruled by the PLO on land to which Israel has a legal claim to sovereignty as strong as, if not stronger than the PLO's. While Israel is forced to cease taking actions to defend its citizens from armed aggression carried out by the Palestinians, the Palestinians themselves are requested only to make statements to the effect that they are opposed to armed aggression against the State of Israel. While Israel must recognize the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and to relinquish the right of return of Jews to lands whose sovereignty is disputed, the Palestinians are not asked to recognize that the State of Israel has a right to exist as the Jewish state. The road map makes no reference to the need for the Palestinians to renounce their demand to settle millions of Palestinians within Israel. Israel, which has absorbed 32 months of unremitting terrorist warfare against its civilians - warfare directed by the Palestinian Authority - is the side the Quartet points to in the road map as the villain. Israel must stop defending itself from aggression. Israel must accept Palestinian political demands lock, stock, and barrel. Perhaps Prime Minister Ariel Sharon thought that accepting the road map would throw the ball back into the Palestinian court. For the past two months, the Bush administration placed unrelenting pressure on the prime minister to accept the road map "for the president." According to some reports, the State Department was even threatening Israel with economic and military sanctions if Sharon were to refuse. The Middle East Newsline reported earlier this week that the State Department recommended denying Israel $8 billion in loan guarantees and $1 billion in supplemental military assistance if the government did not accept the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of the year as stipulated by the road map. The State Department was also recommending that the administration announce an investigation into the use of Apache and Cobra attack helicopters and F-16 fighters by the air force in operations against Palestinian terrorists. And yet, immediately after the cabinet announced its decision, Washington announced its plans for a trilateral summit among President George W. Bush, Sharon, and Abbas next week. Top administration officials are now here busily working to ensure that Sharon will be forthcoming with concrete concessions at the Akaba summit to ensure the meeting's "success." So if Sharon thought accepting the road map would decrease US pressure, he was dead wrong. Far from lessening the pressure, Sharon's decision to accept the road map has only increased US pressure on him tenfold. Since assuming office, Bush has been viewed by many Israelis, including by this writer, as the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. In his June 24 speech last year about the Palestinian war against the Jewish state, he made quite clear that the Palestinians are the aggressor. And yet, in light of the recent actions by the administration, actions that are quite simply hostile to the State of Israel, the president's credibility as a friend and an ally of the state is necessarily placed in doubt. Parallel to his calls for democratization of the PA and demands for PA action against terrorism, Bush has distinguished himself as the most outspoken champion of Palestinian statehood to have ever occupied the Oval Office. Bush is the first US president to have ever adopted the establishment of a Palestinian state as an aim of US foreign policy. Bush first made this statement in a letter to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah on August 29, 2001. The announcement came 36 hours after Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar delivered a breathtakingly hostile message from Abdullah to the White House that amounted to little less than a declaration of war against the US. According to press accounts, Bandar informed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that because of the administration's support for Israel, "the crown prince feels that he cannot continue dealing with the United States." Subsequently, the Bush administration sponsored UN Security Council Resolution 1397 that for the first time gave Security Council support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Bush, while acknowledging Israel's right to self-defense, has never allowed Israel to take decisive action against the Palestinian war machine. In spite of the fact that the Palestinian terror threat to Israel is backed by the same forces that back al-Qaida and in spite of the fact that Palestinians fought at the side of Iraqi Republican Guard units in Baghdad against US forces, the Bush administration refuses to accept that the Palestinian terrorist war against Israel is related to the Arab-Islamist jihad against the US. Indeed the administration has labeled "illegitimate" Israeli counterterrorism tactics that are identical to those of the US. And now, today, all that remains of the contents of Bush's historic address last June, all that has survived the events of the past year, is an unwavering demand from Israel to accept Palestinian statehood - immediately. Critics of the president's newest actions against Israel have argued persuasively that this new hostility toward Israel and embrace of Palestinian terrorists is inimical to US national security interests and deals a harsh blow to the US war on terrorism. From Israel's perspective, however, the largest problem with this policy is the one with which we never imagined having to contend. This problem is that when judged solely on its actions, the Bush administration has shown that while in the past it could be relied on for at least a modicum of support, today it no longer views such support as concordant with its interests. Therefore we can no longer blindly trust its intentions. Whether the current, openly hostile US policy toward Israel is the result of the president's own preferences or of bad advice he has received from his advisers is impossible to know. But whatever the case, this crushing and heartbreaking reality cannot be swept under the rug. The threats arrayed against us are too foreboding. We must accept the truth. As presently constituted, the Bush administration's Middle East policy is hostile to the national security interests of the State of Israel. This also ran on the front page of the Jerusalem Post on May 30th, 2003
Preparing for the Next Murdered
Jew - The saying is that a smart man learns from his own experience, while the wise man learns from the experience of others. What can be said about a person who has not learned even from his own experience? After all, we are not talking about distant history. Just three weeks ago, on May 11, the security establishment announced with a flourish the lifting of the full closure on Judea, Samaria and Gaza. On that same day Zion David was murdered in a shooting attack north of Ofra, a terror attack that opened a series of terror attacks that cost the lives of 12 murder victims and 70 injured within the space of four days-from the terror attack in which the couple in Hebron were murdered in the afternoon, through the terror attack on Bus no. 6 in Jerusalem, up to the terror attack at the Afula mall. Exactly one week later, after the terror attack at French Hill intersection, the full closure was applied again to all of Judea, Samaria and Gazafor two weeks. The same closure that was lifted this morning once again. The recent past has proven countless times that every time relief measures are given to the Palestinians, they immediately facilitated the execution of successful terror attacks. Removing the closure means more Palestinians who enter for work or trade in Israel. Removing the closure means more traffic on the roads of Judea and Samaria. And when thousands of workers stay in Israel,with permits that are issued after security checks,then the lone terrorist who succeeds in infiltrating will arouse less suspicion by virtue of his being an Arab in Israel. Relief measures mean, therefore, capability to carry out terror attacks. And contrary to the prevalent public impression, the IDF has not been stationed permanently inside the cities of Judea and Samaria as it was after Operation Determined Path, but rather only enters and leaves. The ability to launch terror attacks while the IDF maintained a permanent presence inside the cities was very small. So that one really does not to have the gift of prophecy. Removing the closure, just like all of the other relief measures and gestures of good-will, are a proven recipe for terror attacks and more slain people. And the Sharon government, time after time, repeats that proven recipe. This piece ran in HaTzofeh on June 1, 2003
Excerpted from Interview:
. . . Abu Mazen wrote his doctorate in 1982 in Moscow, at the Institute for Oriental Studies. The institute was headed by Yevgeny Primakov, a Jew, an Arabist, an avowed friend of Saddam Hussein and other Arab rulers, and eventually the prime minister of Russia. Of all these qualities, Abu Mazen emphasized mainly Primakov's Jewish origin. The heading of his doctoral thesis was: "Zionist leadership and the Nazis." The introduction dealt, among other topics, with a loaded issue: How many Jews perished in the Holocaust. In the Soviet period, especially in the anti-Israel institute that Abu Mazen attended, they often dealt with such questions. The Soviet Union, more than any other country, was addicted to Holocaust denial. The victims were not recognized by their origin, but rather by their nationality. And this is what the diligent researcher Mahmoud Abbas wrote: "World War Two caused the death of 40 million people from different parts of the world. 10 million Germans, 20 million Soviets, and more… Rumors at the end of the war said that 6 million of the world's Jews were among the victims in the war of extermination that was waged against the Jewish people and later on against other peoples. The fact is that no one can confirm this number or deny it. The number could be 6 million, but it could be much smaller, perhaps even smaller than one million. The controversy over the number must not divert us from the severity of the crime committed against the Jewish people. The murder of a human being is a crime that the cultured world must not accept." "Many researchers who discussed the number reached the unconventional conclusion that it is no more than several hundred thousand." Later on, Abu Mazen quotes a Holocaust denier who claimed that "at first the Zionists spoke about 12 million Jews who were killed in the death camps. They later narrowed the number down to 6 and to 4 million. It is not possible that the Germans murdered more Jews than existed in the world at the time." He quotes another Holocaust denier who counted 896,000 Jewish victims in all. On Wednesday, in his office, Abu Mazen placed the photocopy of the problematic page of his paper on the table and said: "I am not a Holocaust denier. I have never been a Holocaust denier. I discussed the numbers, but I said: It is not a matter of numbers. Any murder is a heinous crime." "I wrote this in 1982. We were enemies then. What do you expect of me, as a historian? To accept the numbers as they are written in the books?" If we were Abu Mazen, we would say: I made a mistake, and I am sorry for it. This piece ran on May 30, 2003 in Yediot Aharonot
"Hello Uncle Lewy": Scene 1 Uncle Lewy heard that his millionaire nephew was dying. Every day he would call him and ask him to remember his dear uncle in his will. After many months of nudging, Uncle Lewy's persistence paid off. His dear nephew died, and Uncle Lewy received an old 45 inch record which contained his last will and testament. Uncle Lewy went home and listened to the record from his dear nephew. He opened his record player with great expectation.
And there was the voice of his dying nephew: Uncle Lewy's nephew had been true to his word. He had taken Uncle Lewy's request "into consideration". Scene 2 Uncle Lewy signed a rental contract for an apartment with his nephew the landlord which stated that his landlord did have not to fix the plumbing. After Uncle Lewy signed the rental agreement, he sent a letter to his nephew the landlord in which he politely asked his landlord to fix the plumbing. The landlord, who liked his Uncle Lewy, immediately called his new tenant and said that he would take his letter "into consideration". Well, Uncle Lewy's toilet overflowed the day after his rental agreement went into effect. Uncle Lewy called his nephew the landlord right away. The landlord was waiting for Uncle Lewy's call. He left a recorded message on his answering machine in which he said, "Hello Uncle Lewy. Just wanted to know that I have taken your letter into consideration. Good luck in fixing the toilet". . And so it was on Sunday May 25, 2003 in Jerusalem. Under duress, the government of Israel agreed to accept the US "road map" which dictates that Israel relinquish the areas that it had gained in the a defensive war that Israel fought and won in 1967. That same road map is explicitly based on the March 2002 Saudi Arabian plan which requires Israel to recognize "the right of return" for all Palestinian Arabs and their descendents to take back lands that Israel gained in the defensive war that it fought and won in 1948 After the Israeli government accepted the road map, the Jewish state dispatched a letter to the US government which contained 14 "reservations". Yet on the same day that the Israeli government accepted the "road map", the US state department circulated a memo to the world media and to the government of Israel in which it said that it would not allow for any changes in the "road map", but that it would "consider" comments from both sides Hello Uncle Lewy. The last thing that the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants he world to know is that the Road Map agreement of May 25th transformed the government of Israel into one great unhappy Uncle Lewy. Therefore, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs has launched a world wide effort to convey the impression that Israel's comments on the road map were accepted by the US government as a binding, integral part of the road map. From reports that our agency has received, that line has been communicated in briefings conducted for the World Jewish Congress, AIPAC and the UJC. According to one director of a major Jewish Community Relations Council, he was given to understand from his local Israeli consul that the US had accepted Israel's 14 reservations as "binding" upon the road map. In a May 29th statement issued by Moshe Fox, The Minister for Public Affairs at The Embassy of Israel in Washington DC "Israel views its comments on the Road Map, and the American commitment to address these comments, as integral parts of the Road Map's implementation process. Consequently, Israel's comments were attached to the government decision itself" And so the deception begins. How similar it is to the deception policies of the Israeli government ten years ago, when the government of Israel conveyed the impression among all of Israel's friends in the world that Arafat and his colleagues had made ironclad commitments to peace and reconciliation, while obfuscating the message that the nascent Palestinian Authority was communicating to its own people. The Israeli government then went so far as to orchestrate official visits for Arafat with major Jewish organizations, while arranging for the Isaiah Award for Peace to be bestowed upon Arafat by the Prime Minister's mission of the UJC in October 1999, until our news agency disclosed the plans of that ill-fated award which caused its cancellation. Well, Israel's Foreign Ministry can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. It will not be long for many people to invoke Mel Brooks' image of a silly Uncle Lewy as the face of the state of Israel today.
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