• Eastern Jerusalem Arabs paying taxes to remain Israeli and avoid PLO annexation by Haggai Huberman
• Palestinian Summer Camp Offers the Games of War by John burns
• Arafat lies about his birthplace by Danny Rubenstein
• Why Peres was defeated: the betrayal of the public trust by David Bedein
• PMW - This Week in the Palestinian Media 3 August 2000 by By Itamar Marcus

Hatzofeh: Eastern Jerusalem Arabs Pay Their Municipal Debts Hoping This Will Spare Them From Annexation by the Palestinian State

Many of them are also bringing their Interior Ministry documents uptodate so that, if a Palestinian state is established, they will be able to claim Israeli citizenship and demand to remain in Israel rather than be annexed to "Palestine."

Among those doing the above are also Arab residents of villages on Jerusalem's periphery which Israel annexed in the wake of the Arab-Israel War of 1967. Among these is Wallaja village on the outskirts of Bethlehem.

Jerusalem Arabs fear a political arrangement that will transfer them to the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. In private conversations with Israeli politicians, senior Palestinian officials admit that if a referendum were to be conducted among the Jerusalem Arabs asking them whether they would rather be annexed by the Palestinian Authority or remain under Israeli jurisdiction, the overwhelming majority would vote to remain under Israel.

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Instead, there is the chance to stage a mock kidnapping of an Israeli leader by masked Palestinian commandos, ending with the Israeli's bodyguards sprawled dead on the ground. Next, there is the mock attack on an Israeli military post, ending with a sentry being grabbed by the neck and fatally stabbed. Finally, there is the opportunity to excel in stripping and reassembling a real Kalashnikov rifle.

In the summer of the latest Camp David talks, a summer that was supposed to produce a final peace settlement between Israel and its Palestinian adversaries, the Palestinians' idea of a teenage boys' camp is a reminder of how deep old enmities run. At 90 two- and three-week camps on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, youths from towns and villages already ceded to Israel by Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority are learning the arts of kidnapping, ambushing and using assault weapons.

"As President Arafat says, this is the generation that will plant the Palestinian flag on the walls of Jerusalem," said Dr. Wajieh Affouneh, a 49-year-old dental school graduate who joined Mr. Arafat's Fatah organization in a refugee camp. In the 1970's and 80's, he participated, according to other aides, in some of the operations that made the Palestinian cause synonymous with attacks on Israeli and other targets. Dr. Affouneh is now a top man in the "political guidance" department of Mr. Arafat's National Security Forces, the armed police unit permitted under the Oslo accords.

In the camps around this biblical town 35 miles north of Jerusalem, the mood is a throwback to the days before Mr. Arafat joined Israeli leaders in the peacemaking effort that faltered last week at Camp David, mainly over the future of Jerusalem.

Since the current cycle of talks began in Oslo in 1993, both sides have made generous use of the tactics of bluff and threat, and have still made impressive strides toward peace. But the display today in the yard of what was once a notorious Israeli prison seemed more than old-time propaganda, even if there was an element of that. What the youths and their mentors had prepared for a graduation parade on Thursday appeared to a visitor to be steeped more in the Palestinian mind-set of the 1970's than the conciliatory postures of today.

In the mock kidnapping, an Israeli official walked across the old prison yard surrounded by eagle-eyed security men. Suddenly a reporter approached with a tape recorder. The target stopped, only to be grabbed by the reporter, now flourishing an imitation pistol. As the target was dragged off, other mock kidnappers shot seven of the bodyguards dead.

For 1,000 Palestinian youngsters standing in neatly ordered platoons, cheering, the exercise seemed like ripping good stuff.

Afterward, many predicted that their generation would someday take up arms against Israel over Jerusalem. At indoctrination sessions in the camps, the youths have been told that Mr. Arafat, at Camp David, rejected American proposals that would have given the Palestinian Authority a foothold in parts of Jerusalem, demanding instead that Israel surrender the entire eastern half of the city it seized in 1967.

Fikri Fouad, a 15-year-old village boy, said Palestinians had learned during the Oslo peace effort to live with a split view of Israelis -- "as people that we can make peace with, but still our enemies, too." He added: "If we can get Jerusalem without weapons, it is better. But if there is a need to liberate Jerusalem with weapons, we will be ready for that."

Other youths offered opinions that would be grist for the mill of Israeli politicians like Ariel Sharon, the hawkish former general who has accused Prime Minister Ehud Barak of endangering Israel with his acceptance of American proposals on Jerusalem. At a news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Sharon said any Palestinian foothold in the city would encourage Mr. Arafat to press the "real" Palestinian goal of recovering Tel Aviv and Haifa, along with the rest of Israel.

Suleiman Nubaim, 16, said the Camp David talks had given new relevance to what he and his friends had been taught about the exploits of the freedom fighters, or "fedayeen," the name taken by Palestinian guerrillas of the pre-Oslo period. Like many youths, he said he wanted to join the Palestinian forces.

"I want my country to be free," he said. "It's been my dream since I was a small boy."

Asked how he defined Palestinian freedom, he said it included having Jerusalem, and then the rest of Israel. "As long as Israel occupies any part of our land, in Tel Aviv or Jaffa or Haifa," he said, "we have not liberated our homeland."

Although these camps have been run for five years with some weapons training, it is only this summer that they have caused noticeable controversy in Israel. Since Camp David, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Army chief of staff, has cited the training in the summer camps as evidence of the risks of a new Palestinian upheaval. Israeli officials have said security has been tightened all across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, especially near the 145 Jewish settlements that have been the cause of much Palestinian ire.

Mr. Affouneh, the Arafat aide who oversees the Nablus camps, said weapons training was only a small part of a wider program that included inculcating the benefits of discipline and physical fitness, and teaching the youths about the history of Palestine before and since 1948, including the armed struggle led by Mr. Arafat. "We joined the Palestinian national movement when we were their age," he said, referring to the men who now lead the Palestinian Authority, "and we are creating a continuum between our generation and theirs."

In any case, he said, weapons used in the camps -- judging by the graduation rehearsal, American-made Smith & Wesson revolvers in addition to the Kalashnikovs -- were "legitimate" under the Oslo accords.

These allowed Mr. Arafat to establish an armed police force but denied him the right to acquire heavy weapons. In practice, even Palestinian officials admit that the Russian mafia, with the foothold it has gained in Israeli life, is smuggling an enormous number of rifles and other small arms into Palestinian-controlled areas.

Dr. Affouneh said Israeli alarm at the weapons training was hypocritical, since Israel was one of the world's most heavily-armed countries. "Israel is a country with nuclear weapons, whereas we have no air force, no tanks, and no arms industry," he said.

"All we have is a small number of rifles. And even today, just a few miles from here, Jewish settlers are being encouraged by the Israeli government to build up their arms stockpiles. Tell me, who are the victims, and who are the victimizers?"

Other officials noted that recent Israeli news reports had identified a hitherto-secret Israeli Army training camp where troops rehearse storming a mock Palestinian village being used as a base for attacks on Israelis. What's good for Israel, the Palestinians seemed to be saying, is good for Palestinians.

Dr. Affouneh drew a closer parallel, saying that a part of the Zionist movement that survived the transition to Israeli statehood was Gdudei Noar, or Gadna, a corps that introduces tens of thousands of Israeli teenagers to army life. In recent years, the organization has shifted from weapons familiarity to sports, physical fitness and camping, but Dr. Affouneh said the Palestinian summer camps were essentially the same.

"We hope that we will achieve our rights through negotiations, so that summer camps like these will cease to exist," he said. "There is nothing we want more than a full and genuine peace, including Jerusalem, which would allow us to end the weapons-training and concentrate instead on teaching our young people about computers, and swimming and other recreations. That has always been our hope."

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One of the pieces of information leaked to the Arabs at Camp David (to Muhammad el-Abzi of the international Al-Quds newspaper) stated that Prime Minister Ehud Barak suggested to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat that he set up his presidential offices in the village of Abu Dis, which is actually a suburb of East Jerusalem.

Abu Dis is even closer to the Old City and the Temple Mount than the Israeli Knesset building, and Barak allegedly said to Arafat that this would make it possible for him to pray every day at the Al Aqsa mosque.

To this Arafat purportedly replied, "My office will be in the Old City, on the property that is registered in my family's name, the Al-Qadwa family.".There seems to be some mistake in this statement, because there is no evidence that the Al-Qadwa family, which is Arafat's father's family, had any property in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The family that did have property there, and still does, is the Abu Sa'ud family, which is Arafat's mother's family. The large old house belonging to the Abu Sa'ud family tribe, which was among the oldest and most established Arab families in Jerusalem, stood on what is now the southern corner of the plaza in front of the Western Wall, adjacent to the Mugrabi Gate that leads from the plaza to the Al Aqsa mosque.

That house was destroyed in the summer of 1967 in accordance with a decision by the government of Israel to evacuate and demolish the whole Mugrabi neighborhood in order to expand the plaza at the foot of the Wall.

Arafat has claimed in the past that he was an eyewitness to the destruction of his mother's home. In the summer of 1967 he was still an unknown figure, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization sent him to infiltrate the West Bank via the Jordan river in order to set up a cell of guerillas to wage a grass roots war against the Israeli occupation. After spending a few weeks in the underground here, Arafat returned to east of the Jordan river, and that is apparently the last time he visited Jerusalem.

Arafat has, of course, enormous national, religious and political interest in Jerusalem, and it was the reason that the sides did not succeed in reaching an accord at Camp David. This interest, however, is coupled with a complex personal story. All the official PLO publications have always stated that Arafat was born in August 1929 in his family's home in East Jerusalem.

Several newspaper researchers have investigated this statement and found it to be untrue.

Arafat was born in Cairo. His father, Abd al Ra'uf Arafat Al-Qadwa, was the son of a well-known family from Gaza and nearby Khan-Yunis, who had married Zahava Abu-Sa'ud from Jerusalem. In 1927, the couple had emigrated from Palestine and settled in Egypt. Two years later their son Yasser was born. When Yasser was three years old, his mother died and his father sent him to spend some time with his mother's family in Jerusalem. During the 1930s, Yasser lived alternately in Jerusalem and in Gaza, and after his father remarried, his family sent him back to Cairo, where he spent the rest of his youth.

What is bad about this biography? Is something not correct? It seems that during Arafat's early years as a PLO activist, he found it a great drawback to have been born in Egypt, in a foreign country, and not in the Palestinian homeland.

His friends also found it strange. Many of the young Arabs who volunteered to serve the PLO immediately after the Six-Day War noted with astonishment that their leader, whom they were meeting for the first time, spoke Arabic with an Egyptian accent. Arabs from Middle Eastern countries can easily recognize the country of origin of any other Arab they meet by his accent - and here the man who claimed to be a warrior representing and leading the Palestinian people spoke with an Egyptian accent.

Could the solution to the hardship of the Palestinian people and the refugees be spearheaded by a man whose speech indicated that he was not a Palestinian and was apparently also not a refugee?

Not only this, but the issue of birthplace is also among the most important components of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. There is hardly a discussion in which the Palestinian claim of birthright is not raised - they were born here, this is their homeland, and they therefore deserve sovereignty over it. This counters the Jewish claim to the land, inasmuch as the Jews are foreigners, most of whom were born abroad and immigrated here.

And what could Arafat say to all this, when he, too, was born abroad? Furthermore, his father and mother left their homeland of their own free will. They were not expelled by a hostile imperialistic government and were not refugees displaced by a wave of Jewish settlers who stole their land, but they had simply picked up and gone down to Egypt because they felt they could earn a lot of money there (Arafat's father apparently emigrated to Egypt to claim ownership of a plot of land in Cairo that had belonged to his grandmother). How credible could all the Palestinian claims to standing firm on their ownership of their homeland be if the father of the national leader deserted the homeland to chase after riches?

Arafat was aware of all this. He understood that it would be better for whoever wanted to lead the Palestinian nationalistic struggle if his biography stated that he was born in Palestine, and there is no better birthplace than the Old City of Jerusalem, in a house adjacent to the Al Aqsa mosque.

It was easy for Arafat to say that he was born in Jerusalem because he was familiar with his grandparents' home from his childhood. When, several years ago, journalists showed him copies of his birth certificate and other documents attesting to his birth in Egypt, he replied that they were forgeries made by his father so that he would be exempt from paying tuition, as are all Egyptian residents who were born in Egypt. Arafat said that his mother came back from Cairo to Jerusalem to give birth to him in the family home, adding that he spent most of his childhood in Jerusalem and only went to Cairo when he had almost finished elementary school. On several occasions Arafat related his blurred memories as a child in the Old City, near the Wall, when there were clashes between Jews and Arabs during the pogroms (or the Arab rebellion, as they call it) of 1936 to 1939.

In interviews during the 1980s and 1990s, Arafat gave detailed accounts of the years he spent in the Abu-Sa'ud family home in Jerusalem, and spoke very little of the Al-Qadwa family home in Gaza, or about his youth and freedom in Cairo.

There are very few members of the Abu-Sa'ud family tribe still living in Jerusalem. Arafat's closest relatives there are some first cousins, the descendents of his mother's brothers and sisters. One of them, the engineer Ahmed Al Husseini who died recently, was the head of the East Jerusalem Electric Company. The family still owns a house and a plot of land in Ras el Amud, above the village of Silwan, next to the section of land that was purchased by philanthropist and settlement supporter Irving Moskowitz, on which a small Jewish neighborhood is now being built.

The place on which the original family home stood, below the Mugrabi Gate, currently serves Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall plaza. Even if a permanent accord grants Arafat presidential office space in the Old City, it is highly unlikely that it would be on the spot where his grandparents' home once stood.

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These financial investigators examined the accessible public records of the Peres Center that were provided by the registrar of non-profit organizations of the Israel Ministry of Interior.

What the record showed was that the center that Peres had personally organized was delinquent in every aspect of what can be called the "public trust".

The Peres Center refused to disclose its foreign contributors, as required by law.

The Peres Center refused to disclose its senior staffers who received exorbitant salaries, as required by law.

The Peres Center did not pay the appropriate taxes that an organization in the political realm is supposed to pay, as required by law.

The Peres Center remunerated the law firm of one of its founding members, Yitzhak Hertzog, in the amount of more than $250,000, in violation of the law.

The Peres Center would not provide the government with an explanation as to what it did with more than $2,000,000 that disappeared from the coffers of the center.

Meanwhile, the Peres Center initiatiated a $60 Million investment fund to transfer money to a corrupt PLO agency, Pal-Tel communications, a company owned in part by Osama Bin Ladin.

The Peres Center would not disclose where it got the funds for such an investment and whether it knew of the involvement of Bin Laden in such a venture.

Although the popular investigative journalist of Maariv, Yoav Yitzhak, had last year written three articles in the Fall of 1999 that was based on this research concerning these financial discrepancies of the Peres Center, the press in the Spring and summer of 2000 turned a deaf ear to our findings.

To begin with, Maariv, whose publisher had meanwhile been jailed, was less than enthusiastic to allow Yoav Yitzhak to further explore these issues.

The editor of Maariv, indeed, had meanwhile been appointed to be an advisor to Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

However, the reporters for all of these media outlets met with our news agency and demonstrated great enthusiasm for this story, until the editors vetoed their reporters.

Besides Maariv, the story was self-censored by the editors of Yediot Aharonot, the "Mishal Ham" investigation show of Israel TV, HaAretz, Makor Rishon, Yom HaShishi and IBA Israel news radio.

There was a breakthrough on July 13, when the leading Israeli economics paper, Globes, reported two articles based on the Peres Center which appeared on page 2 - The first, concerning the accusation of the registrar of Non-Profit organizations which stated that the Peres Center would not provide for an accounting of more than $2,000,000.

The other article concerning the fact that the Peres Center was providing 73% of its budget for exorbitant administrative costs.

However, no other media outlet picked up on the story.

The reporters from the various media outlets all reported that their editors were under pressure not to report the story.

Self-censorship of the media concerning Peres hit new heights when the Jerusalem Post canceled its July 28th investigative story that was based on our documentation, after which we encouraged a "citizens for clean government" organization to sponsor an ad on the front page of the July 28th edition of the Jerusalem Post which would state some of the financial discrepancies of the Peres Center so that the people should know about before they voted.

HaAretz, which had also self-censored an article on these findings, refused to run the same ad in Hebrew.

However, integrity won the day.

At least six MK's say that they used this investigative material played a key roles in their decision to vote for Moshe Katzav, and, most significantly, against Shimon Peres.

Epilogue:

This is not the first time that the integrity of Shimon Peres as a candidate for public office has been called into question.

On April 23, 1996, Peres, then a candidate for re-election as Prime Minister of Israel, declared that the PLO would cancel its covenant that calls for Israel's destruction in a special meeting of the PNC that was to be convened the next day.

Only one TV crew covered the PNC's special session.

Since it was held on Israel Independence Day, the Israeli media was "off".

After the session, Peres declared that the PLO had indeed canceled its covenant, and this was the most important day in Zionist history. Clinton chimed in with coordinated praise of the PLO and the Oslo process.

Except that the tape of the session was shown repeatedly before the May 29, 1996 election.

A picture is worth a thousand words: The PLO had decided to create a committee, not to cancel its covenant. Peres and Clinton were lying.

In 1996 and in the year 2000, Peres was exposed in a betrayal of the public trust. It was that betrayal of the public trust that denied him election as the prime minister and the president of Israel.

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Instead he permitted the Palestinian leadership to make pronouncements that cornered him into the same inflexible positions, which were published in Palestinian Authority’s (P.A.) official newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. Arafat even allowed his newspaper to print that it would be considered “treason” were he to compromise in general, and on Jerusalem and the refugee issue in particular, and that the Palestinians would not view themselves bound by any such agreements. Pointing to these “pressures” at home Arafat went to Clinton and said he couldn’t compromise. Barak would have to give in on everything or there would be no agreement.

The following are some examples of the way the media created this “pressure”:

A headline on a newspaper article that appeared during the height of the negotiations read:

“Abu Al-Naja [Deputy Speaker of the of the Palestinian Legislative Council]: ‘Any agreement that detracts from our legitimate rights is void and not binding. The article went on: “... leaders and activists of the people’s party, of [national] institutions, and representatives of the summer camps’ political cadre demonstrated opposite the Legislative Council in Ramallah [regarding] .. the right of return... and the rest of the other rights that to forgo them or even some of them is treason against the [Palestinian] people, that will bring confrontation...” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida 20 July 2000].

And in the same newspaper:

“Marwan Al-Barghouti, a member of the [Palestinian] Legislative council, said that the Palestinian ‘street’ will consider any Palestinian-Israeli agreement that does not include an adherence to the principles of the 1967 borders, Jerusalem, and the refugees as an illegitimate agreement and not binding...” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida 20 July 2000].

And if this is not enough, the leadership of the Palestinian Authority was warned that an Arafat retreat from the maximalist positions would bring about a new military and political structure:

“Legislative Council member Husam Hadar said that the refugees [both] inside and outside of the Palestinian territories would be forced to set up a new political-military organization, that will cut across the existing organizations, in the event that the leadership will offer concessions at this stage regarding the right to return. Hadar warned the Palestinian leadership against signing any peace agreement with the Israeli side that does not include a general [solution] to the problem of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes...” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida 20 July 2000].

Again, all this appeared in Arafat’s official newspaper.

Along with the calls not to compromise, threats of violence continued at an unprecedented pace, creating an eve of war atmosphere. A conspicuous example is the Fatah announcement of a general draft for boys under the age of 16:

“The Fatah movement announced a general call-up in its ranks as a preparation for the next stage. The movement announced the opening of registration for boys until the age of 16, for weapons training... The individual responsible for the movement made it clear that the movement will offer military weapons training to all boys under the age of 16, and noted that there is a strong response on the part of the boys ...” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida 20 July 2000].

“Other calls to violence threatened the use of “all available means – from the kitchen knife to the Kalachnikov rifle” [Head of Regional Defense] and the ultimate purification of the land from the defilement of the settlers”. [Governor of Khan Yunis, Sakhr Basiso, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida 20 July 2000].

Palestinian TV contributed to the eve of war atmosphere, by its repeated broadcast of military parades, video clips of violence against Israeli soldiers. One example: the TV program entitled “Fathers and Sons”, broadcast a video clip containing an assortment of old file film of Israeli tanks, Israeli soldiers firing on rioters, violent confrontations and arrests, and images of wounded and killed Palestinians. In the voice-over heard during the video clip broadcast, the announcer read the following in a dramatic voice:

“Oh Satan’s agents (directed at Israeli soldiers on-screen), Oh enemies of mankind. I am Man the son of Man, I have been robbed, I have been pursued, I am frightened, every day I die... and in my death, is life; I am the flame of life...” [21 July 2000].

As part of their ongoing attempt to formulate a distinct cultural identity the PA tries to create a link between themselves and Jesus. This week a TV program “Good Morning Jerusalem” broadcast an interview with a Palestinian artist displaying his new paintings, among them is a painting of Jesus standing between two Israeli soldiers, with the following explanation:

“... Our struggle today against the Other [Israel-ed.] is an eternal struggle; one can say that it began 2000 years ago and it continues until today. I portray this with the figure of Jesus who came to the world with the gospel of justice, and the other side did what they did to him, and the Palestinian demands the same justice, and they [Israel] deal with us the same way. In this painting I exemplify this idea: The Israeli soldier, as we see him, is wearing an army uniform, while Jesus has nothing other than the Truth. When they searched Jesus upon his entry into Jerusalem, they found a stone, a slice of bread, fish, and he was chained. This is the Palestinian from the beginning of the struggle until it’s end...” [July 23 2000].

In general, the official position of the P.A. is to portray Jesus himself as a “Palestinian” and their “historians” go to great lengths to create this myth. Note how Jesus is treated in this recent article about the Israeli city Nazareth. [It is also worth noting that the PA portrays all Israeli cities as Palestinian cities under occupation.]

Under the headline: “Nazareth: The City where the Jews Murdered the First Palestinian of Her Sons”, the article continued: “[Nazareth] became famous as the place where the Lord Messiah grew up... The Jews tried to attack the city many times in order to disperse the people of Nazareth and uproot them, just as they obliterated many Arab villages, and established settlements in their place. However Nazareth’s Palestinians still preserve their Palestinian customs and traditions... The deeply rooted Palestinian language still flows off of the tongues of the Nazarenes, to the extent that one senses when one speaks to them, that time and the forces of the Zionist occupation did not succeed in altering the face of Palestinian Nazareth, and that she did not forget and will not forget her first son [Jesus] that the Jews betrayed and handed him over to the Roman emperor, and persisted until he was taken out to be killed... and their is no escaping that one day the Redeemer will come to Nazareth in order to bring back joy [to the city].” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida 24 January 2000].

Blood libels like that Suha Arafat who said that Israel gassed Palestinians, are heard regularly from P.A. officials. One of the repeated claims is that Israel is spreading drugs in the Palestinian territories, and that Israel’s goal is to undermine and destroy the Palestinian youth via drug addiction.

Palestinian TV expressed it as follows in the local news broadcast this week:

“[Social Affairs] Minister Intisar Al-Wazir stated that her office provides all possible assistance to those fighting drugs, but the Israeli authorities are diligent about sending them into Palestinian society.”

A final word on Jerusalem. While the Camp David summit failed, partially because of PA opposition to Israeli rule in Jerusalem, a person only following the Palestinian media would conclude that the Palestinian Authority already rules over Jerusalem. Political and national-social events occur daily. An example from this week: “The Jerusalem club will host the P.A. table tennis championship this morning in the Palestinian capital.” [Palestinian TV 21 July 2000]. They relate to Jerusalem as if it were the capital city of “Palestine”, already under Palestinian rule.

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