FULL ARTICLES

ARAFAT’S HIDDEN MILLIONS

Arafat's hidden millions
Excerpts from Al-Watan al-Arabi
July 12, 2002

The Saudi owned Paris journal Al-Watan al-Arabi reported on July 12th that most of Arafat's close associates are concerned with the future and asking questions about the billions of dollars reportedly taken by Arafat and they want to know what happened to the money?

The experts say there are at least 7 billion dollars involved that were gathered through numerous devices, including donations from Palestinians employed in the Gulf states and other countries, and financial aid provided by Arab countries. These billions are now causing secret controversies within the PNA for several reasons that include the possibility that Arafat is finished as leader of the Palestinians. Also upsetting to these searching for the missing funds is the nonexistence of any financial records that prove the quantity of amount of money received by the Palestinian Authority over decades and how this money was spent. Clearly, the quiet controversy within the PNA is to determine Arafat's complicity in the missing funds and the need for any new president to seize control over this wealth so he can exercise the power necessary for his position.

Al-Watan al-Arabi questions the stories of Yasir Arafat squirreling away billions in secret accounts and asks if this just a story spread by his adversaries and enemies? The journal asks why do the estimates of funds in "secret accounts" vary from about $7 billion to about $40 billion? They ask where are the financial records of funding received by the PLO since its inception in 1964? They ask where are the financial records of the PLO expenditures? They ask why did Palestinian financial records disappear after each upheaval affecting the PLO? The journals point out that all the PLO's records vanished when it left Amman during the PLO's presence in Jordan. And the records in Beirut also vanished when Palestinian fighters left Lebanon as they vanished in every other instance.

The journal also reports that high-level Palestinian figures are speaking out about Arafat's wealth and the PNA's need for these funds to assist in forming a state. Additionally, they report that sacked Palestinian security figures leaked details of Arafat's wealth and said that they have documents to prove their assertion.

Moreover, the journal reports that informed sources revealed that the United States government prepared a secret file about Arafat's wealth. They say that the file contains information about Arafat's fiscal assets and secret accounts and documents containing the names of Palestinian and Arab 'businessmen'; but whose real job is to manage these funds for Arafat. They add that the file has information about property owned by Arafat in many countries, including South America. These properties are described as large plantations that along with cash investments and shares are in the names of Arafat's representatives.

The journal says that United States sources leaked information about this file to Arab and Palestinian personalities and would use the information later on to ensure that this wealth will be transferred officially to the PNA and then to the proposed state.

Al-Watan al-Arabi closes by asking is Arafat going to disclose the funds owned by the Palestinian Authority registered in his name or in the names of unknown businessmen? Or will the Palestinian people stay poor?

 

ARAB COUNTRIES FREEZE MORE THAN $200 MILLION PLEDGED TO THE PA

Arabs halt funding to PA
Middle East News Line
July 26, 2002

Several Arab countries have halted funding to the Palestinian Authority amid accusations that chairman Yasser Arafat embezzled funds meant to aid Palestinians.

Palestinian sources said the Arab League funding was meant to finance the Palestinian health system as well as improve infrastructure. The sources said Arab countries froze more than $200 million in funding pledged to the PA after reports in the Gulf Arab media asserted that Arafat had embezzled $5 million in Arab allocations.

The sources said among the countries that have suspended funding to the PA are Morocco, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. They said Egypt and Jordan have sent little financial help and instead have focused on the transfer of food and humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials have confirmed a sharp reduction in Arab and Western aid. They said many countries have pledged tens of millions of dollars but have placed conditions on delivery of the aid.

"The United States has allocated $50 million in humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, and other countries did the same," PA International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath said. "But the actual supplies that arrived were little."

Shaath has been touring Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council states in an effort to renew Arab funding. The PA minister has stressed that Arafat has implemented reforms meant to increase financial accounting and transparency.

Saudi Arabia has maintained funding to the PA, the sources said. But the sources said Riyad provides the lion's share of aid to Hamas and individual Palestinian municipalities.

Saudi Arabia has agreed to fund an international team of military experts and monitors in an effort to restructure PA security forces. Palestinian officials said the monitors would come from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The Arab cutoff has frozen Palestinian developmental projects as well as the operation of several hospitals in the Gaza Strip. The sources said several of the countries that have halted funding are offering to relay money directly to municipalities in the PA.

On Thursday, Israel met with international representatives regarding a renewal of funding to the PA. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was quoted as telling the International Task Force on Palestinian Reform that Israel planned to release 10 percent of the $650 million being held in taxes collected for the PA.

 

WHO’S FINANCING TERROR NOW?

Who's financing terror now?
Editorial
The Jerusalem Post
July 27, 2002

In a stunning and inexplicable reversal of policy, Israel decided last week to begin transferring funds to the Palestinian Authority. Acting under intense pressure from the United States, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorized the Treasury to hand over NIS 200 million, or approximately 10 percent of the PA's frozen assets.

And so, just several weeks after it justifiably criticized the European Union for continuing to support Yasser Arafat despite the violence, Israel itself now joins the list of those propping up his terrorist regime with a steady cash flow.

The significance of the decision cannot be understated. Since shortly after the start of the Palestinian terror campaign in September 2000, Israel has refrained from passing along to the PA the monies collected in customs and VAT from Palestinian purchases in Israel or on goods imported through Israel.

As proof of the PA's direct involvement in terror mounted, it was only logical that Israel would choose to desist from financing an entity that was murdering Israeli citizens. To do otherwise would have been unthinkable.

Indeed, as former US secretary of state James Baker once noted, albeit in an entirely different context, money is fungible. Funds provided, say, to help the PA pay clerical salaries will necessarily free up other monies that can then be used for far more devious purposes, such as purchasing weapons, manufacturing explosives, or rewarding the families of suicide bombers.

And, though Sharon reportedly had insisted that no money would be transferred until a mechanism was established to ensure that the funds would go to improve the lives of average Palestinians, even that condition has now apparently fallen by the wayside amid objections by the PA.

Hence, Israel will essentially be giving Yasser Arafat a blank check, with no way of knowing precisely to what use the funds will be put.

Needless to say, there is plenty of good reason to suspect where at least part of it will end up. Shortly after Operation Defensive Shield earlier this year, the government began releasing reams of internal PA documents that had been discovered by the IDF during its sweep of the Palestinian-controlled areas.

Among the papers were handwritten instructions from Arafat himself ordering the disbursal of money to fund terrorists and their activities and pay for weapons to be used in terror attacks. There is no reason to now believe that the money being transferred will go to purchase butter rather than guns, and the government is therefore making a grave error by handing over the money.

Moreover, even if the dollars do not go to sponsor violence, there is still the issue of PA corruption to contend with. Recent revelations have demonstrated that large sums of money have gone into Arafat's own private accounts or been used to defray the living expenses of a PA minister's son studying at a university overseas.

Hence, pouring additional funds into Arafat's treasury, when even the elementary reforms demanded by outsiders have not been implemented, makes little economic or financial sense.

Nor does it make political sense either. Israel has made clear that Arafat is "irrelevant" and must be replaced, a position that the US has belatedly adopted as well. Nevertheless, the transfer of the NIS 200 million will only serve to strengthen his position, enabling him to buy off opponents and demonstrate a tangible achievement which he did nothing to earn.

In so doing, the Sharon government is also unwittingly sending a dangerous message to Arafat, namely that he can engage in terror and do nothing to halt Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and yet he will still get his paycheck at the end of the month.

As admirable as the government's desire to improve the lives of Palestinians might be, sending money to Arafat is hardly the best way to achieve this aim.

After all, the primary reason behind the increasingly dire economic straits in the territories is not Israel's counterterror operations, but the Palestinian terrorism which necessitates them. There would be no need for the closures, checkpoints, and roadblocks if Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen would lay down their arms and stop murdering innocent men, women, and children.

As long as the PA persists in resorting to terror, it must bear the responsibility for the consequences that result, be they economic or otherwise.

But by agreeing to join the dubious list of those financing the PA, Israel has effectively conceded the moral high-ground. Sharon is now playing along with the fiction that the PA is a partner with whom business can be done, even as the terrorism continues. So, when the next attack occurs though we pray that it won't just bear in mind where the money for carrying it out may have come from.

FULL ARTICLE

"WHAT OCCUPATION?"

What Occupation?
By Efraim Karsh
Commentary Magazine
July/Aug 2002 edition

No term has dominated the discourse of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict more than "occupation." For decades now, hardly a day has passed without some mention in the international media of Israel's supposedly illegitimate presence on Palestinian lands. This presence is invoked to explain the origins and persistence of the conflict between the parties, to show Israel's allegedly brutal and repressive nature, and to justify the worst anti-Israel terrorist atrocities. The occupation, in short, has become a catchphrase, and like many catchphrases it means different things to different people.

For most Western observers, the term "occupation" describes Israel's control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, areas that it conquered during the Six-Day war of June 1967. But for many Palestinians and Arabs, the Israeli presence in these territories represents only the latest chapter in an uninterrupted story of "occupations" dating back to the very creation of Israel on "stolen" land. If you go looking for a book about Israel in the foremost Arab bookstore on London's Charing Cross Road, you will find it in the section labeled "Occupied Palestine." That this is the prevailing view not only among Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza but among Palestinians living within Israel itself as well as elsewhere around the world is shown by the routine insistence on a Palestinian "right of return" that is meant to reverse the effects of the "1948 occupation"-i.e., the establishment of the state of Israel itself.

Palestinian intellectuals routinely blur any distinction between Israel's actions before and after 1967. Writing recently in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the prominent Palestinian cultural figure Jacques Persiqian told his Jewish readers that today's terrorist attacks were "what you have brought upon yourselves after 54 years of systematic oppression of another people"-a historical accounting that, going back to 1948, calls into question not Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza but its very legitimacy as a state.

Hanan Ashrawi, the most articulate exponent of the Palestinian cause, has been even more forthright in erasing the line between post-1967 and pre-1967 "occupations." "I come to you today with a heavy heart," she told the now-infamous World Conference Against Racism in Durban last summer, "leaving behind a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing naqba [catastrophe]": "In 1948, we became subject to a grave historical injustice manifested in a dual victimization: on the one hand, the injustice of dispossession, dispersion, and exile forcibly enacted on the population ... On the other hand, those who remained were subjected to the systematic oppression and brutality of an inhuman occupation that robbed them of all their rights and liberties."

This original "occupation"-that is, again, the creation and existence of the state of Israel-was later extended, in Ashrawi's narrative, as a result of the Six-Day war:

"Those of us who came under Israeli occupation in 1967 have languished in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip under a unique combination of military occupation, settler colonization, and systematic oppression. Rarely has the human mind devised such varied, diverse, and comprehensive means of wholesale brutalization and persecution."

Taken together, the charges against Israel's various "occupations" represent-and are plainly intended to be-a damning indictment of the entire Zionist enterprise. In almost every particular, they are also grossly false.

In 1948, no Palestinian state was invaded or destroyed to make way for the establishment of Israel. From biblical times, when this territory was the state of the Jews, to its occupation by the British army at the end of World War I, Palestine had never existed as a distinct political entity but was rather part of one empire after another, from the Romans, to the Arabs, to the Ottomans. When the British arrived in 1917, the immediate loyalties of the area's inhabitants were parochial-to clan, tribe, village, town, or religious sect-and coexisted with their fealty to the Ottoman sultan-caliph as the religious and temporal head of the world Muslim community.

Under a League of Nations mandate explicitly meant to pave the way for the creation of a Jewish national home, the British established the notion of an independent Palestine for the first time and delineated its boundaries. In 1947, confronted with a determined Jewish struggle for independence, Britain returned the mandate to the League's successor, the United Nations, which in turn decided on November 29, 1947, to partition mandatory Palestine into two states: one Jewish, the other Arab.

The state of Israel was thus created by an internationally recognized act of national self-determination-an act, moreover, undertaken by an ancient people in its own homeland. In accordance with common democratic practice, the Arab population in the new state's midst was immediately recognized as a legitimate ethnic and religious minority. As for the prospective Arab state, its designated territory was slated to include, among other areas, the two regions under contest today-namely, Gaza and the West Bank (with the exception of Jerusalem, which was to be placed under international control).

As is well known, the implementation of the UN's partition plan was aborted by the effort of the Palestinians and of the surrounding Arab states to destroy the Jewish state at birth. What is less well known is that even if the Jews had lost the war, their territory would not have been handed over to the Palestinians. Rather, it would have been divided among the invading Arab forces, for the simple reason that none of the region's Arab regimes viewed the Palestinians as a distinct nation. As the eminent Arab-American historian Philip Hitti described the common Arab view to an Anglo-American commission of inquiry in 1946, "There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not."

This fact was keenly recognized by the British authorities on the eve of their departure. As one official observed in mid-December 1947, "it does not appear that Arab Palestine will be an entity, but rather that the Arab countries will each claim a portion in return for their assistance [in the war against Israel], unless [Transjordan's] King Abdallah takes rapid and firm action as soon as the British withdrawal is completed." A couple of months later, the British high commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan Cunningham, informed the colonial secretary, Arthur Creech Jones, that "the most likely arrangement seems to be Eastern Galilee to Syria, Samaria and Hebron to Abdallah, and the south to Egypt."

The British proved to be prescient. Neither Egypt nor Jordan ever allowed Palestinian self-determination in Gaza and the West Bank-- which were, respectively, the parts of Palestine conquered by them during the 1948-49 war. Indeed, even UN Security Council Resolution 242, which after the Six-Day war of 1967 established the principle of "land for peace" as the cornerstone of future Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, did not envisage the creation of a Palestinian state. To the contrary: since the Palestinians were still not viewed as a distinct nation, it was assumed that any territories evacuated by Israel, would be returned to their pre-1967 Arab occupiers-Gaza to Egypt, and the West Bank to Jordan. The resolution did not even mention the Palestinians by name, affirming instead the necessity "for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem"-a clause that applied not just to the Palestinians but to the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from the Arab states following the 1948 war.

At this time-we are speaking of the late 1960's – Palestinian nationhood was rejected by the entire international community, including the Western democracies, the Soviet Union (the foremost supporter of radical Arabism), and the Arab world itself. "Moderate" Arab rulers like the Hashemites in Jordan viewed an independent Palestinian state as a mortal threat to their own kingdom, while the Saudis saw it as a potential source of extremism and instability. Pan-Arab nationalists were no less adamantly opposed, having their own purposes in mind for the region. As late as 1974, Syrian President Hafez alAssad openly referred to Palestine as "not only a part of the Arab homeland but a basic part of southern Syria"; there is no reason to think he had changed his mind by the time of his death in 2000.

Nor, for that matter, did the populace of the West Bank and Gaza regard itself as a distinct nation. The collapse and dispersion of Palestinian society following the 1948 defeat had shattered an always fragile communal fabric, and the subsequent physical separation of the various parts of the Palestinian diaspora prevented the crystallization of a national identity. Host Arab regimes actively colluded in discouraging any such sense from arising. Upon occupying the West Bank during the 1948 war, King Abdallah had moved quickly to erase all traces of corporate Palestinian identity. On April 4, 1950, the territory was formally annexed to Jordan, its residents became Jordanian citizens, and they were increasingly integrated into the kingdom's economic, political, and social structures.

For its part, the Egyptian government showed no desire to annex the Gaza Strip but had instead ruled the newly acquired area as an occupied military zone. This did not imply support of Palestinian nationalism, however, or of any sort of collective political awareness among the Palestinians. The local population was kept under tight control, was denied Egyptian citizenship, and was subjected to severe restrictions on travel.

What, then, of the period after 1967, when these territories passed into the hands of Israel? Is it the case that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have been the victims of the most "varied, diverse, and comprehensive means of wholesale brutalization and persecution" ever devised by the human mind?

At the very least, such a characterization would require a rather drastic downgrading of certain other well-documented 20th-century phenomena, from the slaughter of Armenians during World War I and onward through a grisly chronicle of tens upon tens of millions murdered, driven out, crushed under the heels of despots. By stark contrast, during the three decades of Israel's control, far fewer Palestinians were killed at Jewish hands than by King Hussein of Jordan in the single month of September 1970 when, fighting off an attempt by Yasir Arafat's PLO to destroy his monarchy, he dispatched (according to the Palestinian scholar Yezid Sayigh) between 3,000 and 5,000 Palestinians, among them anywhere from 1,500 to 3,500 civilians. Similarly, the number of innocent Palestinians killed by their Kuwaiti hosts in the winter of 1991, in revenge for the PLO's support for Saddam Hussein's brutal occupation of Kuwait, far exceeds the number of Palestinian rioters and terrorists who lost their lives in the first intifada against Israel during the late 1980's.

Such crude comparisons aside, to present the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as "systematic oppression" is itself the inverse of the truth. It should be recalled, first of all, that this occupation did not come about as a consequence of some grand expansionist design, but rather was incidental to Israel's success against a pan-Arab attempt to destroy it. Upon the outbreak of Israeli-Egyptian hostilities on June 5, 1967, the Israeli government secretly pleaded with King Hussein of Jordan, the de-facto ruler of the West Bank, to forgo any military action; the plea was rebuffed by the Jordanian monarch, who was loathe to lose the anticipated spoils of what was to be the Arabs' "final round" with Israel.

Thus it happened that, at the end of the conflict, Israel unexpectedly found itself in control of some one million Palestinians, with no definite idea about their future status and lacking any concrete policy for their administration. In the wake of the war, the only objective adopted by then-Minister of Defense Moshe Dean was to preserve normalcy in the territories through a mixture of economic inducements and a minimum of Israeli intervention. The idea was that the local populace would be given the freedom to administer itself as it wished, and would be able to maintain regular contact with the Arab world via the Jordan River bridges. In sharp contrast with, for example, the U.S. occupation of postwar Japan, which saw a general censorship of all Japanese media and a comprehensive revision of school curricula, Israel made no attempt to reshape Palestinian culture. It limited its oversight of the Arabic press in the territories to military and security matters, and allowed the continued use in local schools of Jordanian textbooks filled with vile anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda.

Israel's restraint in this sphere-which turned out to be desperately misguided-is only part of the story. The larger part, still untold in all its detail, is of the astounding social and economic progress made by the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli "oppression." At the inception of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors.

In the economic sphere, most of this progress was the result of access to the far larger and more advanced Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.

During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world-ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan's $1,050, Egypt's $600, Turkey's $1,630, and Tunisia's $1,440). By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's (one of the better off Arab states). Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.

Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.

No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars.

Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980's, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the time of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990's, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.

All this, as I have noted, took place against the backdrop of Israel's hands-off policy in the political and administrative spheres. Indeed, even as the PLO (until 1982 headquartered in Lebanon and thereafter in Tunisia) proclaimed its ongoing commitment to the destruction of the Jewish state, the Israelis did surprisingly little to limit its political influence in the territories. The publication of pro-PLO editorials was permitted in the local press, and anti-Israel activities by PLO supporters were tolerated so long as they did not involve overt incitements to violence. Israel also allowed the free flow of PLO-controlled funds, a policy justified by Minister of Defense Ezer Weizmann in 1978 in these (deluded) words: "It does not matter that they get money from the PLO, as long as they don't build arms factories with it." Nor, with very few exceptions, did Israel encourage the formation of Palestinian political institutions that might serve as a counterweight to the PLO. As a result, the PLO gradually established itself as the predominant force in the territories, relegating the pragmatic traditional leadership to the fringes of the political system.*

Given the extreme and even self-destructive leniency of Israel's administrative policies, what seems remarkable is that it took as long as it did for the PLO to entice the residents of the West Bank and Gaza into a popular struggle against the Jewish state. Here Israel's counterinsurgency measures must be given their due, as well as the low level of national consciousness among the Palestinians and the sheer rapidity and scope of the improvements in their standard of living. The fact remains, however, that during the two-and-a-half decades from the occupation of the territories to the onset of the Oslo peace process in 1993, there was very little "armed resistance," and most terrorist attacks emanated from outside-from Jordan in the late 1960's, then from Lebanon.

In an effort to cover up this embarrassing circumstance, Fatah, the PLO's largest constituent organization, adopted the slogan that "there is no difference between inside and outside." But there was a difference, and a rather fundamental one. By and large, the residents of the territories wished to get on with their lives and take advantage of the opportunities afforded by Israeli rule. Had the West Bank eventually been returned to Jordan, its residents, all of whom had been Jordanian citizens before 1967, might well have reverted to that status. Alternatively, had Israel prevented the spread of the PLO's influence in the territories, a local leadership, better attuned to the real interests and desires of the people and more amenable to peaceful coexistence with Israel, might have emerged.

But these things were not to be. By the mid1970's, the PLO had made itself into the "sole representative of the Palestinian people," and in short order Jordan and Egypt washed their hands of the West Bank and Gaza. Whatever the desires of the people living in the territories, the PLO had vowed from the moment of its founding in the mid1960's-well before the Six-Day war-to pursue its "revolution until victory," that is, until the destruction of the Jewish state. Once its position was secure, it proceeded to do precisely that.

By the mid-1990's, thanks to Oslo, the PLO had achieved a firm foothold in the West Bank and Gaza. Its announced purpose was to lay the groundwork for Palestinian statehood but its real purpose was to do what it knew best-namely, create an extensive terrorist infrastructure and use it against its Israeli "peace partner." At first it did this tacitly, giving a green light to other terrorist organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad; then it operated openly and directly.

But what did all this have to do with Israel's "occupation"? The declaration signed on the White House lawn in 1993 by the PLO and the Israeli government provided for Palestinian self-rule in the entire West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a transitional period not to exceed five years, during which Israel and the Palestinians would negotiate a permanent peace settlement. During this interim period the territories would be administered by a Palestinian Council, to be freely and democratically elected after the withdrawal of Israeli military forces both from the Gaza Strip and from the populated areas of the West Bank.

By May 1994, Israel had completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip (apart from a small stretch of territory containing Israeli settlements) and the Jericho area of the West Bank. On July 1, Yasir Arafat made his triumphant entry into Gaza. On September 28, 1995, despite Arafat's abysmal failure to clamp down on terrorist activities in the territories now under his control, the two parties signed an interim agreement, and by the end of the year Israeli forces had been withdrawn from the West Bank's populated areas with the exception of Hebron (where redeployment was completed in early 1997). On January 20, 1996, elections to the Palestinian Council were held, and shortly afterward both the Israeli civil administration and military government were dissolved.

The geographical scope of these Israeli withdrawals was relatively limited; the surrendered land amounted to some 30 percent of the West Bank's overall territory. But its impact on the Palestinian population was nothing short of revolutionary. At one fell swoop, Israel relinquished control over virtually all of the West Bank's 1.4 million residents. Since that time, nearly 60 percent of them-in the Jericho area and in the seven main cities of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Hebron-have lived entirely under Palestinian jurisdiction. Another 40 percent live in towns, villages, refugee camps, and hamlets where the Palestinian Authority exercises civil authority but, in line with the Oslo accords, Israel has maintained "overriding responsibility for security." Some two percent of the West Bank's population-tens of thousands of Palestinians-continue to live in areas where Israel has complete control, but even there the Palestinian Authority maintains "functional jurisdiction."

In short, since the beginning of 1996, and certainly following the completion of the redeployment from Hebron in January 1997, 99 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have not lived under Israeli occupation. By no conceivable stretching of words can the anti-Israel violence emanating from the territories during these years be made to qualify as resistance to foreign occupation. In these years there has been no such occupation.

If the stubborn persistence of Palestinian terrorism is not attributable to the continuing occupation, many of the worst outrages against Israeli civilians likewise occurred-contrary to the mantra of Palestinian spokesmen and their apologists-not at moments of breakdown in the Oslo "peace process" but at its high points, when the prospect of Israeli withdrawal appeared brightest and most imminent.

Suicide bombings, for example, were introduced in the atmosphere of euphoria only a few months after the historic Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn: eight people were murdered in April 1994 while riding a bus in the town of Afula. Six months later, 21 Israelis were murdered on a bus in Tel Aviv. In the following year, five bombings took the lives of a further 38 Israelis. During the short-lived government of the dovish Shimon Peres (November 1995-May 1996), after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, 58 Israelis were murdered within the span of one week in three suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Further disproving the standard view is the fact that terrorism was largely curtailed following Benjamin Netanyahu's election in May 1996 and the consequent slowdown in the Oslo process. During Netanyahu's three years in power, some 50 Israelis were murdered in terrorist attacks-a third of the casualty rate during the Rabin government and a sixth of the casualty rate during Peres's term.

There was a material side to this downturn in terrorism as well. Between 1994 and 1996, the Rabin and Peres governments had imposed repeated closures on the territories in order to stem the tidal wave of terrorism in the wake of the Oslo accords. This had led to a steep drop in the Palestinian economy. With workers unable to get into Israel, unemployment rose sharply, reaching as high as 50 percent in Gaza. The movement of goods between Israel and the territories, as well as between the West Bank and Gaza, was seriously disrupted, slowing exports and discouraging potential private investment.

The economic situation in the territories began to improve during the term of the Netanyahu government, as the steep fall in terrorist attacks led to a corresponding decrease in closures. Real GNP per capita grew by 3.5 percent in 1997, 7.7 percent in 1998, and 3.5 percent in 1999, while unemployment was more than halved. By the beginning of 1999, according to the World Bank, the West Bank and Gaza had fully recovered from the economic decline of the previous years.

Then, in still another turnabout, came Ehud Barak, who in the course of a dizzying six months in late 2000 and early 2001 offered Yasir Arafat a complete end to the Israeli presence, ceding virtually the entire West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the nascent Palestinian state together with some Israeli territory, and making breathtaking concessions over Israel's capital city of Jerusalem. To this, however, Arafat's response was war. Since its launch, the Palestinian campaign has inflicted thousands of brutal attacks on Israeli civilians-suicide bombings, drive-by shootings, stabbings, lynching, stonings-murdering more than 500 and wounding some 4,000.

In the entire two decades of Israeli occupation preceding the Oslo accords, some 400 Israelis were murdered; since the conclusion of that "peace" agreement, twice as many have lost their lives in terrorist attacks. If the occupation was the cause of terrorism, why was terrorism sparse during the years of actual occupation, why did it increase dramatically with the prospect of the end of the occupation, and why did it escalate into open war upon Israel's most far-reaching concessions ever? To the contrary, one might argue with far greater plausibility that the absence of occupation-that is, the withdrawal of close Israeli surveillance-is precisely what facilitated the launching of the terrorist war in the first place.

There are limits to Israel's ability to transform a virulent enemy into a peace partner, and those limits have long since been reached. To borrow from Baruch Spinoza, peace is not the absence of war but rather a state of mind: a disposition to benevolence, confidence, and justice. From the birth of the Zionist movement until today, that disposition has remained conspicuously absent from the mind of the Palestinian leadership.

It is not the 1967 occupation that led to the Palestinians' rejection of peaceful coexistence and their pursuit of violence. Palestinian terrorism started well before 1967, and continued-and intensified-after the occupation ended in all but name. Rather, what is at fault is the perduring Arab view that the creation of the Jewish state was itself an original act of "inhuman occupation" with which compromise of any final kind is beyond the realm of the possible. Until that disposition changes, which is to say until a different leadership arises, the idea of peace in the context of the Arab Middle East will continue to mean little more than the continuation of war by other means.

[Footnote: *For further details, see Menahem Milson, "How Not to Occupy the West Bank," Commentary, April 1986.]

(Efraim Karsh, head of Mediterranean studies at Kings College, University of London. His articles in Commentary include "Israel's War" (April 2002) and "The Palestinians and the `Right of Return"' (May 2001).)

TERRORISM’S YOUNGEST VICTIM

Baby boy is conflict's youngest victim
By Mayan Jaffe
The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2002

Doctors rushed to perform a Caesarean section on a seriously wounded woman moments after the terror attack in Emmanuel, but her baby died Wednesday, becoming the youngest known victim of the 21-month conflict. The baby's mother remains in serious condition in Beilinson Hospital.

Sixteen people remained hospitalized Wednesday at least one in critical condition following Tuesday's bombing and shooting attack near the West Bank settlement.

Among the seriously injured was 22-year-old Yehudit Weinberg, who was hit in the pelvis and legs. Her fetus was unharmed by bullets but was born without a pulse because the mother had lost a lot of blood, doctors said. Nine hours after delivery, he died.

The baby became the youngest known victim of the 21 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, although women in advanced stages of pregnancy and their fetuses have also been killed.

The infant had no pulse after the surgery, Professor Lea Sirota, director of the neonatal intensive care unit, told The Jerusalem Post.

"We worked on the baby for 40 minutes only to discover he had brain damage, " Sirota said.

While doctors succeeded in reviving him, the baby succumbed at 2 a.m. Wednesday to the brain injury, she said.

Among other victims in Tuesday's ambush were three generations from the same family: 8-month-old Tiferet Shilon, her father and maternal grandmother. Shilon's twin sister, two-year-old brother and mother were injured in the attack.

 

HEADLINES FROM THE HEBREW PRESS TODAY

Ha'aretz – Headlines
July 17, 2002

1. Three terrorists detonated bomb next to armored bus, and after it stopped opened fire on trapped passengers.

Seven Israelis murdered in bomb and shooting ambush on bus near Emmanuel.

20 wounded, seven in serious condition; four wounded children. Suspicion of faults in IDF action and civilian security. Terrorists escaped: Four terror organizations took responsibility

2. Daughter and grandmother killed in bus; father who arrived to rescue them killed.

3. Arafat's hypocrisy: Fatah took responsibility for attack; PA condemned it.

4. IDF arrested female Tanzim terrorist in Jenin who was planning to carry out suicide attack.

 

AMAZINGLY, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL ISSUES CONDEMNATION ON BEHALF OF JEWISH CHILDREN

[Amnesty International issues statements on behalf of Palestinians all the time. It is very rare for them to denounce the killing of West Bank Jewish children. -- TG]

Amnesty International
Press Release

AI Index: MDE 15/117/2002 (Public)
News Service No: 122
July 16, 2002

Israel / Occupied Territories / Palestinian Authority: Amnesty International condemns attack on bus near West Bank settlement

Amnesty International condemns the attack on a bus near the Israeli settlement of Emmanuel in the West Bank that killed at least seven people and wounded 19 others, including children.

"There is no justification for the targeting of civilians," Amnesty International said. "The fact that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal under international humanitarian law does not mean that settlers may be attacked. They are still civilians and civilians are not legitimate targets."

Apparently the bus was attacked by roadside bombs that detonated under the bus. The attackers then opened fire on the fleeing passengers. Two Palestinian armed groups – Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) – have claimed responsibility for the attack.

"Deliberately killing civilians violates fundamental principles of international law and we call on all Palestinian groups and individuals to cease such attacks immediately," the organization added.

Amnesty International has recently published a report on attacks against civilians unreservedly condemning these attacks, whatever reason the perpetrators give to their action. The report Without distinction – attacks on civilians by Palestinian armed groups documents 128 attacks in which more than 350 civilians, most of them Israeli, have been killed since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000.

"Israel and the Palestinian Authority have a responsibility to bring to justice people within their jurisdiction who order, organise, assist or carry out attacks on civilians," Amnesty International said. "In doing so they must act strictly in accordance with international humanitarian law and human rights standards."

 

TERROR IN DISGUISE

Terror in disguise
The New York Post
July 17, 2002

At least three Palestinian terrorists wearing Israeli army fatigues staged an elaborate and deadly ambush yesterday, killing seven Israelis on a bus outside an ultra-Orthodox West Bank settlement.

Among those killed in the first deadly attack on Israeli civilians in nearly a month were an 8- month-old baby and her father – who was running to save her – while another 14 were badly wounded, said Ron Nachman, mayor of nearby Ariel.

Yesterday's horrific attack at the Emmanuel settlement was so sly that three terror organizations instantly clamored to take credit for it.

It was a near replica of the attack on Dec. 12 that killed 11 people in the same place – at the entrance to Emmanuel, between the Palestinian-controlled towns of Qalqilya and Nablus.

Sources said the terrorists, dressed in Israeli army fatigues, planted 65 pounds of TNT on the road and detonated it as a bus filled mostly with women and children passed by.

Although the bus was made of steel armor – a precaution taken since the December attack – the bombing forced the bus to skid to a halt.

The gunmen, positioned on top of a nearby cave, then threw grenades on the bus roof – which was not reinforced – and sprayed it with bullets before escaping.

Authorities say a family by the name of Shilon was particularly devastated by the ambush. Mr. Shilon – whose first name could not be learned last night – was walking in the settlement when news of the attack came over the central public-address system.

"He went running toward the bus," a source said. "He saw the gunmen, but he was desperate to save his family, and they shot him dead."

His baby daughter, Sarah, and his mother-in-law were both killed by gunfire.

His wife and 2-year-old son were shot, but they are expected to survive.

Sarah's twin sister was unharmed.

Three terror groups claimed responsibility: Hamas, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is affiliated with Yasser Arafat.

 

OTHER ATTACKS SO FAR TODAY, JULY 17, 2002

News Agencies
July 17, 2002

Gunmen shoot at Netzarim and Neve Dekalim

Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the IDF outposts in Netzarim and Neve Dekalim, in Gush Katif.

Palestinians stab Meah Shearim man
July 17, 2002

The man who was stabbed by Palestinians in the Meah Shearim orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem an hour ago is in moderate condition, Israel Radio reports.

Explosive device discovered near Arab village of Sinjel
July 17, 2002

An explosive device was discovered near the Arab village of Sinjel, south of the Jewish community of Shilo in the Shomron, during the night, media sources report.

Soldiers closed Route 60 in order to deal with the discovery.

Soldiers prevent major terrorist attack in South
The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2002

Members of the Southern Command's Desert Patrol Battalion discovered an 80-kilogram bomb along the Egyptian border near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday, preventing an attempt by Palestinians to carry out a major terrorist attack.

The large bomb, similar to the type used to destroy Merkava III tanks, was safely detonated by sappers in a controlled explosion.

 

PA STOPS SHORT OF CONDEMNING TERRORIST ATTACK AT EMMANUEL

PA fails to formally condemn yesterday's attack
July 17, 2002

The Palestinian Authority has denounced attacks on civilians, but stopped short of specifically condemning the terrorist attack at Emmanuel.

In a statement sent to the French news agency in Gaza, the Authority says it rejects any operation aimed at civilians, Israeli or Palestinian.

The statement also noted that peace and security will not be obtained through a military, but only through a political solution.

 

TWO SUSPECTS HELD IN TORONTO FOR DAVID ROSENZWEIG MURDER

Two suspects held in Toronto for David Rosenzweig murder
By Noah Sarna and Amy Carmichael (edited)
July 16, 2002

Two suspects have been arrested in the weekend murder of David Rosenzweig outside a kosher pizzeria.

Christopher McBride, 20, and Mercedes Asante, 19, also known as Sylvia Asante, were arrested at a home in Toronto's west end late Monday, police said. McBride, who faces a first-degree murder charge, was out on bail and charged with possessing a stolen vehicle in Ottawa when Rosenzweig was killed.

The Toronto Jewish community reeled in shock as it gathered to bury David Rosenzweig, 49, in Toronto yesterday evening.

Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Ontario Premier Ernie Eves both issued statements yesterday condemning anti-Semitism.

Jewish leaders in Canada say the crime is a result of the anti-Semitism inflamed by the conflict in Israel and unjustified criticism of the Jewish state.

"When they were shouting 'Kill The Jews!!' at rallies on Bloor St. [in downtown Toronto], B'nai Brith Canada warned the police and the community that that brazen call would be heard in some hate-filled corners of the city," said Frank Diamont, Executive Vice President of B'nai Brith Canada. "This has, to our great sorrow, come to pass... As we have been doing for the last 6 months, we again call upon the prime minister to issue a clear statement denouncing anti-Semitism, and indicating that Canadians will not tolerate it in any shape or form."

A CPA and Orthodox Jew, Rosenzweig was stabbed while helping his son fix a damaged car in front of the King David Pizzeria, a popular kosher restaurant in the center of the city's Jewish neighborhood, shortly after 1 a.m. Rosenzweig's 16-year-old son Ezra, a new driver, had just been in a car accident not far from the pizzeria.

Rosenzweig was murdered on his birthday. He is survived by his wife, and six children: Meir, 24; Shalom, 22; Shira, 20; Ezra, 16; Shragi, 12; and Yehiel, 8. His parents, originally from Poland, were survivors of the Holocaust. He also has an aunt and uncle who live in Petah Tikva.

 

CAR EXPLODES 200 METRES FROM A SYNAGOGUE IN HELSINKI

Car explodes near Helsinki synagogue
July 16, 2002

A car exploded about 200 meters from a synagogue in Helsinki, Finland, early yesterday, killing the driver and wounding another man, police said.

Helsinki police said they did not know whether the synagogue was the target. The blast killed the driver, a 30-year-old Finnish citizen, while he was driving, and wounded a man in another car, which was also badly damaged.

Gideon Bolotowsky, president of Helsinki's small Jewish community, told Reuters he had no information yet to indicate the blast was an attack on the synagogue, which received a bomb threat earlier this year.

"I think we will have to wait and not jump to any hasty conclusions about what could have been," he said. "There is a chance there could be a link with what is going on in the Middle East, but that is pretty remote I would think."