Issue no 117

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Issue No : 117 12th JANUARY , 2015

Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia | 1


Palestinian Cultural Organization MalaysiaMalaysiaM

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Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia

Ehud Barak: BDS is developing, Israel liable to a boycott

Palestinians raise concerns over dangers facing Al-Aqsa Mosque

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P16

FEATURED STORY

Articles & Analyses

Read in This Issue

The Palestinian Authority and its political dreams

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Swedish FM cancels visit to Israel following Lieberman’s remarks

Two Palestinian children burn to death after electricity outage in Gaza

For Palestinians, Asian Cup more than a game

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Palestine’s Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas

P8Israeli Insider

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CONTENTS

Palestinian Cultural

Organization Malaysia

News of Palestine

Israel Insider

Articles & Analyses

FEATURED STORY

Palestinians raise concerns over dangers facing Al-Aqsa Mosque 4

Swedish FM cancels visit to Israel following Lieberman’s remarks 5

Two Palestinian children burn to death after electricity outage in Gaza 6

Palestinian prisoners face slow death from freezing temperatures in Israeli jails 7

Ehud Barak: BDS is developing, Israel liable to a boycott 8

Israel hands down 8 month suspended sentence to Haniyeh’s sisters 9

Israeli settlers chop down 300 olive trees south of Hebron 10

For Palestinians, Asian Cup more than a game 11

ICC ‘close’ to opening war investigation 12

Palestine’s Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas 13

Israel freezes Palestinian tax payments, EU denounces 14

Palestinians to join war crimes tribunal on April 1 15

The Palestinian Authority and its political dreams 16

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Featured Story

Palestinians raise concerns over dangers facing Al-Aqsa Mosque

After the announcement of a thwarted attempt to bomb the Dome of the Rock, Palestinian Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Adnan al-Husseini announced Palestinian fears regarding the dangers facing Al-Aqsa Mosque, Felesteen newspaper reported on Friday.

Al-Husseini blamed the Israeli oc-cupation authorities for all dan-gers facing Al-Aqsa Mosque and the other facilities in the Al-Aqsa compound, including the Dome of the Rock.

In its weekly supplement, the Is-raeli Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Friday that the Israeli intelligence agency Shabak had thwarted an attempt to bomb the Dome of the Rock by and American migrant.

Speaking to Palestine newspa-per, Al-Husseini did not rule out such an outrage happening and

said that this was not the first at-tempt. “Many similar attempts planned to target the Dome of the Rock or the main Mosque in Al-Aqsa sanctuary were revealed and thwarted,” he said.

He held the Israeli authorities re-sponsible for these attempts be-cause they protect the “extremist settlers when they break into Al-Aqsa Mosque and its compound.”

Asked whether the Yedioth Ahro-noth report would pave the way for a real attack on the Mosque, Al-Husseini replied: “Yes, this is part of the plan and the daily raids of the settlers into the sanctuary of Al-Aqsa Mosque and perfor-mance of Talmudic rituals are all part of the plan.” He stressed that the end of the chaos in Jerusalem would only come about with the end of the occupation.

The minister said that the resi-dents of the holy city are insisting

on an end to the occupation and called upon Arab and Islamic states to support the aspirations of the Palestinians in Jerusalem.

On his part, the director of Al-Aq-sa Association for Endowments and Islamic Heritage, Amir al-Khatib, derided the news about aborting an attempt to bomb the Dome of the Rock.

“This is just to show that the Is-raeli occupation is the protector of the Mosque and its facilities,” he said, “while in fact, it is occu-pying it.”

Speaking to the Palestinian newspaper, Al-Khatib said that Al-Aqsa Mosque has been un-der the Israeli occupation since 1967 and the only demand for the Palestinians is the end of this occupation.

10 January 2015

Source: MEMO and Agencies

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Swedish FM cancels visit to Israel following Lieberman’s remarks

The Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom called off her visit to Israel after Israeli PM Avigdor Li-eberman said he would boycott her visit, Israeli.. In the wake of the recognition of Palestine by Sweden, Lieberman announced he would boycott his Swedish counterpart, saying that Stockholm abandoned Israel just as the European countries had abandoned Czechoslovakia through the agreement between Munich and the Nazis in 1938.

Wahlstrom was scheduled to visit Israel in mid-January to participate in a ceremony commemorating Swedish diplomat Raoul Folenberg who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Swedish officials made con-tact with Netanyahu’s office regarding holding a meeting between with Wahlstrom, they did not receive a positive response.

As a result, the Swedish Foreign Ministry announced the postponement of the visit. “The foreign minister has decided to postpone her visit to Israel and Palestine. Instead of next week it will take place later. No date is yet decided,” Wahlstrom’s spokesman Erik Boman said.

Israel has expressed outrage at the announcement made by the Swedish government last November about its recognition of the State of Palestine. Following the Swedish announcement, Israel recalled its ambassador to Stockholm, he returned three weeks later.

08 January 2015 Source: Agencies

News of Palestine

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A massive fire caused by a short circuit has left two young brothers dead in the embattled Gaza Strip while their father sustained moderate burns, their family said on Sunday, blaming the enclave’s chron-ic electricity crisis for their death.

“Power supply had gone out intermittently for sev-eral minutes, triggering a short circuit in the two chil-dren’s room, which caused a huge fire on Saturday evening, leading to their death,” Fatma al-Hubail, the two children’s aunt, told The Anadolu Agency at the family house in Gaza City.

According to al-Hubail, the two children – both 3 and 4 – were sleeping when the fire broke out in their room. Having got scared, the children ran into the closet of their room, thinking they would be safe in-side.

“Their father tried to save them, but he fainted from

26 burned to death due to power crisis Two Palestinian children burn to death after electricity outage in Gaza

smoke inhalation,” she added.

Al-Hubail noted that the father, Mohamed, had never used candles when the electricity went out in the past, lest the house should catch fire as a result.

She said there had been several cases of neigh-bouring houses that caught fire when their resi-dents used candles to get light.

In January 2013, the six members of a family were killed when their Gaza City house caught fire as well. The fire was caused by a candle the family used to get light after an electricity outage.

“I call on the international community to inter-vene to help us solve this electricity crisis,” al-Hubail said.

05 Jan 2015

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Head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Committee, Issa Qaraqe, has confirmed that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are facing “very difficult” conditions be-cause they are denied proper clothes and cover for the extreme winter weather, Qudsnet reported.

“The Israeli occupation is using the extremely cold weather to kill the Palestinian prisoners as its inter-rogators expose them to the cold weather in order to extract confessions,” he said.

Qaraqe said that the Israeli Prisons’ Services cat-egorically refused to allow clothes and covers for the prisoners; they have instead obliged them to buy only light covers from prisons’ canteens for high prices.

On the measures to sort out the problem, Qaraqe said that his committee met the International Red Cross, who attempted to send the needed clothes and covers for the prisoners, but the Israeli authori-ties refused.

He said that his committee had also raised the is-

Palestinian prisoners face slow death from freezing temperatures in Israeli jails

sue with the Israeli Supreme Court, which over-turned their complaint claiming the Israeli Pris-ons’ Services had provided all the needs.

According to Qaraqe the number of Palestin-ian prisoners in Israeli jails has increased from 4,000 to 7,000 due to the extensive campaigns of arrest conducted in the last six months.

Qaraqe said that the Israeli prisons, where the Palestinians are held, are not equipped with central heating system and this has caused many health problems for the prisoners.

He called for the international bodies concerned with this issue to urgently intervene in order to save the lives of the prisoners by putting pres-sure on the Israeli authorities to deal with the Palestinian prisoners with respect and apply international standards of detention standards toward them.

10 January 2015 Source: MEMO

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Ehud Barak: BDS is developing, Israel liable to a boycott

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak as warned that Is-rael is vulnerable to a boycott, as the BDS movement develops.

In an interview in Israeli news-paper Haaretz, Barak was asked whether he thought that a boycott of Israel was develop-ing, along the lines of what the apartheid regime in South Africa faced.

Describing a process of “delegiti-misation” taking place “below the surface”, Barak acknowledged that “the BDS movement is de-veloping”.

As long as those voices against Israel came from Eritrea or Mau-ritania, fine; when they start to come from Scandinavia and Britain, it’s a serious problem. Look at Israel’s standing in the community of labor organiza-tions worldwide – it’s a very grim situation. That will continue with consumer organisations, pen-sion funds, the universities.

Barak also commented on the situation on US campuses, not-ing that “35 years ago, the univer-sities were bastions of sympathy for Israel.” Today, however, “you come to a university and you’re told in advance whether there will be a demonstration.”

These groups are quantitatively negligible, but in terms of their

essence, they are the future leadership of the United States and of the world. It’s a gradual trend, but it’s sliding toward a tipping point, and at the end of that tipping point awaits a slope or, heaven forbid, an abyss.

Levelling heavy criticism at the Netanyahu government, Barak said Israel’s isolation was very much a possibility.

But to say it can’t happen? It could happen, even if we don’t want it to. We don’t want a boy-cott, but there is liable to be a boycott. We don’t want Israel’s isolation, but Israel could find it-self in very painful isolation.

Barak referenced the situation that faced South Africa prior to

the end of apartheid, and noted that “the pressure and the sanc-tions” were what “brought about [the leadership’s] awakening.”

They were people of a very high level, intellectually and other-wise, and they had wonderful explanations. They said: “The Americans are preaching moral-ity to us? Well, they committed genocide, all they have left are pangs of conscience.” Or they said: “We gave the blacks ev-erything, the possibility to work, and comparatively they are liv-ing better than in their deserts, we gave them opportunities and they developed.”

09 January 2015

Source: MEMO

Israeli Insider

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Israel hands down 8 month suspended sentence to Haniyeh’s sisters

Two sisters of the Vice President of the political bureau of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh were given eight-month suspended sentences on charges of entering Gaza through the Ra-fah border crossing, an Israeli court ruled yesterday.

Israeli public radio said that the “Be’er Sheva Magistrates Court, in the city of Beersheba, southern Israel, gave both Sabah Haniyeh and Leila Abu Rakik a suspended sentence of eight months after they were convicted of illegally entering the Gaza Strip.”

“The court also handed down a fine of 20,000 shekel ($5,100) each.”

The station pointed out that “those convicted are two Israeli citizens who had illegally en-tered the Gaza Strip in 2012 through Egypt, after the Israeli authorities refused to grant them a permit to enter the Strip.”

It did not indicate whether the judgment was issued against the defendants in absentia or if they were present for the trial.

Haniyeh’s sisters obtained Israeli citizenship after marrying two Arab Israelis.

Israeli authorities forbid their citizens from entering Gaza.

The court’s decision may be appealed at the Supreme Court, the highest judicial body in the country.


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Israeli settlers on Friday night carried out the sec-ond attack of the day on Palestinian farmers south of Hebron and chopped down about 300 olive trees.

Coordinator of a local popular committee against Israeli settlements and the separation wall, Ratib al-Jubour, told Ma’an that the settlers who carried out the attack came from the nearby Jewish-only settlement of Susiya.

He said that they came at night and used the cover of the storm sweeping across the region to carry out the attack.

He added the attackers chopped down about 300 olive trees, each of which had been planted be-tween three and seven years ago. He said that the trees belong to the Shatat, Dawood, and Halabi families.

Earlier on Friday, settlers chopped down 45 olive

Israeli settlers chop down 300 olive trees south of Hebron

trees in the Shaab al-Butm area on the outskirts of Yatta south of Hebron.

Since 1967, approximately 800,000 olive trees have been uprooted in the occupied West Bank, according to a joint report by the Palestinian Authority and the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem.

The olive industry supports the livelihoods of roughly 80,000 families in the occupied West Bank.

Settler violence against Palestinians and their prop-erty in the occupied West Bank is systematic and ig-nored by Israeli authorities, who rarely intervene in the violent attacks or prosecute the perpetrators.

As of mid-December, there had been 320 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in 2014, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

10/01/2015 Source: Ma’an

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From the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, Palestinians are pinning both sporting and political aspi-rations on their national football team as it prepares for its Asian Cup debut in Australia.For many Palestinians, sporting prowess is just as important as political and diplomatic moves to achieve statehood with the na-tional team viewed as a part of the national “resistance” - dubbed “Al-Fidaee” after the militants who fought Israel in the decades after its establishment in 1948.“Sport is still an important weap-on in politics,” said Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas as he greeted the 23-man squad at a ceremony to mark their departure for the tournament.The Palestinians have made some inroads towards achieving statehood, winning the rank of observer state at the United Na-tions in 2012, but have struggled to gain full membership.FIFA, however, recognised the Palestine national team in 1998.Following a diplomatic blow last month when the UN Security Council rejected a Palestinian-drafted resolution seeking to set an end date for the Israeli occu-pation, all eyes are now on Al-Fidaee.The team, ranked 115th in the world, will kick off its Asia Cup campaign against Japan on Jan-uary 12 after qualifying for the first time.Placed in Group D, Palestine will also play Jordan and Iraq over the coming fortnight.“This is a historic occasion for us as it is our first Asian Cup,” striker Ashraf al-Fawaghra told the FIFA.com website.“Our goal is to let the world know that the Palestinian national team are moving forward, despite the difficulties facing us. We want to

For Palestinians, Asian Cup more than a game

convey the message that the Pal-estinian players have the right to play and develop,” the 28-year-old said.“We want to bring a smile back to the faces of our people and make our fans happy.”Palestinian players face difficul-ties in getting to and from tour-naments both at home and away due to tight Israeli restrictions on movement, and some have been arrested or imprisoned.An international under-17s tour-nament hosted by the Palestin-ians in 2013 was delayed after Israel refused to grant entry visas to some Arab players, and the competition went ahead only after pressure from FIFA and UEFA.Some Palestinian players have even been killed, including Gaza football legend Ahed Zaqqut, 49, who died during a deadly 50-day war between Israel and Hamas militants last year.- Sport, politics inseparable -For Palestinian Football Asso-ciation chief Jibril Rajub, a leader within Abbas’s Fatah party, the beautiful game has a unique sta-tus for Palestinians.“For the rest of the world it’s just sport -- cups, medals, and so on. But in Palestine, it’s part of the project for liberation, a political project,” he told AFP.“The Palestine team, which is playing against the biggest teams in Asia has -- despite the occupa-tion, the blockade (on Gaza), and pressure and repression by Israel -- attracted the attention of the media and the international com-munity,” he said.Using football terminology to fur-ther the Palestinian cause, Rajub has regularly urged FIFA to show Israel the “red card” -- suspend its membership -- over the dif-ficulties the occupation poses to Palestinian sport.

For him and for many others, the raising of Palestinian flags at sta-diums across Australia will be a sweet sight after Australia - which is hosting the Asian Cup - was one of only two countries in the 15-member UN Security Council to vote against the resolution.The other was the United States, Israel’s closest ally.Palestine, which won last year’s AFC Challenge Cup, was named best national team in 2014 by the Asian Football Confederation.Its 23-man squad reflects the disparate nature of the stateless Palestinian people -- six players play professionally abroad, six come from the Gaza Strip, three are from the Palestinian diaspora and three are Arab-Israelis.A fourth Arab-Israeli -- descen-dents of some 160,000 Pales-tinians that stayed in Israel after the Jewish state was established -- was selected to play but was unable to join the squad for fear he would have lost his teaching job in Israel.For now, tensions with Israel will remain far from the pitch because teams from the Jewish state only play in European tournaments.Source: AFP

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ICC ‘close’ to openingGaza war investigation

Al Jazeera has learned that the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) may be close to opening an initial investigation into last summer’s Gaza war.

The news comes after Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, told a group of reporters on Thursday that Palestine’s formal acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction starting June 13, 2014 gives pros-ecutor Fatou Bensouda a green light to take up the question of alleged war crimes on Palestinian territory without waiting for Palestine to formally become a member of the court on April 1.

“It is within her discretion that she can do that,” Mansour said.

Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said le-gal experts had said the chief prosecutor had “very little option but to open initial investigation into war crimes”.

Fadi El Abdallah, a spokesman for the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands, confirmed that the prosecutor can now in theory begin a “preliminary examination” of potential cases in the Palestinian territories.

Bensouda has not announced any such examination yet.

The potential cases could include allegations of war crimes by Israel during last summer Gaza offensive which killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians.

Israel’s settlement construction on occupied Palestinian lands could also be examined.

09 Jan 2015 Source: AlJazeera

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Palestine’s Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas

Bethlehem’s Orthodox Christians prepared to celebrate Christmas on Tuesday 6th January in ac-cordance with tradition. Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas Day on January 7th rather than December 25th which is recognised as Christmas Day by the Catholic Church. About 50% of the Palestinian Arab Christian community across all areas of historic Palestine (including the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel) belong to the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem.

Within the Orthodox community, much of the Greek Orthodox Church in Palestine has over recent years been at odds with its leadership in Athens over the alleged sale of church-owned land to Israeli settler groups in 2005. Led by figures including Archbishop Atallah Hanna, many within the Palestin-ian Greek Orthodox church have been outspoken critics of such policies demanding that the church must reclaim all sold land.

Atallah Hanna and other leaders of the Palestinian Christian community have also stood firmly against the new law passed by Israel in September that attempts to divide Palestinian Christians and Muslims by reclassifying Palestinian Christians as Aramaic rather than Arab. Palestinian Christians see such attempts as further attempts by Israel to fragment the Palestinian community and have rejected these moves publicly.

Palestinian scout troupes welcomed visiting Christian leaders to the city on Christmas Eve although some troupes announced in recent days that they would not welcome the Greek Orthodox leadership from Athens in further protest against the sale of land to settlers.


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Israel freezes Palestinian tax payments, EU denounces

Israel is delaying the transfer of taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinians in retaliation for their application to join the Hague-based International Crimi-nal Court, according to Israeli officials.

The online edition of Haaretz daily, cit-ing an unidentified Israeli official, said on Saturday the move involves $127m in VAT and customs duties on goods for the Palestinian territories that pass through Israel.

“The funds for the month of Decem-ber were due to pass on Friday, but it was decided to half the transfer as part of the response to the Palestinian move,” the Israeli official told Haaretz.

Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for the European Commission, told re-porters in Brussels on Tuesday: ‘’The Palestinian Authority is working ef-fectively, it is working on the basis of non-violence and it is working towards

a peaceful resolution of the conflict and this is all very important for the resolution of both countries’ problems in the Middle East.’’

The Palestinians delivered to the UN headquarters in New York on Friday documents on joining the Rome Statute of the ICC and other global treaties, saying they hoped to achieve “justice for all the vic-tims that have been killed by Israel, the occupying power”.

The ICC looks at cases of severe war crimes and crimes against humanity such as genocide.

Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestine Lib-eration Organisation, told Al Jazeera the Israeli re-taliation showed that the country was scared over the Palestinian application to join the ICC.

“Israel collects our customs and our taxes for us, so when they withhold these funds, it means that this month people will not be able to pay for their schools, hospitals, medical supplies, milk and bread,” he said.

“They [Israelis] are trying to suffocate the whole [Palestinian] nation.

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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said the State of Palestine will become party to the International Crim-inal Court on April 1, a move that may allow Palestin-ians to sue Israel for war crimes.The Palestinians formally delivered the UN papers rati-fying the Rome Statute -- the legal document establish-ing the basis of the Hague-based court -- last Friday, the last phase in their accession bid.“The statute will enter into force for the State of Pales-tine on April 1, 2015,” Ban said in a notification pub-lished Tuesday night on the UN’s online treaty collec-tion portal.The secretary-general said he was acting as “deposi-tary” during the ratification process.The International Criminal Court at The Hague was established in 1998 as a court of last resort to pros-ecute the most heinous offenses such as war crimes and crimes against humanity in cases where national courts fail.The Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas signed the treaty last Wednesday along with 16 interna-tional agreements following the UN Security Council’s rejection of a draft resolution calling for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories within three years.In retaliation, Israeli government blocked the transfer of approximately $125 million in tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, a move opposed by Washington.Joining the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal means Palestinians could refer specific Israeli actions to the prosecutor and request that they be investigated.Palestinian sources said their focus would be the illegal Israeli settlement-building in the occupied West Bank and a military offensive last summer that killed more than 2,160 Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Source: AA

Palestinians to join war crimes tribunal on April 1

“It shows that when it comes to enforcing collective punishment, they are punishing four million Pales-tinians, starving them, because they want to act with impunity.

“This shows the legitimacy of what we are doing at the ICC.”

Past precedents

Israel has delayed payments to the Palestinians to signal its displeasure in the past, including in 2012 after the Palestinians won a November 29 UN vote recognising Palestine as a non-member state.

It did it again in May 2011 after Palestinian Presi-dent Mahmoud Abbas announced a reconciliation deal with Hamas aimed at ending years of enmity between the group and his Fatah, and in Novem-ber 2011, after the Palestinians won admission to UNESCO.

The tax revenues make up two-thirds of the Pales-tinian Authority’s annual budget, excluding foreign aid.

Earlier on Saturday an Israeli official said his coun-try was looking at ways to prosecute senior Pales-tinian officials for war crimes in the US and else-where in response to their ICC membership bid.

The Israeli official on Saturday said Palestinian leaders “ought to fear legal steps” after their deci-sion to sign onto the Rome Statute.

“Israel is weighing the possibilities for large-scale prosecution in the United States and elsewhere” of Abbas and other senior Palestinians, the official said.

Israel would probably press these cases via non-governmental groups and pro-Israel legal organ-isations capable of filing lawsuits abroad, a second Israeli official said, explaining how the mechanism might work.

Israel sees the leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank as partners of Hamas, the

04 Jan 2015 Source: Agencies

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The Palestinian Authority and its political dreamsDr Mohammed Al-Misfer

08 Jan 2015

The final day of 2014 wit-nessed an Arab and Pales-tinian failure at the UN Secu-rity Council, which rejected a resolution that called upon the UN to set a specific date for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land occupied in 1967. After that setback, the PA applied to join interna-tional organisations, at the top of which is the International Criminal Court (ICC). Israel and the US are angry, and threaten the “poor” PA with de-struction if it goes ahead with its attempts to join the interna-tional community groups.

On 10 November last year I wrote an article called “Securi-ty Council and the Palestinian Case” after Mahmoud Abbas threatened to go to the UN to protest against Israeli prac-tices in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Israel’s violations included preventing Mus-lims from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque to pray and attacks by Jewish settlers against Is-lamic holy sites while guarded by Israeli security forces and

Articles & Analyses

the army. I said at the time that approaching the Security Council would be ineffective and will not have any impact against Israel; instead, Is-rael must be deterred on the ground using all means avail-able.

Since the signing of the Oslo agreement in 1993, Israel has become more vicious against the Palestinians, despite all of the concessions granted by the PA. Security coordi-nation alone means that PA personnel protect Israeli set-tlements and cities from any act of resistance by Palestin-ians who are defending their land, homes and farms. The PA has more than 180,000 security officers, all of whom have been recruited to protect Israel from any Palestinian resistance. In the West Bank

last month, Palestinian min-ister Ziad Abu Ain was killed along with more than sixty others. At the beginning of this year, an Israeli settler ran over a Palestinian child and Israeli security forces arrested some students. On 31 December Israeli settlers attacked Pal-estinians across the West Bank. Last Thursday, in north Ramallah, settlers attacked farms, bulldozing them and uprooting more than 5,000 olive trees; around 300 acres of agricultural land was de-stroyed. All of these barbaric acts against Palestinians and their property took place in the occupied West Bank and Je-rusalem; yet more happens in the Gaza Strip, but the PA and its 180,000 security forces only protest verbally against Israel.

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The dreadful silence of Mah-moud Abbas and the PA to-wards Israel’s crimes has convinced successive Israeli governments that it is not im-portant to reach a final agree-ment with the Palestinians as long as their own citizens en-joy a safe and stable environ-ment. Internationally Israel is protected by American power, whether in the Security Coun-cil or in international organisa-tions. As a result, it is said that the number of Jews migrating to Israel has increased over the past year.

All of this convinces me that the PA must work towards achieving national unity be-tween the West Bank and Gaza Strip as quickly as pos-sible, and not pay any atten-tion to Israeli and American threats regarding Hamas. Reports claim that Abbas told one Arab leader last August that “negotiations with Israel have failed; 20 years of ne-gotiations regarding the 1967 borders have not moved for-ward even by one step.”

Mahmoud Abbas clearly has many doubts and illusions as a result of faulty Israeli and Palestinian intelligence. He claims to have informa-tion from Israel that it has ar-rested 93 Hamas members who were planning a coup against him. He also insists

that Hamas and Mohamed Dahlan are conspiring against him and that the Islamic movement is receiving finan-cial support from the ex-Fatah official to carry out projects in Gaza. Why would Hamas co-operate with Dahlan? I don’t believe that Hamas is in sync with Dahlan in any Palestin-ian affairs, but Abbas’s dis-pute with his former colleague makes him suspicious about anything he does.

In the end, if Abbas wants to achieve a real victory for the Palestinian people he will have to end the PA’s security coordination with Israel. He should also acknowledge that Israel’s war against the people of Gaza and Hamas last year was a war against all Palestin-ians with whom Fatah and the PLO must stand. In addition, the PA should work to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip through an agreement with the Egyptian government, and Mahmoud Abbas should end his doubts about Hamas and Islamic Jihad. If he is to get the international community to assume its responsibilities to-wards the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, then Mahmoud Abbas must mend the rift with the people of Gaza and seek national unity.

if Abbas wants to achieve a

real victory for the Palestinian people he will

have to end the PA’s security

coordination with Israel

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Issue no 117

Documents

alaqsa sanctuary

alaqsa compound

alaqsa mosqueafter

sanctuary of al

palestinian prisoners

palestinian minister

palestinian fears

issuethe palestinian