When proximity talks started in May, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas declared that the PA would fulfill its commitments, with a special focus
on stopping incitement. But the ensuing two months have brought no change in the
messages being transmitted from the Palestinian Authority and Fatah to
Palestinians, according to a new report by Palestinian Media Watch.
An
examination of the Palestinian leaders’ statements, official media, children’s
programs and PA- and Fatah-controlled events shows that the conditions,
principles and expectations set by the US and the UN Quartet for accepting the
PA as a peace partner continue to be violated, the watchdog group said in the
report.
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statements to its people in Arabic continue to delegitimize Israel’s existence,
deny Israel’s right to exist, define the conflict with Israel as a religious war
for Allah, promote hatred through demonization, slander and libel, and glorify
terror and violence, according to PMW’s Itamar Marcus, Nan Jacques Zilberdik and
Barbara Crook.
The report, which Marcus said he would be presenting to
American officials in Washington on Wednesday, said that the PA continues to
teach on PA educational TV that Israeli cities across the entire country,
including Jaffa and Haifa, are Palestinian cities; that official PA media deny
Israel’s right to exist by using terminology to refer to Israel as “the homeland
occupied in ‘48”; and that the conflict with Israel is defined by PA-appointed
political and religious leaders not as territorial but as
ribat – a religious
war for Allah.
It cited instances in which the PA’s senior religious
leader demonized Jews as the “enemies of God,” and a PA TV host
remarked: “The
Jews are our enemies, right?” It added that the PA continues to honor
terrorists, and quoted Abbas as defending “the right to return to the
armed
conflict,” and describing negotiations as “a tactical decision, i.e., a
temporary, defensive decision.”
Elaborating on PA educational programs
that deny Israel’s existence, the PMW report quoted from a documentary
film that
portrays Israeli cities and sites as “Palestinian” and that was
rebroadcast on
PA TV on June 21: “The Palestinian coast … spreads along the
[Mediterranean]
sea, from... Ashkelon in the south, until Haifa, in the Carmel
Mountains. Haifa
is a well-known Palestinian port.
[Haifa] enjoyed a high status among
Arabs and Palestinians especially before it fell to the occupation
[Israel] in
1948. To its north, we find Acre. East of Acre, we reach a city with
history and
importance, the city of Tiberias, near a famous lake, the Sea of
Galilee. Jaffa,
an ancient coastal city, is the bride of the sea, and Palestine’s
gateway to the
world.”
It also quoted from an educational PA TV quiz show on June 25,
with students competing from different Palestinian universities, which
included
questions and answers identifying Israel as “Palestine.”
News reports repeatedly deny Israel's existence
In terms of PA
news reporting, the report quoted from a June 18 item in the official PA
daily
Al-Hayat al-Jadida, which described the Israeli Arab village Um el-Fahm
as being
located “in the homeland occupied in ‘48.”
It cited several other
examples of the same newspaper referring to Israel with numerous
euphemisms that
deny Israel’s legitimacy and existence, such as: “Interior Palestine,”
“occupied
in 1948,” and “’48 territories.”
Noting that US President Barack Obama
has called the use of maps that present a world without Israel a
security threat
to Israel, the PMW report stated that “all the official PA maps in
offices, Web
sites, in schoolbooks, and those appearing on official PA TV since the
start of
the proximity talks, continue the PA policy of defining all of Israel as
‘Palestine’.”
Turning to the issue of the PA denying Israel’s history, it
quoted the PA Mufti, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, and several other senior
PA
figures, denying the Jews’ connection to the Western Wall and to
Jerusalem in a
series of statements.
In instances of what it called “demonization, hate
promotion, anti-Semitism and libels,” meanwhile, the PMW report charged
that, in
June, “the PA has continued to falsely accuse Israel of intentionally
spreading
drugs and AIDS among Palestinians, having killed Yasser Arafat, and
planning to
destroy the Aksa Mosque. The PA added another accusation this month:
that the
Jews killed Jesus.”
PA exaggerated flotilla confrontation to promote hatred
It added that the PA exaggerated the Gaza flotilla
confrontation to promote hatred of Israel.
Stressing that “the right to
criticize Israeli actions is legitimate,” the report said, however, that
the PA
“slandered Israel” about it, noting that Abbas himself charged that “it
was a
decision made in advance, premeditated and with determination to
kill.”
And it quoted from the PA daily, saying that murder and massacres
are typical or innate Israeli behavior: “The Israeli attack on the
ships...
more serious than a massacre in its ugliness and its
inhumanity...
This is the true nature of Israel.”
The PMW report
further noted that a PA TV music video, demonizing Israel as “my enemy”
and “a
snake coiled around the land” reappeared in June. It was first broadcast
in
2004, and from October 2007 to the end of 2009 it ran continuously on PA
TV.
It quoted the following exchange by PA TV host interviewing the young
sister of a Palestinian prisoner on June 21: PA TV host: “[When you
visit the
prison] do they bother you, the Israeli army, the soldiers there?” Girl:
“Yes.”
Host: “They’re wild animals, right? Aren’t they wild animals?”
Turning to the subject of the glorification of terror and violence,
PMW’s report
noted that the US has strongly condemned the Palestinian practice of
honoring
terrorists: State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley, it recalled, in
April
declared that “Honoring terrorists who have murdered innocent civilians,
either
by official statements or by the dedication of public places, hurts
peace
efforts and must end.”
Violence against Israel still being glorified
Nonetheless, the report noted that the Palestinian
Third Culture and Education Festival held in June in Ramallah “included
dancers
holding rifles while dancing to a song with lyrics glorifying violence
against
Israel and praising death as an ideal. The annual festival is sponsored
by the
PLO National Committee for Education, Science and Culture. This dance
performance with rifles was broadcast twice on official Palestinian
Authority
TV, and was held in the presence of the PA minister of culture and
minister of
women’s affairs.
“‘There is no force in the world that can remove the
weapon from my hand…’ ran some of the lyrics. ‘He who offers his blood
doesn’t
care if his blood flows on the ground.’” It noted that the PA in late
June
opened in Nablus a security course named after Abdallah Daoud that was
held in
the Abu Iyad [Salah Khalaf] hall.
Daoud was one of the terrorists who
stormed the Church of the Nativity in 2002, and continued to fight
against
Israel for several weeks while using the monks and the religious site as
shields, said the report, while Khalaf was head of the Black September
terror
group.
“Attacks he planned included the murder of two American diplomats,
as well as the murders of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in
1972,”
said the report.
The report also noted that a soccer tournament for youth
was named after Khalil Al- Wazir (Abu Jihad), the former deputy to
Arafat who
planned “many deadly Fatah terror attacks, including the worst in
Israeli
history, the hijacking of a bus and killing of 37 civilians, 12 of them
children.”
In its conclusion, the PMW report quoted Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton telling the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State,
Foreign
Operations and Related Programs in April that: “We will only work with a
Palestinian Authority government that unambiguously and explicitly
accepts the
Quartet’s principles: A commitment to nonviolence, recognition of
Israel, and
acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Road
Map” –
whose Phase I, PMW recalled, requires that “All official Palestinian
institutions end incitement against Israel.
“Examining the Palestinian
Authority leaders’ statements, its education of youth, and its
controlled media
during the first months since the proximity talks,” said the report, “it
is
apparent that the Palestinian Authority has not complied with the
conditions set
by the secretary of state, nor has it fulfilled its commitment to ‘work
against
incitement of any sort.’ “In the first two months since the start of the
proximity talks, not only has the PA failed to ‘unambiguously and
explicitly’
accept these conditions, but it has done the opposite. The Palestinian
Authority
continues to ‘unambiguously and explicitly’ deny Israel’s existence,
incite to
hatred, and glorify terror and violence,” the report claimed.