“Our goal is the total liberation of Palestine and any Palestinian who wants less is a traitor”, the President of the PLO Women’s Organisation told an American reporter in 1980. And that same year PLO spokesman Mahmud Labadi observed (Al-Jumhur, Lebanon, 3 October 1980): “Let us not forget that every political achievement opens new vistas for the military alternative.”
Leading Fatah activist Abu Iyad, disclosed in a press interview in 1981: “Even after we establish a state in part of Palestine, we shall continue to struggle for the unification of all Palestine within a secular democratic state, and the struggle will not be undertaken only through political means.”
More recently, in September this year, as reported by the Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the Palestinian Authority’s envoy in Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, observed "that the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, which have started in Washington, are not a goal, but rather another stage in the Palestinian struggle… He believes that Israel will not be dealt a knock-out defeat, but rather an accumulation of Palestinian achievements and struggles, as happened in South Africa, to isolate Israel, to tighten the noose on it, to threaten its legitimacy, and to present it as a rebellious, racist state. He noted that Israel faces international isolation with doubt cast on its legitimacy, because of its actions and the war crimes which it has carried out. He added, ‘Many Israelis in senior positions are afraid to travel to European countries lest they be put on trial for their crimes.'"
That the endgame for the Palestinians remains the end of Israel is suggested by of the results of a face-to-face survey of Palestinians conducted this October for the New Israel Project by the pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. There were 854 Palestinian respondents, comprising 538 residents of the West Bank and 316 Gazans. 38 percent of respondents agreed proposition that “Violence only hurts Palestinians and the days of armed struggle are over”, whereas 56 per cent of respondents agreed that “We will have to resort to armed struggle again”.
60 per cent of respondents agreed that “The real goal should be to start with two states but then move to it all being one Palestinian state”. By contrast, a mere 30 per cent agreed that “The best goal is for a two state solution that keeps two states living side by side”. A paltry 12 per cent supported the latter proposition “strongly”.
66 per cent agreed (42 per cent strongly) that “Over time Palestinians must work to get back all the land for a Palestinian state”. By contrast, just 23 per cent agreed that “Israel has a permanent right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people”. 55 per cent agreed that “A Palestinian state should be run by Sharia Law”, whereas 35 per cent agreed that “A Palestinian state should be run by civil law”.
Thus, a majority of Palestinians are willing to accept a two-state solution as a way station en route to a single state – in other words, the elimination of Israel and its replacement with a single Palestinian state – this goal to be achieved through both negotiations and violence.
The question is, however – are the Palestinians genuine partners for a genuine peace?
Someone once said "The best form of defence is attack".
ReplyDeleteThese arabs only understand force and aggression. They do not want or understand peace. In countries where there are no Jews or Christians, they murder and rape each other.
btw, the My Right Word blog (on my blogroll) had a recent post showing a photo of a black flag hoisted on a building in 1936 during the Mandate with the words (in Arabic) "Free Palestine"
ReplyDeleteJews have no right to Western Wall, PA 'study' says
ReplyDeleteBy KHALED ABU TOAMEH
11/22/2010 18:07
Official paper by published by PA Ministry of Information claims Al-Buraq Wall, as it is known to Muslims, constitutes Waqf property owned by an Algerian-Moroccan Muslim family.
The Western Wall belongs to Muslims and is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-Sharif [the Noble Sanctuary], according to an official paper published on Monday by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information in Ramallah.
The paper, which has been presented as a “study,” was prepared by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the PA Ministry of Information to “refute” Jews’ claim to the Western Wall.
In the past, PA leaders and officials had also denied Jews’ right to the Kotel, insisting that the Temple Mount had never stood in the area.
The new paper claims that the Western Wall, or Al-Buraq Wall as it is known to Muslims, constitutes Waqf property owned by an Algerian-Moroccan Muslim family.
It claims that there isn’t one stone in the wall that belongs to the era of King Solomon.
The “study” also found that the path next to the Wailing Wall was never a public road, but was established only for the use of Muslims living in the area or making their way toward the mosques on the Temple Mount.
“The Zionist occupation falsely and unjustly claims that it owns this wall which it calls the Western Wall or Kotel,” Taha, who is also a renowned Palestinian poet and writer, wrote in his project. “The Al-Buraq Wall is in fact the western wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
He added that the Jews had never used the site for worship until the Balfour Declaration of 1917. “This wall was never part of the so-called Temple Mount, but Muslim tolerance allowed the Jews to stand in front of it and weep over its destruction,” he wrote.
“During the British mandate in Palestine, the number of Jews who visited the wall increased to a point where the Muslims felt threatened and then there was the Al-Buraq Revolution on August 23, 1929, where dozens of Muslims were martyred and a large number of Jews were killed.”
The author, who is affiliated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, emphasizes that over the past few decades Jews had failed to prove that the wall had any connection to their religion.
“Many studies published by Jewish experts have affirmed that there is no archeological evidence that the Temple Mount was built during the period of King Solomon,” the paper added. “One can only conclude that the Al-Buraq Wall is a Muslim wall and an integral part of the Aqsa Mosque and Haram Al-Sharif. No one has the right to claim ownership over it or change its features or original character. Also, no one has the right to agree with the occupation state’s racist and oppressive measures against history and holy sites.”
The PA ministry’s study also warned that “no Muslim or Arab or Palestinian had the right to give up one stone of the Al-Buraq Wall or other religious sites.”
PA Study: Terrorists Motivated by Ideology, not Suffering
ReplyDeleteby Maayana Miskin
Contrary to popular belief, Palestinian Authority terrorists are motivated by religious and national ideology, not personal suffering, a PA researcher has found. The researcher, Bassam Yousef Banat, found that most terrorist killers were educated.
Banat focused on PA terrorists who carried out suicide bombings. He found that most were educated youths from middle-class backgrounds with no significant physical or psychological ailments. While most had jobs, they were not the primary providers for their families.
The majority were religious Muslims with strongly nationalist views, many of them descendents of Arabs who fled Israel during the War of Independence who believed in the “right of return” - the PA demand that they be allowed to “return” to live in Israel.
The study supports findings by Israeli and American researchers. Israeli researchers found several years ago that many PA suicide bombers were from the educated middle class and that nearly all terrorist leaders had at least one academic degree. A study on Al-Qaeda conducted by the United States Military Academy found that most Al-Qaeda members had a college education.
PA suicide terrorists were more likely to be from Shechem (Nablus) than from any other city. The terrorist group that sent the most suicide bombers was Hamas, followed by Islamic Jihad and Fatah.
Banat reported that most suicide bombers did not tell their families that they were planning an attack. Secrecy made their attacks more likely to succeed, he said.
He rejected the widely-held view of suicide bombers as motivated by personal pain, describing it as an insult to terrorists. “As for talking about psychological, social and economic factors and other motives for martyrdom, it is wrong to associate Palestinian martyrs with these factors since this underestimated the real value of a martyr and makes him/her some kind of social suicide,” said Banat, a teacher at the Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.
During his term as Prime Minister, President Shimon Peres often linked terrorism to poverty, and urged Israel to alleviated PA economic woes in order to fight terrorism. However, more recently, Peres told the United Nations, “Terror creates poverty more than poverty creates terror.”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has advocated a stronger PA economy as well, calling to bolster the PA economy as the first step in the diplomatic process.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)