P.A. “UNDERMINES ISRAEL”, TARGETS BUSINESSMEN & JOURNALISTS WHO CRITICIZE ABBAS—MANDELA’S LEGACY INCLUDES CHAMPIONING PALESTINIAN “FREEDOM”

"Kerry's Plan to Invest $4 Billion in Palestinian Economy is Nonsense": Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 5, 2013— Palestinian businessmen planning to invest in the West Bank economy have once again been reminded of the challenges facing anyone who wants to do business with the Palestinian Authority.

Yaalon: the PA is No Different From Hamas: Elad Benari, Arutz Sheva, Nov. 18, 2013— Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Sunday that the Palestinian Authority, often touted as Israel’s “peace partner”, is no different from Hamas in its quest to undermine Israel, explaining that it simply uses different methods to achieve this goal.

Palestinians: Abbas Cracks Down on Media, World Looks the Other Way; Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, Nov. 19, 2013 — The Palestinian Authority has resumed its security crackdown on Palestinian journalists and bloggers in the West Bank. But the crackdown has thus far sparked protests only from Palestinian journalists.

Mourning Mandela as Their Champion, Palestinians Light Candles, Raise His Picture in Protests: Karin Laub, Associated Press, Dec. 8, 2013 —  Palestinians mourned Nelson Mandela as their most loyal champion, lighting candles in special prayer services Sunday and holding his picture like a shield in confrontations with Israeli troops.

On Topic Links

Palestinian Authority’s Double Standard on Prisoners: Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, Nov. 19, 2013

PA Blasts Hamas’ Belligerent New School Curriculum: Elhanan Miller, Times of Israel, Nov. 20, 2013

Hamas May be Turning Away From Violence: Aaron Magid, New Republic, Nov. 28, 2013

Fixing Gaza’s Electricity Crisis: Omar Shaban, Al-Monitor, Nov. 19, 2013

Ha’aretz Violates the Rules of Good Journalism Again: Maurice Ostroff, Jewish Press, Dec. 9, 2013

PA Leaders Use Mandela’s Death to Slam “Occupation”: Elad Benari, Arutz Sheva, Dec. 6, 2013

"KERRY'S PLAN TO INVEST $4 BILLION IN PALESTINIAN ECONOMY IS NONSENSE"

Khaled Abu Toameh

Gatestone Institute, Dec. 5, 2013

Palestinian businessmen planning to invest in the West Bank economy have once again been reminded of the challenges facing anyone who wants to do business with the Palestinian Authority. One of the businessmen, Mohamed Al Sabawi, a Canadian investor of Palestinian origin, was this week arrested by Palestinian Authority policemen in Ramallah after publicly criticizing Mahmoud Abbas. Al Sabawi, 68, is Director-General of the Ahlia Insurance Group, a firm that employs hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank. His arrest is seen as part of a campaign by the Palestinian Authority to intimidate and extort money from prominent and wealthy businessmen who seek to help strengthen the Palestinian economy. Palestinian Authority policemen raided Al Sabawi's office and arrested him on suspicion that he had called on Palestinians to topple Abbas. Al Sabawi was held for nine hours at a police station in Ramallah, where he was accused of "insulting" Abbas and "obstructing" the work of police officers.

The second charge relates to an incident on November 18, when officers belonging to the Palestinian Authority's Presidential Guard stormed the building housing the Ahlia Insurance Group in order to occupy the roof as part of measures to secure the visit of French President François Hollande to Ramallah. Al Sabawi tried to prevent the security officers from entering the building, but to no avail. Frustrated, he declared in front of TV crews, "The people want the downfall of Mahmoud Abbas!" Al Sabawi probably thought that his status as a prominent investor would provide him with some kind of immunity. Of course, he turned out to be wrong.

It is not unusual for the Palestinian Authority to crack down on Palestinians who dare to criticize Abbas. Over the past few years, a number of Palestinian journalists, bloggers and politicians have been targeted by the Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank for publicly criticizing Abbas, especially through social media networking. But clamping down on journalists and bloggers is not the same as arresting or intimidating businessmen and investors. The case of Al Sabawi will undoubtedly scare potential investors and convince them that investing in Ramallah and other Palestinian cities is a dangerous idea.

Al Sabawi's son, Khaled, said that besides the arrest and humiliation of his father, the Palestinian Authority has "stopped all our title deed procedures for our TABO project." He explained that the TABO project "protects Palestinian land by creating title deeds in neglected villages." Khaled, who was named "One of the World's Top Energy Entrepreneurs" by Global Post in 2010, said that his father was released as a result of "enormous pressure" on the Palestinian Authority after being held for nine hours. Khaled, who spent the whole nine hours with his father in the police station in Ramallah, wrote that the arrest "goes to show that the US Kerry Plan to bring 4 billion in private investment to the Palestinians territories is nonsense! Come and invest in the PA areas, but if u don't bribe their corrupt officials, the will PA will arrest you."

Abbas himself has not commented on the arrest of Al Sabawi. However, a Palestinian Authority security official said that the arrest was a "routine legal procedure" against an investor suspected of slander and obstructing the work of police officers. Ironically, Abbas was quoted the following day as saying that the Palestinian economy "needs security and stability." Abbas was speaking during a meeting in his office with a delegation of Israeli businessmen. The arrest of Al Sabawi shows that Abbas is responsible for creating an atmosphere that harms the Palestinian economy and drives away potential investors. As the defiant son of Al Sabawai concluded, "This arrest was an attempt to humiliate my father – an independent investor who employs hundreds of Palestinians and has invested in renewable energy and expanding property rights for Palestinians. What the unelected, cynical, and morally bankrupt cronies in Mahmoud Abbas's office don't realize is that they just completely humiliated themselves and that this issue has made us stronger, more vigilant, and with your help, given us a bigger microphone."

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YAALON: THE PA IS NO DIFFERENT FROM HAMAS

Elad Benari                                                                                                                               Arutz Sheva, Nov. 18, 2013                                                    

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Sunday that the Palestinian Authority, often touted as Israel’s “peace partner”, is no different from Hamas in its quest to undermine Israel, explaining that it simply uses different methods to achieve this goal. "I supported Oslo but smartened up when I realized that Arafat considered it to be yet another stage in the negotiations,” Yaalon said at an event in memory of former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.

“To date, I’ve never heard any Palestinian leader, including Abbas, who was willing to say that a territorial compromise, even along the borders he dreams about, is the end of the conflict and an end to the demands, a recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and a waiver of the right of return,” Yaalon added. “Their unwillingness to recognize our right to exist as the national homeland of the Jewish people in some border, this is the obstacle to peace and is the root of the conflict.”

He noted that “the Palestinian Authority is no less hostile than the entity that runs Gaza, but tries to undermines us by using other means. They threaten a third Intifada. What do they want? For us to surrender as a result of the threat of violence. When you threaten with a third intifada, you implicitly give legitimacy to violence.” Yaalon said that the latest victims of Arab terrorism were a direct result of the recently resumed peace talks.

“When there is a peace process, the Israeli issue comes up in the Palestinian media at the level of de-legitimization and hatred. They educate their children, in their curriculum, in the rhetoric, and when this increases then there are initiatives – not by terror organizations but rather by criminals – that turn into nationalistically motivated crimes. Our victims are victims of the diplomatic process. And when we stand firm and do not look like we are about to give up, that's when we receive quiet.”

The Defense Minister also raised the Iranian nuclear issue in his remarks, reiterating that the Iranians must be pushed to the point that they will have to decide between survival and a nuclear weapon. “The Iranian regime is the most significant factor in the instability in the Middle East today,” he declared. “This regime is willing to invest and sacrifice. They invest in Afghanistan, Iraq (where they cause bloodshed to weaken it), Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Africa, South America, Asia, Europe. These are the arms of a regime that dreams of defeating the Western culture using terrorism and subversion against other regimes. And this regime wants nuclear weapons capability. We must not let it have this ability.”

Yaalon added, "Today there is no argument that the Iranian project is a nuclear-military one, with the aim of reaching a bomb. When the world began to impose sanctions, the Iranian regime concluded that it may not survive the economic crisis. That's why it made ​​the decision to enter talks with the West. There is a willingness to ease sanctions too soon, to strengthen Rouhani. We say that anyone who wants peace should also be prepared for war. If it’s necessary to confront them, they should be confronted, anything so they don’t get a nuclear weapon. It is clear that what was proposed by the West would allow Iran to achieve something: sanctions relief on the one hand, and maintaining the enrichment capacity on the other hand.”

"I hope we will not have to say 'We told you so’, but rather that we’ll see that the sanctions exhausts themselves effectively, and will not be relieved before we see that Iran does not have a military-nuclear capability,” he concluded.
 

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PALESTINIANS: ABBAS CRACKS DOWN ON MEDIA, WORLD LOOKS THE OTHER WAY

Khaled Abu Toameh

Gatestone Institute, Nov. 19, 2013

The Palestinian Authority has resumed its security crackdown on Palestinian journalists and bloggers in the West Bank. But the crackdown has thus far sparked protests only from Palestinian journalists. Western governments that fund the Palestinian Authority continue to turn a blind eye to the breach of freedom of expression in the West Bank. International human rights groups and organizations purporting to defend freedom of the media also continue to ignore the violations against freedom of expression under the Palestinian Authority. These groups only see what the Israeli authorities do. On the side of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, or Hamas in the Gaza Strip, they "see no evil." They know about the assaults on Palestinian journalists by Palestinian security forces. But they choose to bury their heads in the sand. It is more convenient and safer to criticize Israel than the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

For Western governments, so long as the Palestinian Authority leadership says it is committed to the peace process with Israel, its leaders are free to rule as a dictatorship. Western diplomats based in Ramallah say they are fully aware of the anti-democratic measures taken by the Palestinian Authority. But, they add, these measures are an "internal Palestinian issue" that does not concern the international community. The silence of the international community drove Palestinian journalists to announce that they have had enough and that the time has come to stage public protests against the crackdown.

Scores of journalists staged a protest outside the headquarters of the Palestinian government in Ramallah in protest against the arrest and assault on some of their colleagues by Palestinian security forces. The journalists called for an end to the persecution of Palestinian journalists and held banners that asked, "Where is freedom of the media?" and, "No to repression and incarceration of journalists." The protest, which was almost completely ignored by Western media outlets operating in the West Bank, came after two incidents in which Palestinian security officers arrested journalists.

In the first incident, Palestinian policemen raided the home of George Canawati, director of Bethlehem Radio 2000, and arrested him in what eyewitnesses described as a violent manner. Canawati, a Christian from the town of Bet Sahour, near Bethlehem, was accused of "slander" for criticizing the commander of the Bethlehem Police, Col. Omar Shalabi, during his weekly radio program. The following day, Canawati appeared in a Bethlehem court with a black eye and a ripped shirt. He was quoted as saying that the interrogators had physically assaulted him before and during his interrogation.

In the second incident, Palestinian security officers arrested Sami al-Saee, a reporter for the Wattan news website in the West Bank city of Tulkarem. The Palestinian Authority did not offer any explanation as to why al-Saee was arrested. Hours after the Ramallah protest, Palestinian security officers raided the home of another journalist and blogger, Esmat Abdel Khalek, and confiscated documents and a laptop. Abdel Khalek, who teaches journalism at a West Bank university, was arrested last year on suspicion of posting critical comments on her Facebook account about the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas. No reason was given for the latest raid on her home in Ramallah, although Palestinian journalists said that it could be linked to her ongoing criticism of the Palestinian Authority leadership.

"It's harmful and shameful that we the Palestinian journalists are being arrested and intimidated by our Palestinian Authority," a group of Palestinian journalists wrote in a letter to their prime minister, Rami Hamdallah. "We call for an investigation into the arrest and humiliation of George Canawati, as well as the detention of Sami al-Saee for more than 12 hours in Tulkarem." The Palestinian Authority apparently does not want journalists to report about issues that could reflect negatively on its leaders — possibly the reason why criticism of Palestinian leaders as often denounced by the Palestinian Authority as an act of "treason."

The latest clampdown on the media is aimed at deterring journalists from criticizing the Palestinian leadership; in the eyes of the Palestinian Authority, a journalist is supposed to serve as a spokesman for his president and government. The Palestinian Authority also apparently does not want the outside world, especially international donors, to hear about the financial corruption and violations of freedom of the media. It wants criticism to be directed only toward Israel in the hope that this will invite international pressure on the Israelis and force them to accept at the negotiating table all of Abbas's demands.

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MOURNING MANDELA AS THEIR CHAMPION, PALESTINIANS LIGHT CANDLES, RAISE HIS PICTURE IN PROTESTS

Karin Laub

Associated Press, Dec. 8, 2013

Palestinians mourned Nelson Mandela as their most loyal champion, lighting candles in special prayer services Sunday and holding his picture like a shield in confrontations with Israeli troops. But the death of the South African leader who famously said that "our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians" also reminded many here of how far they are from establishing a state of their own.

U.S.-mediated talks between Israelis and Palestinians on the terms of such a state have reached their mid-way point and appear bogged down. "I don't think our leaders or the Israeli leaders or the American leaders will make peace here," Wael Shihadeh, 52, said Sunday while chopping eggplants in the kitchen of a Ramallah restaurant. Palestinians lack a leader of Mandela's calibre, he said.

Palestinian activists have compared Mandela's struggle against apartheid to theirs against Israeli occupation — a parallel Israel rejects — and some increasingly look to South Africa for help in pressure campaigns against Israel. Many South Africans also equate the Israeli treatment of Palestinians with their former apartheid regime's abuse of blacks.

Last year, South Africa's government decided that goods imported from Israeli West Bank settlements cannot not be labeled "product of Israel." In 2011, the University of Johannesburg became the world's first to impose an academic boycott on Israel. In October, veteran anti-apartheid leader Ahmed Kathrada, who was convicted alongside Mandela in 1964, launched a campaign from Mandela's former prison cell for Marwan Barghouti. The Palestinian uprising leader was jailed 11 years ago and is serving five life terms after being convicted of a role in the uprising-related killings of four Israelis and a Greek monk.

Asked about the use of violence by the Palestinians, Kathrada noted that Mandela's African National Congress also turned to it at one point. "When everything failed, every peaceful method failed, we also had to resort to armed struggle, realizing that the main struggle will be where masses of people were involved," the 84-year-old said by phone from South Africa. "We cannot prescribe to the Palestinian people how they should conduct their struggle," added Kathrada, who spent 26 years in prison, or a year less than Mandela, much of it in the same place.

Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in 1967. More than 20 years of intermittent talks with Israel have been fruitless. A decade ago, Palestinians waged an armed uprising that was met by Israeli retaliation, and the fighting left more than 1,000 Israelis and more than 3,600 Palestinians dead. The violence subsided after Mahmoud Abbas, who views negotiations with Israel as the preferred path to statehood, was elected Palestinian president in 2005, replacing one-time guerrilla leader Yasser Arafat. Two years later, Palestinians split politically, with the Islamic militant Hamas seizing Gaza, refusing to renounce violence and calling for an Islamic state in historic Palestine, including what is now Israel.

Mandela's ANC and Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization have co-operated closely since the 1960s, including in joint military training. Hanan Ashrawi of the PLO said ANC activists told their PLO colleagues they believed the Palestinians would reach their goal first. "The ANC would always tell us, 'when you are independent, when you are free, you mustn't forget us'," she said. To Mandela, support for the Palestinians was "a personal commitment, a moral commitment," she said.

Kathrada said that after Mandela's release from prison, then-U.S. President George H. W. Bush urged the anti-apartheid leader to cut ties with Arafat, Cuba's Fidel Castro and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. "Mr. Mandela's response was that when we came to you, the Americans, the British and other Western countries and asked for assistance, you called us terrorists," Kathrada said. Mandela told Bush that "it would be immoral and ungrateful" to break with old allies, Kathrada said.

Alon Liel, Israel's ambassador to South Africa from 1992-1994, said Mandela told him he would never forget Israel's close ties with South Africa's apartheid regime, but was willing to move forward. Mandela said South Africa would have normal and even good relations if Israel moves toward an agreement with the Palestinians, Liel recalled. Mandela was eager to mediate. When Arafat and then-Israeli President Ezer Weizman attended Mandela's 1994 inauguration, Mandela arranged an impromptu meeting. Arafat and Weizman talked for three hours, Liel said, noting that "this was his (Mandela's) first working meeting as a president." Mandela offered his services again in 1999, during a visit to Israel after he had already left the presidency. Liel said Israel's prime minister at the time, Ehud Barak, turned Mandela down, telling him that "you are so close to them (the Palestinians) and we need somebody who is balanced between the two sides."

Relations between Israel and South Africa were cool during long years of deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Solly Tshivhula, a South African diplomat in Ramallah, said his country's relations with Israel are shaped by South Africa's empathy for the Palestinians. "The complication in South Africa's relations with Israel, in the context of Palestine, is derived from the fact that we see the struggle of Palestine as similar to that of ours against apartheid …," he said. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said both sides are working hard to improve the relationship. Palmor and other Israeli officials have rejected the portrayal of Israel's rule over the Palestinians as a type of apartheid…

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Hamas May be Turning Away From Violence: Aaron Magid, New Republic, Nov. 28, 2013— Across the Middle East, tension is rising as violence spreads in Damascus, Beirut, and Cairo. Yet one area has remained surprisingly calm: the Israeli-Gaza border.

Palestinian Authority’s Double Standard on Prisoners: Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, Nov. 19, 2013 — While the Palestinian Authority continues to demand the release of Palestinians from Israeli jails, it has long been ignoring the fact that thousands of Palestinians are languishing in prisons in several Arab countries.

PA Blasts Hamas’ Belligerent New School Curriculum: Elhanan Miller, Times of Israel, Nov. 20, 2013 — A Palestinian Authority Education Ministry official accused Hamas of deepening the six-year-long political divide by introducing new militaristic textbooks to middle schools under its control in the Gaza Strip.

Ha’aretz Violates the Rules of Good Journalism Again: Maurice Ostroff, Jewish Press, Dec. 9, 2013 — Recently Ha’aretz and Gideon Levy were reprimanded by the Israel Press Council for violating the ethics code that mandates fact-checking, objectivity and loyalty to the truth and that bars any mention of a person’s country of origin, ethnicity or social class if it isn’t relevant to the subject under discussion.

PA Leaders Use Mandela’s Death to Slam “Occupation”: Elad Benari, Arutz Sheva, Dec. 6, 2013 — Leaders in the Palestinian Authority are taking advantage of the death of former South African President Nelson Mandela to slam “Israeli occupation of Palestine”, AFP reported Friday.

On Topic Links

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