Blackmailing The PA Into Submission:
Rampant Incitement Against Arabs And Muslims In The
Israeli Media
07 September 2012By Khalid Amayreh
With the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process
going nowhere, mainly due to Israeli intransigence and
American complicity, Israel is increasingly bullying
the Palestinian Authority (PA) into doing its bidding,
says Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the
second-most powerful Israeli official after Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has called PA President
Mahmoud Abbas "a terrorist who will have to be
eliminated". Lieberman also urged the international
community, especially the Quartet for the Middle East
peace process, which includes, the UN, US, EU, and
Russia, to organise new elections that would see the
PA replaced by another Palestinian entity that is more
acceptable to Israel.
Lieberman's remarks, which he repeated several times
in the past few days, came in part as a response to
declared PA plans to restart endeavours at the UN for
recognising Palestinian statehood and accepting
"Palestine" as a member-state at the international
organisation. "There is a division of labor between [Hamas
premier Ismail] Haniyeh and Abbas. Haniyeh and Hamas
are leading armed terrorism while Abbas is leading
political terrorism."
Palestinian officials retorted by calling Lieberman "a
thug disguised as a politician". PA negotiator Saeb
Ereikat said Lieberman was continuing his rudeness and
incitement without the Israeli government taking any
measures to rein him in. "The whole world condemned
those declaration and we were officially informed by
the Israeli governments that it and its premier were
not related and did not necessarily share his view."
The United States, Israel's guardian ally, firmly
opposes Palestinian plans at the UN. American
officials wary of angering Israel and her powerful
supporters at the American domestic arena, especially
during an election year, have threatened to punish the
PA in case it went along with its statehood
recognition plans at the UN.
However, Israel is worried that American pressure,
especially financial pressure, may not eventually
succeed in thwarting PA plans. Netanyahu sought to
distance himself from Lieberman's remarks, especially
calling Chairman Abbas a "terrorist". However, the
Israeli premier, who some PA officials consider a
"mere diplomatic carbon copy of Lieberman" made no
signs suggesting that he opposes the essence of
Lieberman's recalcitrant approach towards the PA,
namely constantly narrowing its horizons and forcing
it to grovel at Israel's feet.
In fact, nearly every Israeli measure in the West Bank
shows that the Netanyahu government is not really
interested in reaching a balanced and dignified
settlement with the PA, a settlement that would free
Palestinians from Israeli domination. Last week,
Israel's electric company said it was considering
cutting off power to large parts of the West Bank due
to unpaid bill totaling $125 million.
The PA has been undergoing a sever financial crisis
stemming from the failure of donor countries to make
good on their promises to bail out the PA, forcing the
Ramallah government to take some austerity measures
and postpone the payment of salaries to civil servants
and public employees. Israeli electricity is
distributed to the West Bank by the Jerusalem District
Electricity Co, a private firm. In a news conference
last week, officials of the Jerusalem Company said
some 12 Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank
were the main debtors.
It is unknown why the PA has accepted liability to pay
the electricity bill for the refugee camps when the
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, is
supposed to be the main body that should cater for the
refugees. In addition to the electricity crisis,
several Palestinian towns in the West Bank are facing
an acute water shortage crisis due to scarcity of
drinking water. Some localities, especially in the
southern parts of the West Bank, receive tap water
only once every five or six weeks, which lasts for a
few hours.
The problem stems from the fact that the lion's share
of water resources in the West Bank is allocated for
Jewish settlements which in many cases leaves many
Palestinian literally thirsty. When Palestinian
citizens complain to PA officials about the dearth of
water supplies, the officials simply tell the
complainants. "Sorry, we are as helpless as you are.
We can do nothing about this because the Israelis
control the water distribution system."
Still more, Israeli measures go far beyond merely
stealing and arrogating Palestinian water. The
so-called Israel Civil Administration, which is a tool
of the Israeli occupation army and Jewish settlement
enterprise, has been destroying water cisterns
belonging to Palestinian villagers and peasants in the
so-called area C where, according to the Oslo Accords,
Israel maintains security as well as civilian
authority. In recent days and weeks, the Israeli army
destroyed several cisterns south of the town of
Dahiriya, 20km south west of Hebron. According to Azmi
Shoyoukhi, head of popular committees for resistance,
Israeli troops destroyed three cisterns, several huts,
as well as a number of water containers in the
proscribed area.
Residents and human rights activists in the region say
the ultimate Israeli goal behind these measures is to
force Palestinians to flee the area in order to expand
Jewish settlements. Israel, say political observers,
is hell-bent on preventing the establishment of a
viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state
in the West Bank. On Monday, Netanyahu declared that
the Gush Itzion settlements were an integral part of
Jerusalem, which he called Israel's "eternal and
undivided capital." International Law doesn't
recognise Israeli sovereignty over any part of the
occupied territory.
The latest Israeli measures to corrode whatever
remaining prospects for a balanced and fair resolution
of the enduring Palestinian issue are coinciding with
a serious escalation of organised Jewish terror
against Palestinian civilians. The latest wave of
Jewish terror in the West Bank included hurling a
firebomb on a passenger Palestinian car, causing
serious burns to five people, including children.
More to the point, an East Jerusalem youth was nearly
killed after fanatical Jewish youths tried to lynch
him while walking on a West Jerusalem street. Jewish
terror is encouraged by rampant incitement against
Arabs and Muslims in the Israeli media and synagogues
and also by the extreme leniency with which the
manifestly racist Israeli justice system deals with
Jewish terrorists especially when the victim is Arab.
Khalid Amayreh is an American-educated
journalist living in the southern West Bank town of
Dura near Hebron. He graduated from the University of
Oklahoma in Norman in 1981. He also, received a Master
degree in Journalism from the University of Southern
Illinois at Carbondale in 1983.
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