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Flags to realize Arafat's vision. (AP)
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| By Jerusalem Newswire August 17, 2005 |
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| Ready for new flags and banners. A Palestinian mob outside the walls of Neve Dekalim. (AP) |
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The Gaza-based United Nations Development Program last week transferred funds to the Palestinian Authority to pay for the production of banners, flags and bumper stickers suggesting Israel's withdrawal from Gaza is terror's success, and that Jerusalem is next.
Banners declaring "Gaza Today, the West Bank and Jerusalem Tomorrow" have been prominently displayed throughout Gaza since last week, as the Palestinian Arabs revel in the Jews' departure.
The tag line on the banners reads "Paid for by the United Nations Development Program," and bears the official symbol of the world body, reported The New York Times.
The PA is engaging in an aggressive public relations campaign to convince those who live under its rule that Israel's withdrawal is not a unilateral action, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon insists, but rather the direct result of Palestinian efforts.
Amy Goldstein of the Washington-based Jewish organization B'nai Brith told The New York Sun the message the UN is funding is basically that "the intifada worked."
That message, critics said, will only encourage further Arab violence against Israel's Jews.
UNDP representative Timothy Rothermel admitted to Fox News that his organization had indeed provided the "Palestinian Withdrawal Committee" with financial aid to communicate its propaganda to the general population.
The banner suggesting the Palestinian Arabs would soon "liberate" Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem from the Jews was "prepared by the disengagement office with financial support from the United Nations Development Program," Rothermel said.
Rothermel argued that the slogan is "consistent with the relevant UN resolutions and Security Council resolutions about the status of Palestine."
Jerusalem and the "West Bank" are in fact "disputed territory under UN Security Council Resolution 242," the status of which is yet to be determined, noted former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dore Gold.
Indeed, Israel has traditionally argued that "The Jewish people and the State of Israel have the right in principle, as well as in law and in terms of national security, to a permanent presence in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District," as former Ambassador to the UN Yehuda Blum stated in 1979.
In the meantime, "the UN has no business getting involved in [pro-Palestinian] sloganeering," Gold told Fox News.
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