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PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (AP)
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| By Michael Widlanski August 28, 2005 |
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| Where's the rest of me? Remains of Beersheva suicide bomber. (AP) |
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At 3 pm, Palestinian Authority Television announced in its afternoon news show that the office of PA President Mahmoud Abbas had "condemned the operation that took place today in Beersheva."
The terse statement did not call the "operation" an act of terror, and it came more than six hours after the Palestinian terror attack. In addition, unlike Dr. Abbas's frequent condemnations of Israel, the statement was not read by Abbas himself and was not echoed by other PA officials.
Abbas lieutenants called the attack, which was thwarted by the bravery of two security guards, one an Arab Bedouin, "an explosive operation."
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"Those who committed the massacre in Tulkarm had to expect some kind of response."
Palestinian General Jibril Rajoub
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Some leading Palestinian Authority (PA) officials justified the attack that injured ten Israeli civilians aside from the Palestinian suicide bomber, who blew himself up just outside the
central bus station in Beersheva, a town with a large Arab population.
"Those who committed the massacre in Tulkarm had to expect some kind of response," asserted General Jibril Rajoub, the National Security Advisor to the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Dr. Abbas, according to Voice of Palestine radio.
Rajoub was referring to Israel's killing of five armed members of the Islamic Jihad terror organization in the West Bank town of Tulkarm last week, but his remarks were not a departure from the PA policy set forth by PLO Chairman Abbas and his prime minister Ahmad Qurei.
Both Abbas and Mr. Qurei have declined to condemn Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians in the last week, including rocket and mortar attacks on the Israeli town of Sderot in the Negev area not far from today's blast in Beersheba.
In a long interview broadcast Friday afternoon on Palestinian Authority television, Abbas referred to Israeli actions as irhaab ("terror in Arabic), while almost never using a negative term to describe any Arab attack.
Abbas, Qurei, Rajoub and PA Interior Minister Nasser Youssef have repeatedly defended the Islamic Jihad which has carried out terror attacks in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Netanya in recent months, and the Palestinian Authority has actually offered shelter and intelligence information to the Jihad terrorists.
In the last two weeks since Israel has evicted about 8,000 of its own citizens from the Gaza Strip, the rhetoric of senior PA officials is almost indistinguishable from that of the leaders of Jihad and the even larger Islamic terror group, Hamas.
PA television and radio commercials echo the messages in the street banners of Hamas and Jihad: "Gaza First" and "Today Gaza, Tomorrow Jerusalem."
Children interviewed on PA television were asked what they thought of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and one child said: "We are returning to Jaffa and to Haifa."
© 2005 Michael Widlanski Associates
Dr. Michael Widlanski is a specialist in Arab politics and communication whose doctorate dealt with the Palestinian broadcast media. He is a former reporter, correspondent and editor, respectively, at The New York Times ,The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution, and The Jerusalem Post.
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