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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wgh613 who wrote (2663)	4/15/2002 8:22:00 PM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Respond to of 32591

Bargouti and the “Illegal Israeli Settlement” of Netanya David Bedein 16 April 2002 The sudden news of a PLO attack in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya on Passover night was in keeping with the PLO commitment to attack any place that the PLO defines as an “illegal Israeli settlement.” After all, in January, 1995, on the day after an Arab killed 21 people at a bus stop in Beit Lid, just outside Netanya, PLO leader, and now prisoner, Marwan Bargouti appeared on the Saudi Arabian MBC TV channel to explain PLO support for the attack, since “this was an area that we haven´t liberated yet.” In light of recent events, I present the following story, which speaks for itself: At the end of November, 2000, I lectured at a retirement home in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya, to discuss the PLO demand that all Arabs who have wallowed in UN refugee camps for the past fifty years be given the “right of return” to villages that they left in 1948. I showed the retirees a map of a “future Palestinian State” that the PLO’s Orient House headquarters had provided for the media in Jerusalem, which marks the 531 Arab villages that are slated for return, all of which had been overrun in 1948. One of those villages was Um Khalid, which, according to the PLO, had been illegally absorbed by Netanya. The PLO therefore defines Netanya as one of Israel’s “illegal settlements” under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention, enacted in 1949, which forbids a conquering nation from moving its citizens into a conquered area. The implication is that the PLO will justify any attack on any such settlement that it views as “illegal.” Thus, the formalized December, 1995 PLO -Hamas accord, signed in Cairo by both Palestinian factions, allowed the Hamas to carry out operations from outside of areas not yet under direct PLO control and in areas within Israel proper that had not yet been “liberated.” These ideas of the “right of return” play out on the ground in many ways that have escaped public attention. Over the past seven years, the PLO developed a computer database that was located at the Orient House, which helps Arab refugees locate their homes from before 1948, to enable their imminent right of return to places like Um Khalid. Throughout summer 2000, UNRWA Arab refugee camps sponsored tours for Arab refugee children, their parents and their grandparents to visit villages that they had left in 1948. They used Israeli Arab buses to circumvent checkpoints. The above presentation made retirees at the Netanya nursing home very nervous. They could not believe what they were hearing, that their city was considered to be a target. They became quite emotional and some of the retirees actually screamed that “all the Palestinians want is the west bank and Gaza!” It was clear that the message that the PLO demanded the “right of return” to Netanya was a hard one for these senior citizens to swallow. Yet, there was one man who made it easy to listen: An Arab male nurse asked to say something at the end of the lecture. He approached the podium, stared at the map and turned to speak to the retirees. “This is what want. The ‘right of return.’ That would bring peace,” said the nurse. I asked him if that meant that Israel would have to withdraw from Um Khalid. The nurse, in a soft voice, said, “yes.” I then said to the nurse that this would mean that half of the Jews would have to leave their homes in Netanya. The nurse said, “Well, that is the price of peace.” The retirees were stunned. The message had been delivered. The Arab nurse at the Netanya nursing home conveyed the same data that I had just communicated, with greater credibility. Since the time of that talk in Netanya, there have been at nine terror attack in the Netanya region. Our agency, which monitors and translates the newscasts on the Voice of Palestine radio news program, the official Arabic Palestinian Authority news station has not publicized any Palestinian condemnation of these attacks in Netanya. From the PLO point of view, these bombings occur because Um Khalid has not yet been liberated from Israeli “occupation.” In the words of Arafat´s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rodeinah, speaking on Voice of Palestine radio following the Netanya bombing of March 4, 2001, “What occurred is an example of what results from Israel´s policies.” ---------------------------------- David Bedein is the Bureau Chief for Israel Resource News Agency in Jerusalem (IsraelBehindTheNews.com).