* A similar practice applied to non-Fatah operators.... At one point, Ghazi Jabali admitted that more than 150 members of the "opposition" movements serve in his Police force (Palestinian Television, June 24, 1997).

* It systematically refused, often in blatant disregard of the signed commitment to do so, to extradite even a single terrorist from the list (over thirty, at one time) demanded by Israel.

* In cases where the perpetrators of murders and other serious terrorist attacks were in fact apprehended by the P.A., they were put on trial overnight and given bogus sentences, so as to render them unavailable for extradition.

Failure to Collect Illegal Weapons

Within days of the signing of the Interim Agreement in Cairo, May 1995, the Preventive Security Chief in the West Bank Jibril Rajub made it clear that the Agreement, while expedient for the Palestinians, given the damage done to their cause by the fall of the Soviet Union and Saddam's defeat in the Gulf war, would not oblige them to act as "Lahad's Army" (the SLA, Israel's allies in South Lebanon at the time) in restraining those who seek to carry out armed actions against Israel.

"As to the question of weapons," reported Al-Nahar on May 25 1994, "Rajub divided it into three parts: the first, those under national control, i.e. the weapons in the hands of national factions [such as Fatah] which are directed against the occupation -- those we shall sanction and tolerate out of national responsibility. The second -- those carried, now and in the future, for social or personal reasons, and we shall study how to deal with them. The third -- weapons in the hands of suspected characters, bandits and spies, which will be collected at all costs."

This clearly meant that no serious effort would be made to implement the unambiguous commitment to collect all illegal weapons. Fatah members continued to carry arms openly, and in recent events have displayed items strictly forbidden to be held in P.A. territories, such as various automatic weapons and hand grenades. There are indications that heavier weapons -- bought, stolen or smuggled -- are in the hands of Palestinian forces or militias....

The requirement to collect illegal weapons was therefore re-incorporated in the Wye River memorandum, and again in the February 2000 Sharm el Sheikh summit. The Palestinians agreed to design and implement, step by step, a detailed plan for that purpose, but in fact:

* The "Law of Arms and Ammunition" passed hastily by the P.A. Legislative Council in the wake of the Wye memorandum falls well short of the requirements outlined in the Interim Agreement;

* On the ground, Palestinian action has been very limited, as no plan was submitted; on some occasions, visible raids were made against specific arms merchants in the West Bank and Gaza (for local/personal reasons).

* No further reporting was made to the monitoring commission. The use of illegally held weapons -- particularly in the hands of the "Tanzim" -- thus became a key problem in the present crisis. It is also a problem for Palestinian society at large: regular reports on the extensive use of such weapons at wedding parties, etc., has given rise to sharp debate. The answer, as propagated by the nationalist media -- "turn all your gun barrels towards the enemy."

Incitement and the Perpetuation of Hatred

Since the Palestinian leadership continued to look upon the current situation as transitory, no systematic effort was made to re-educate Palestinian youth, or the public at large, as to the need to accept Israel as a neighbor and peace as a value....It took a long and sustained effort to introduce some change and remove explicit anti-Jewish texts from Palestinian school books, and even so, they do not include any map showing Israel or even Tel Aviv as a city. As indicated above, there is only one map of Palestine in use -- and displayed in huge format everywhere. Schools and institutions of higher education are used to perpetuate this historic narrative. The question of education and incitement was raised at the Wye River talks, and a joint committee was established to discuss it: but not much action was taken -- it was impossible to bridge the basic conceptual gap -- and the committee soon became defunct. The extent of Palestinian efforts to perpetuate hatred and rejection of Zionism and Israel (and all too often, in more popular usage, "the Jews") is too broad to cover, beyond certain glaring visual examples. In the run-up to the present crisis, two key officials played a salient role in stressing to the Palestinian public the impossibility of any compromise and the need to prepare for a confrontation:

* Hasan al-Kashif, the Director-General of the P.A. Ministry of Information, and a daily commentator in both the electronic media and Al-Ayyam, has been arguing that since the Palestinians cannot possibly accept the Camp David offers (or any other departure from the Arab interpretation of 242), they should prepare for a prolonged struggle (and hoard food);

* Sheikh lkrimah Sabri, Mufti of Jerusalem, kept up -- in the context of the discussion on the future of the

[(Continued on p.9)]

Outpost               - 8 -               December 2000