Nearly five months after the signing of the Wye accords, in which Yasser Arafat promised --again-- to halt all "incitement" and "hostile propaganda" in the Palestinian Authority-controlled media, an article in the PA's daily newspaper, Al Hayat Al Jadeeda (March 8) has declared: "Netanyahu continues with his racist policy and his boasting of his imaginary power, which will be removed just as the dictatorial and colonialist Crusader power was removed in the past...We think that the Jewish danger threatens the Palestinian and Arab lands just as the American danger threatens the Arab and Islamic nation."
These two sentences are just a small sample of what appears in the PA press, television, and radio every day. But they are worth a closer look because they encapsulate so many of the themes of incitement that Wye was supposed to have eliminated.
First, the implied threat of violence--Netanyahu's "power" will be "removed," just as the Crusaders' power was "removed." Every Muslim schoolboy knows that the Crusaders were "removed" through Muslim violence and conquest.
The "Crusader" reference is also a reminder that PA officials, including Arafat himself, constantly assure Arab audiences that Israel is only a temporary phenomenon, like the Crusaders. The Crusaders' fate--eventual destruction--is seen by Muslims as a source of hope that Israel will yet be destroyed. That hardly squares with Arafat's promise to accept Israel's right to exist.
The use of the term "Jewish" is also significant. Instead of referring to an "Israeli danger," or even a "Zionist danger," the PA newspaper took off the kid gloves and made it clear who the real target is: the Jews. No temporary PA accord with Israel can change that.
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Outpost - 12 - April 1999