Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Al Qaeda accuses Hamas of being stooges of the Jews

Media sources linked to Al-Qaeda criticized Hamas’ operation against the Salafi group Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers for God) in Rafah on Friday, accusing the de facto government of “abdicating from Islam,” CNN Arabic reported Wednesday night.

The statement called Moussa a “martyr,” saying he was killed by “the bullets and the rockets of Hamas government.”

The statement linked the Hamas action, termed a “massacre” against Jund Ansar Allah, with clashes that took place last summer between Hamas police and Army of Islam affiliates in the Ash-Shyjayyiah area of Gaza City.

Hamas was further accused of working against Islamic groups and “Serving the Jews who occupy Palestine, and the Christians who fight against Iraq, Afghanistan Somalia and Chechnya.”

This is not the first time Al Qaeda insulted Hamas. Last year we saw the strange phenomenon of Al Qaeda scolding Hamas for attacking women and children, and Hamas answering back that they really don't.

Arab News reports blood libel as fact

Headline in Saudi Arabia's Arab News:

Israelis killed Palestinians for organs

No qualifications whatsoever until you read well into the article that Israel disputes the claims.

Another interesting part about the story, noticed by commenter Suzanne, is that the "stone thrower" Bilal Ghanem mentioned in the story actually was a suspected kidnapper and a fugitive when he was shot while the IDF was trying to arrest him in 1992:

Soldiers yesterday shot and killed Bilal Ghanem, 20, a fugitive since July 1991, after cornering him in the village of Imatin, near Nablus. Ghanem had been suspected of kidnapping and violently interrogating alleged informers, the IDF announcement said.

Amnesty International caves to Israel boycotters

Leonard Cohen is planning to play a concert in Israel on September 24th. The 47,000 tickets, ranging in price from $90 to $315, sold out in a day.

Cohen turned the concert into a fundraiser for pro-peace groups. He worked together with Amnesty International to create a special fund that would hand out the proceeds to places like a peace group made up of the parents of Israelis and Palestinians killed called the Parents Circle-Family Forum, a children's health program run by the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv, an organization that brings together Israeli army veterans and former Palestinian fighters and a center for special needs children in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Cohen tried to also schedule a concert in Ramallah, but this was rejected by the Palestinian Arabs.

The Israeli concert is not in Jerusalem, but in Tel Aviv. In no way can it be considered controversial to anyone who thinks that Israel has the right to exist.

However, the "peace" organizations who do not share that belief immediately started pressuring Amnesty International to withdraw its involvement in a charity that would give literally millions of dollars to groups that are dedicated to Arab-Israeli coexistence. These groups sent an open letter to Amnesty insisting that they stop all involvement with the concert. The signed groups include:

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
Adalah-NY
The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East,
American Jews for a Just Peace (US)
Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within (Israel)
British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP)
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network www.ijsn.net
Jews Against the Occupation-NYC
New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (NYCBI)
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK)
US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel

So Amnesty, that paragon of morality, caved to the Israeli boycotters.

Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) was approached by representatives of Leonard Cohen for advice on setting up a fund (the Fund for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace) to receive and distribute proceeds from a planned concert in Tel Aviv to benefit the Parents Forum: Bereaved Parents for Peace and Reconciliation and other Israeli and Palestinian NGOs. AIUSA was pleased to offer what help it could. Given the different requirements of AI's work and that of the Fund both have agreed that at this point AIUSA will withdraw from active involvement with the Fund. AIUSA will not be part of the Fund nor benefit financially from the proceeds of the concert in Tel Aviv.

AIUSA is impressed by Leonard Cohen's commitment to use his talent to benefit directly those working for human rights and continues to hope that this wish will be realized.

Amnesty International has taken no position on boycotts anywhere in the world. AIUSA's participation in discussions related to this project was based firmly on the belief that setting up such a fund could be beneficial to Israeli and Palestinian efforts on behalf of human rights."

Even though they claim it has nothing to do with the boycott, that is clearly not true, or else they would not have agreed to help out in the first place. And the boycotters are crowing over their victory:

Omar Barghouti from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) commented, “We welcome Amnesty International’s withdrawal from this ill-conceived project which is clearly intended to whitewash Israel’s violations of international law and human rights. By abandoning the Leonard Cohen project in Tel Aviv, Amnesty International has dealt Cohen and his public relations team a severe blow, denying them the cover of the organization’s prestige and respectability.”

This effectively means that Amnesty International supports the boycott of Israel, notwithstanding its denials. If it could not participate in this event - as pro-peace an event as could be imaginable - that means that it will refuse to do anything with Israel that could possibly be construed as anything other than abject condemnation of Israel's existence. And that is exactly what this is - Amnesty happily doing the bidding of groups that want to see Israel destroyed.

Somehow, this is not a problem for AI.

The limited facade of objectivity that Amnesty International claimed concerning Israel has been demolished.

The Stockholm Syndrome of Hebron, 1929

We are almost at the 80th anniversary of the bloodthirsty Arab massacre of the Jews of Hebron that took place on August 23, 1929.

A recent book about the Jews of Hebron by Jerold Auerbach goes into detail of not only that horrible day but the entire history of Hebron Jews. The details of the slaughter itself are chilling to the point of disbelief, and are summarized in this Tablet column today by Seth Lipsky.

By August, trouble was sensed by the one British police officer in the town, Raymond Cafferata. He was told by both Arabs and Jews in Hebron that “any trouble” was “out of the question.”
Yet that same week a Jewish teacher named Haim Bagayo was warned, “This time we are going to butcher you all.” Earlier that day, there had been clashes in Jerusalem, in which three Arabs and three Jews died. The Jews of Hebron, Auerbach writes, “refused to believe that their Arab neighbors, with whom they had lived in relatively peaceful coexistence for four centuries, meant them harm.” Cafferata noted that in Hebron “everything appeared normal.” But before the day was out, Arabs began to attack Jews with clubs, and Jewish shops were quickly shuttered.
The first to die was a student, Shmuel Rosenhaltz, who was set upon as he studied, alone, in the main yeshiva. The Jews were warned to stay inside their homes. Early the next morning, Arabs, screaming “Allah akbar” and “Itbach al Yahud,” or “kill the Jews,” began surging through the streets. Two Jewish youths were stoned to death outside the house of the Heichel family. Some 70 Jews sought refuge inside a relatively large house, owned by Eliezer Dan Slonim. Almost the whole family of Slonim—his wife, Hannah, and their son, his father-in-law, who was the chief rabbi of Zichron Yaakov, and his wife—were among 22 persons who were clubbed or stabbed to death and, in some cases, disemboweled. The Slonim’s one-year son survived, having been hidden under dying Jews.
Rabbi Hanoch Hasson was murdered, along with his family. A pharmacist, Ben-Zion Gershon, who’d served both Arabs and Jews, “had his eyes gouged out before he was stabbed to death,” Auerbach relates. His wife’s hands were cut off before she and their daughter were killed. Mr. Goldshmidt was tortured, his head held over a kerosene flame, before he, his wife, and one of their daughters were killed. Twenty-three corpses were discovered in the Anglo Palestine Bank, where women were raped on a floor covered with thick pools of congealing blood. Rabbis Meir Kastel and Tzvi Dabkin and five of their students were tortured and castrated before being murdered. The killings went on for two hours, and the final death toll reached 67.

Were the Arabs of Hebron as tolerant of Jews before the massacre as the Jews there claimed? Or was this a psychological defense mechanism that the Jews employed to shut their eyes to the truth?

The truth may very well be the latter. A book written in 1905 called The Jews of Many Lands, by Elkan Nathan Adler, describes Hebron Arabs as being the most intolerant of all:

Hebron, or Khalil, the "City of Friendship," is perhaps the oldest city of the Holy Land, and in interest it vies with Jerusalem itself. Among us Jews it is reverently described as " the Burial Ground of our Fathers," and a pilgrimage thither is highly esteemed. The Mohammedans regard it with even more reverence as a sacred place than Jerusalem, for is it not the last resting-place of Abraham—el Khalil Allah—the friend of God and His great prophet? Their regard, although flattering to the founder of our race, carries with it the disadvantage that it makes the Hebronites the most fanatical of the followers of Islam, and the most intolerant. Christians cannot live at Hebron, and Jews there are treated as dogs. Curses both loud and deep greeted us as we walked round the Great Mosque, which encloses the Cave of Machpelah; but, as we did not understand the meaning of the imprecations or appreciate the delicacy or appropriateness of the choice epithets applied to us, and, as the missiles thrown at us were not well aimed, we could afford to treat our reception with amused nonchalance. Nowhere in the East did I meet with such bigotry as at Hebron, and it did not surprise me to learn that Dr. Stein, the medical man whom we sent out there some time ago, has no Mohammedans among his clientele, because the Hebronites, unlike the Mohammedans who live in Jerusalem and elsewhere are too utter fatalists to believe that medicine can arrest the progress of disease or the angel of death.

The 1948 war also had many examples of Arabs, considered friendly neighbors of Jews for generations, "suddenly" turning on them and butchering them, or cheering on those who tried.

If there are to be any lessons for Jews from the past hundred years, it is that being slightly paranoid is probably a much more accurate posture than feeling overly secure, and that it may be a fatal mistake to believe otherwise.

Egypt seizes tons of TNT for Gaza

Firas Press reports that Egyptian security forces discovered a warehouse near the Gaza border with bags filled with TNT, in the sizes necessary to transport through Rafah tunnels. Recently they also seized M-16s and missile warheads. Egypt also discovered five tunnels, including one from a house that was over 100 meters from the border.

The smuggling tunnels are still being used for explosives and weapons, but the media only talks about consumer goods.

By the way, Israel's recent delivery of cement to Gaza for humanitarian purposes was partially seized by Hamas to build weapons bunkers. And this delivery was closely coordinated with UNRWA and the World Bank.

Israel's latest "human rights" violation

Palestine Today reports on the latest flagrant Israeli human rights violation: making phone calls offering money.

Israeli intelligence is calling Gazan phone numbers, offering 10 million shekels for any information about the whereabouts of Gilad Shalit.

This is, of course, terrible.

Dr. Salah Abdul-Ati, director of the Independent Commission of Human Rights in Gaza said that these practices of the occupation of voice messages sent to [Gaza] citizens is a flagrant violation of human rights and an infringement of their rights, using pressure or temptation, and this work demonstrates the the viciousness of the occupation and its practices and the exploitation of the people's needs.

Abdul Ati told Al Ayyam that this is a breach of the Geneva Convention and rules of international law imposed on the occupied civilians of respect for their rights, and the exposure to these actions to be forced to do that work is classified as acts of military coercion, saying that it comes within the framework of the media war and psychological warfare against citizens in order to undermine the domestic front, adding that the war is not waged with arms alone.

He called on human rights institutions to document and expose the practices of the Israeli occupation and intelligence of these human rights violations to bring the crimes of the occupation to the international courts.

I can't wait to read HRW's scholarly paper about this crime, and its insistence to have the IDF create a "do not call" list under international law.

Egypt's summer "marriage" trade

Al Arabiya has an article in Arabic about a growing phenomenon of older Arabs vacationing in Egypt in the summer and "marrying" minor girls.

We have seen that Gulf Arabs tend to take vacation brides, usually abandoning them after the trip is over and sometimes leaving them pregnant. This, however, is the first time I have seen reference to child brides as the victims of this "temporary marriage" phenomenon.

The marriages are a legal fiction for underage prostitution. The girls' families are the benefactors of the rich Arab "grooms' " largess.

It is a harder than normal article to translate, but one part seems to say that the "brides" are as young as three years old (the entire paragraph autotranslates to "The figures indicate a large percentage of minors in the province of married October 6 from non-Egyptian people, girls are as young as third-year-old, but some of them become mothers within months.") I do not want to make that accusation yet; perhaps it means third grade or third year of high school.

The clear fact though is that some Egyptian families are pimping out their daughters for cash from rich, probably Gulf, Arabs taking a summer sex vacation.

UPDATE: An English article about this here.

The Elder scoops the world on blood libel

From Ha'aretz:

A leading Swedish newspaper reported this week that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs, a claim that prompted furious condemnation and accusations of anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival publication.

"They plunder the organs of our sons," read the headline in Sweden's largest daily newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.

The report quotes Palestinian claims that young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israel Defense Forces, and their bodies returned to the families with missing organs.

"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied," writes author Donald Boström in his report.

Boström's article makes a link to the recent exposure of an alleged crime syndicate in New Jersey. The syndicate includes several American rabbis, and one Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who faces charges of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant.

I saw this rumor coming two days ago. I am just surprised that it surfaced in Sweden before it hit the Arab world.

(h/t Mustafa)

Fatah and Peace Now: It must be love

Barry Rubin hears from Peace Now's Ori Nir about his analysis of apparent Abbas successor Muhammad Ghaneim's hardline views. Nir disputes Rubin's characterization of Ghaneim, saying that Ghaneim "implicitly committed to Fatah's pragmatic platform of peace..."

Rubin finds this interesting:

Talk about wishful thinking! and this is the kind of things we are supposed to risk our lives on?

Here's what's wrong with this:

1. Ori has no evidence for this assertion. He is speculating because he assumes it is impossible for Fatah or the Palestinian movement to reject peace or be more radical. So you have to, in effect, search through the manure until you find the pony.

2. Most important of all, it's one thing to have Ghaneim come back but why should Abbas make him his successor!

3. Nothing will make the locals angrier than importing another guy from Tunis and passing over all those from the West Bank--or at least living there!--including ones who support Abbas. He had a dozen choices at least who are no great doves but at least are status quo types who accept the peace process.

3. Did you catch the word "implicit" By this definition, anyone who joins Fatah on the West Bank or Gaza is by that very fact a supporter of peace! What's wrong with his explicitly saying: I have changed my views and I think Arafat was right in signing the Oslo agreement. Remember, Ghaneim's not being asked to endorse Benjamin Netanyahu's policy but rather Arafat's and can't even do that.

If he cannot do even that, how the heck is he ever going to negotiate a comprehensive peace with Israel ending the conflict and making some concessions?

4. And finally, what "pragmatic platform of peace"? I have no problem in principle for their demanding the 1967 borders as their opening position. The first problem is that this is also going to be their closing position. The real tip-off is that if they had a pragmatic platform of peace it wouldn't include the demand that all Palestinian refugees and their descendants had to be able to go live in Israel if they wished.

But notice how groups like Peace Now make the leap from being dovish Israelis to being the advocates of groups like Fatah....They have become the pro-Palestinian Authority lobby.

This is exactly why the Fatah conference platform explicitly calls for closer ties to the Israeli peace camp:

The restoration of our relationship with the direct and powerful Israeli peace camp, and re-activate it to work for a just peace without mixing with the unacceptable policy of normalization under occupation.

Does no one find it ironic that the Fatah platform, filled with references to the legality of "armed struggle," turns around and says that it embraces the Israeli "peace camp"?

Fatah defines "peace" in this way:

The definition of the concept of peace for the Palestinian people is based on justice and the right to freely exercise self-determination like other peoples of the world, and based on the principles of international law and international legitimacy...

And it interprets "international law" as supporting Palestinian Arab terrorism:

The right of resistance: The Fatah movement and the Palestinian people have the right to resist occupation by all legitimate means, including the exercise of their rights to armed struggle, which is guaranteed by international law, as long as there remains occupation and settlements and dispossession of the Palestinian people of their inalienable rights [to move to Israel and destroy it demographically - EoZ]

So we see that the Fatah movement defines "peace" as "armed struggle."

Peace Now defines "Fatah" as "peaceful."

So, naturally, Fatah wants to strengthen its ties with "Peace Now" to give legitimacy to its "armed struggle."

Newspeak lives!

UNHCR decreases real refugees; UNRWA increases fake ones

From Ma'an:

One hundred and forty Palestinian refugees who fled Iraq to Syria left that country for Norway this week, where they were granted asylum.

The Palestinians were living in three refugee camps: Al-Walid camp, on the Iraqi side of the Syrian border which houses 1,549 refugees; Al-Tanf camp, also located on the border and home to 747 refugees; Al-Hol camp, in Syrian territory and houses 331 Palestinian refugees.

In a statement, the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria called on “the Syrian and the Jordanian governments to allow the entry of Palestinian refugees from Iraq and asked for their protection from persecution, and respect and protection for their human rights.”

In July, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it planned to move 98 Palestinians from Syria to a temporary “transit camp” in Slovakia.

Romania opened a similar camp last year, and the US, Chile, and several European countries have taken in many of the thousands of Palestinians who were stranded after the start of the US-led occupation of Iraq in 2003.

The UNHCR moves these Arab refugees from Iraq, of Palestinian ancestry, to countries where they will be welcomed and become normal citizens.

And none of those countries are Arab.

The only "Palestinian refugees" that exist in Arab countries are the ones who cannot become citizens and that fall under the control of UNRWA, not UNHCR. Because UNRWA happily allows Arab countries to practice discrimination against Palestinian Arabs, and it happily goes along with their keeping them stateless and often homeless. It does not make an attempt anymore to move the grandchildren of the refugees out of "refugee" camps and into real houses. It doesn't chide Lebanon for limiting the types of jobs Arabs of Palestinian origin can have or for not allowing them to buy land. UNRWA is happy to define children and grandchildren and great-granchildren of Palestinian Arabs as "refugees" (of course, they explicitly exclude the Palestinian Jews who were forced to move out of Gush Etzion and east Jerusalem from being considered "Palestinian refugees.")

UNHCR tries to make the refugee problem go away. UNRWA is invested in keeping the problem going forever.

And as such, they are partners with the Palestinian Arab leadership who have enshrined their own desire to keep people in camps forever in the Fatah platform I mentioned yesterday:

The [Fatah] Movement believes in the need to preserve the camp[s], [which are] a key symbol to the political refugees who have been deprived from returning to their homes until a solution to their cause, and the need to adhere to the administration of an international relief agency [UNRWA] and a recognition of the cause of refugees until they return to their homes and their country.

See? Everyone agrees that Palestinian Arabs should be in misery! Arab leaders enforce it, the PLO/Fatah enshrines it, and the UNRWA perpetuates it.

The only people who disagree are the Palestinian Arabs themselves.

I get visited by a neo-Nazi

I just received a comment about my post mentioning that Google is allowing ads by neo-Nazis:

tom metzger »No body likes a cry baby or a snitch. It makes you look like a jerk.

08.18.09 - 6:38 am

It looks like this may indeed be the real Tom Metzger, American founder of the White Aryan Resistance and failed candidate for US Congress and Senate. (The IP address is in Indiana, where he lives.)

I banned him, as I have no interest in having neo-Nazis or white supremacists running around my site, even if the messages are just sillier than they are racist.

I'll just have to risk looking like a jerk to a group of bigots.

(Google is still displaying the ad. Do a search for "Zionism" and refresh the page a few times, the ad will show up at some point on the right.)

UPDATE: Google did respond to my complaint and says it is investigating.

Freedom of the Press, Hamas-style

From Reporters Sans Frontieres:

Reporters Without Borders condemns the Hamas interior ministry’s decision to deny Palestinian and foreign journalists access to the southern city of Rafah and to all hospitals in the Gaza Strip until further notice. The ban was issued on 14 August, after fighting broke out in Rafah between the Hamas government and a radical Islamist group.

“The Hamas-led government’s interior ministry has again demonstrated a desire to control news and information in the Gaza Strip,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Only the presence of journalists would ensure independent information about what took place in Rafah on 14 and 15 August.”

Palestine Press Agency adds that Hamas broke into the offices of Reuters on August 14th following their coverage of the speech by Abdul Latif declaring Gaza an Islamic emirate. Hamas also accused Al Arabiya of broadcasting a report about the events “full of lies and slander,” that brought “harm to the Palestinian resistance.”

Abbas to embrace a mass murderer

From Ma'an:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will travel to Sudan on Wednesday and meet with his counterpart Omar Al-Bashir, the country’s SUNA news agency said.

The meeting between the leaders will include discussions around ways of strengthening bilateral relations and developments in the Middle East, the report said. Abbas' visit with the leader comes despite a standing arrest warrant for him issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.

What's a little genocide between friends?

A lot has been said recently to ensure that Jordan is never to be considered a part of a Palestinian Arab state.

Jordan itself has reacted strongly to the suggestion by MK Aryeh Eldad that Jordan should become the Palestinian Arab state, given that most of its population is Palestinian. Israeli president Shimon Peres publicly distanced himself from the idea as well, and Israel even sent a delegation to Jordan to calm Jordanian fears.

What I find more interesting is that the Fatah platform explicitly rejects the concept as well:

Emphasis on the rejection of ...advocacy of the alternative homeland ...in Lebanon [or] Jordan.

I can certainly understand the Hashemite kingdom's rejection of the concept, but why don't Palestinian Arab leaders want to see some part of Jordan or even Lebanon become a part of an Arab Palestine?

Historically, for the most part the East Bank was considered part of Palestine as was most of Lebanon. I'm not talking about the Sykes-Picot agreement; I'm talking about how most people would define Palestine before Balfour. As I've shown before, the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1911 describes both sides of the Jordan as being Palestine, with the East Bank being called "Eastern Palestine" and encompassing some 3800 square miles.

Arabs also considered the East Bank of the Jordan and Lebanon to be a part of Palestine. The Crusaders' "Kingdom of Jerusalem" included parts of the East Bank. Palestine never extended nearly as far east as British Transjordan did but the populated areas closer to the river were usually considered part of Palestine since the area was renamed by the Romans.

Not only that, but Palestinian Arabs carved out their own statelet in Jordan before September 1970 as well as their own autonomous areas of Lebanon in the 1970s and part of the 80s. It would be hard to imagine that the radical leaders at the time were not thinking that they were liberating parts of Palestine when they were fighting the Jordanians and other Lebanese factions.

The fact is that the Jordan River boundary was created by Western powers, not by the natives of the region, Jew, Arab or Christian. If Palestinian Arabs were to be honest in their characterization of themselves as having their own history separate from the rest of the Arab world, that history must include parts of Lebanon and Jordan.

It would seem exceedingly strange that their dreams to restore their homeland would not include their entire homeland.

Yet the Fatah platform is explicit that this is not the case. Why not? Why can they not dream of a return to this mythical area of Palestine in its entirety, even if it is not practical now?

The answer to that question is that the Palestinian Arabs are not dreaming of Palestine - they are dreaming about the destruction of Israel. They are not bothered that their territory is controlled by non-Palestinians but that parts of it are controlled by Jews. The borders that they draw for Palestine always coincide with the borders that happen to be under Jewish control.

Before 1967, they did not agitate to have the West Bank become independent from Jordan, because Jews did not control the West Bank. Except for a brief, embarrassing period in 1948 they did not try to create a state in Gaza either.

Their ambitions for territory always coincided with the land ruled by Jews, not with land ruled by Arabs (except for the examples given above in the 1970s and 1980s.)

The question is not whether Jordan or Lebanon should be the Palestinian Arab state. The question is why Palestinian Arabs themselves don't even consider the topic. The fact that they don't shows that their current claims are not based on historic rights or control, but simply on the negation of a Jewish political entity in the Middle East.

Highlights of the Fatah platform

I finally got to see the full Fatah platform in Arabic from the recent conference. Some of the parts have not been publicized, such as:

* Fatah's insistence that terrorism ("armed struggle") is legal under international law

* Fatah rejecting the idea that Palestinian Arabs could become citizens of any other Arab country and preferring that they remain stateless

* Once again reaffirming that Islam is their official religion while at the same time saying that Israel is a Jewish state is "racism"

* Their glee at President Obama's attitudes towards them and assumption that the US will start to pressure Israel

* Their continued insistence that all "refugees" should "return" to Israel proper

* Their plan to continue to keep their people in miserable refugee camps as a symbol of their plight and to continue to take aid from the UN indefinitely

* The fact that the Israeli "peace" camps are an integral ally in their fight against Israel.

Here are some autotranslated highlights:

2. Methods and forms of struggle

Based on the struggle of the Palestinian people's right to resist occupation, and in the struggle against the settlements and the expulsion and deportation, and racial discrimination, a right guaranteed by laws and international laws. Launched our revolutionary armed struggle in the face of armed rape of our land, but not limited to never, and a variety of tools and methods to include the peaceful struggle, as practiced by the Intifada, demonstrations and protest and civil disobedience and confrontation against the gangs of settlers, and the struggle of political, media and legal, diplomatic, and negotiations with the occupation authority, and therefore, the right of the Palestinian people in the practice of armed struggle against the armed occupation of their territory is an inalienable right by the law and international law. The choice of method of the fight in time and space depends on ... internal and external conditions, the calculation of purchasing power and the need to maintain mobility, and on the ability of people to the revolution and resistance, and to continue the struggle.

3. Personal and independent national Palestinian identity:

Fatah's strategy is based on the Palestinian people and their struggle, and that there is no alternative to him from his homeland, and their movement have been made in all fields to confirm the independent national identity, and to stabilize the Palestinian identity, this identity is based in our our country, and our rejection of resettlement in neighboring Arab countries (as Arabs in our country and our neighborhood), or in any alternative homeland. The Movement believes that the affirmation of personal interest, the need to belong to the public and the nation and the basic social components.

6.Religions

Palestine is the holy land of the heavenly religions, Islam is the religion of the majority of the Palestinian people, which is the official religion of the authority of the state, and for the Christian the same sanctity and respect, do not allow the opening of any distinction between the Palestinians on the basis of religion, faith or the amount of faith, and respect freedom of worship for all, including Jews, our movement has been launched calling for a democratic, not sectarian Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Functions of the next phase:

The winds of change blowing in the United States, under new management, and it is likely to move away from the world single view, and is heading toward more balance and pluralism and dialogue, and commitment to international law.

In total there are strengths and weaknesses in our reality. There are the dangers we face, or avoid, the most important internal divisions, and centralization levels, and we must seize the opportunities there, including the opportunity offered by the defeat of the American project in the Middle East, and the end of an era which President Bush based on the use of excessive force in the conduct of American policy in the region, through the vision single of the world refuses to multilateralism, and international participation in decision-making, has also modified its policy to the U.S. on the conflict - the Iranian, the brightest flames of discord and division in our country and our region. may have a better chance under the new U.S. administration. The opportunities of new national and regional, is Arab reconciliation and the positive role of Turkey and the improvement in Iran's position towards us, the regional forces in the past, she was standing by the enemy and to establish closer alliances with him.

Our goal is to defeat the central occupation and liberation of the country, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and to ensure the right of refugees to return and compensation. For the next stage of our analysis shows the progress of tasks to be performed to achieve this goal are summarized in the face of occupation, settlement and the preservation of the land and the holy sites and its Arabism, and particularly in Jerusalem, and work on the release of prisoners, and to uphold the Bthoaptna[?], and the awakening of the various forms of struggle to defeat the occupation, and negotiating a course correction, but not limited acceptance, or to continue to no avail, and try to get through on the progress towards our goals, and to explore strategic alternatives if it failed to address the peace process in its current form, and continue to build the self - for the continuation of this confrontation.

2. Refugees: Fatah is committed to including the following:

A - to work hard to achieve the right of refugees to return, compensation and restoration of property, and the unity of the refugee issue, regardless of their whereabouts, including refugees in the territories (48).

The Movement believes the need to preserve the camp[s], a key witness to the political refugees who have been deprived from returning to their homes until a solution to their cause, and the need to adhere to the title of an international relief agency and a recognition of the cause of refugees until they return to their homes and their country, while working to improve the situation of refugees and the camps, with confirmation that the PLO is a political reference to Palestinian refugees.

B - emphasis on the rejection of the principle of forced resettlement, or advocacy of the alternative homeland, then resettled in Lebanon, nor an alternative homeland in Jordan.

-----------
The right of resistance: stick to the Fatah movement against the Palestinian people to resist occupation by all legitimate means, including the exercise of their right to armed struggle, which is guaranteed by international law, as long as the occupation and settlement, and dispossession of the Palestinian people of their inalienable rights.

Forms of struggle in the current stage: adopting the Fatah movement of all forms of legitimate struggle, with the option of adhering to peace, but not limited to negotiations to achieve it, and it is this struggle between the forms of exercise that can be successful at the current stage of negotiations for the assignment and activated or alternatively that it did not achieve its goals:

# The awakening of the popular struggle against the settlements and the contemporary model is successful in the continuing confrontation Naalin and Bil'in against the settlements and the wall, and to save Jerusalem and the refusal of judaizing. Our mobilization of all citizens to engage in their activities, and participation of Arab and foreign roots, and provide all the help from the organs of the Authority for the success, leadership and issue mobility and popular and official of the main events.

# Innovation of new forms of struggle and resistance over the initiatives of grass-roots initiatives and the cadres of the movement, and the design of our people's resilience and resistance, including guaranteed by international law.

The restoration of our relationship with the direct and powerful Israeli peace camp, and re-activate it to work for a just peace without mixing with the unacceptable policy of normalization under occupation.