Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

The West Bank distortions industry (Missing Peace)

Yesterday I noted a great article by Yochanan Visser and Sharon Shaked of Missing Peace in the Jerusalem Post debunking the PA's lies about water.

Today there's an even better article by Visser and Shaked in Israel Today that exposes the entire infrastructure of lies in the territories. Read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts:

[One] claim that originated from a Palestinian source involved the alleged destruction of 200 olive trees in the village Al Walaja near Bethlehem.

JAI, the Joint Advocacy Initiative, published a report about Na'el Khalid, a Palestinian farmer who claimed that 200 olive trees were destroyed when Israeli authorities started building the security fence on part of his land.

JAI also reported that Khalid would lose his land to Givat Ya'el - a planned Jewish community adjacent to Al Walaja.

We asked the IDF to comment on this report and received the following answer:

"In accordance with Israeli Supreme Court rulings regarding the rerouting of Israel's security fence, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) transplanted trees from Mr. Na'el Khalil's property to an adjacent plot, ensuring that he was able to continue working his land.

"The Israeli court authorities have previously denied several petitions seeking ownership of the land adjacent to the Palestinian village Al-Walajah by the Givat Ya'el community, a private building project in Judea."

A field investigation in Al Walaja where we visited Na'el Whalid's lands confirmed the IDF account of the situation.

And here is an interesting anecdote where Visser follows up on UNRWA claims:

The most shocking example of the distortions industry came from UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness during an interview with the Bethlehem-based Ma'an News Agency.

Reacting to this interview, and a related UNRWA press release, we asked Gunness for additional data and information on the topic of home demolitions.

UNRWA then sent us a report that only contained locations and dates of the West Bank demolitions.

When asked for additional information about the demolitions, such as court orders, Gunness became extremely agitated, used crude language and demanded immediate publication of "the facts."

Facts? Let’s examine this claim in the Ma'an interview:

"Many displacements are taking place where settlements are expanding and with it we are seeing an upturn in vicious attacks by Jewish settlers. Palestinians are being thrown off their ancestral lands to make way for settlers," Gunness told Ma'an.

This suggests two things: First, that settlements are still expanding outside their municipal boundaries, and second that Jews are supplanting Palestinian Arabs.

As Gunness knows very well, since 2005 settlement expansion has only taken place within the existing zoning lines of the municipal boundaries. No Palestinian Arabs have been kicked off their land to be replaced by Jews.

In fact, Gunness was referring here to Bedouins who are illegally squatting. An official with the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) told us that the Bedouin increasingly tend to camp in the vicinity of Jewish settlements and are often paid to do so by pro-Palestinian NGO's.

In the same Ma'an interview Gunness claimed the following:

"There is growing evidence that it (demolitions in Area C of the West Bank) is destroying the very fabric of these communities and ultimately contributing to a demographic shift which is changing the ethnic make-up of the West Bank."

This suggests a slow "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinian population on the West Bank.

Of course, Gunness is well aware of the fact that only 3% of the Palestinian population lives in Area C – most of them Bedouins, who mostly live in tents and are used to moving from place to place.

UNRWA's own census from 2007 shows an average population growth of the Palestinian population on the West Bank of 2.5 percent per year.

But there was more. In an e-mail to Missing Peace Gunness wrote the following:
"127 people expelled in Ma'aleh Nikhmas [sic] - displaced for settlement in the last few weeks. Is that enough?"

Really?

The 127 Palestinians expelled from Ma'aleh Michmas "for [Jewish] settlement" were in fact Bedouins who decided to leave, as his own UNRWA press release states.

There is no evidence that Ma'aleh Michmas residents took their place.

In fact, according to a report by the pro-Palestinian organization International Solidarity Movement, 16 Bedouin were evicted in the Ma'aleh Michmas area at the end of July.

This happened after they illegally camped within a closed military zone and received eviction orders two years ago.

By the way, for those coming from HuffPo, here's my comment about UNRWA that they didn't let me post.

Israel wooing Hollywood

From AP:

Israel is tired of Hollywood filming Jesus' crucifixion in Italy and the Crusader invasion of the Holy Land in Morocco.

So Israeli officials are promising better tax breaks, terror attack insurance and handouts of up to $400,000 to lure international movie producers to the holy city of Jerusalem. They want to cash in on the multibillion-dollar industry, and want the real Jerusalem on the silver screen — not Mediterranean stand-ins.

"It's absurd. Movies set in Jerusalem are filmed in Malta, Morocco and Greece," said Yoram Honig, an Israeli film director and 10th-generation Jerusalemite. He heads the Jerusalem Film Fund, which was set up three years ago to encourage more moviemaking in the city.

According to conventional wisdom in Hollywood, Jerusalem is too volatile to ensure smooth filming on location. International insurance companies have traditionally refused to provide terrorism risk coverage, or offered it at exorbitant prices.

For a long time, it didn't make financial sense for the producers. While Israel in the 1980s attracted such star-studded productions as Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo 3" and Chuck Norris' "The Delta Force," it later lost out to other countries that started giving big tax incentives to producers.

"If they think it's expensive and dangerous, they won't want to come," Honig said.

That's why the Israeli government enacted a law in 2008 offering tax breaks to foreign film companies that choose to shoot in Israel. And earlier this year Israel introduced an insurance fund to provide coverage to a production in case of disruptions by acts of war or terrorism, said Zafrir Asas, manager of audio visual industries in Israel's Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor.

...Part of the push to get Jerusalem into movie theaters is to present a more positive image of the city than the conflict seen in the news — "the Jerusalem that more than 3.5 billion people of faith around the world wish to see," said Stephan Miller, spokesman for Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

Honig said the municipal fund is close to signing a contract with a German producer to shoot a film about the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, which took place in Jerusalem in 1961. An Italian producer has also proposed filming a comedy in the city about an Italian nun who falls in love with an ultra-Orthodox Jew.

Other projects the film fund is courting include an Indian-Israeli romance, and "Jerusalem, I Love You," an installment of producer Emmanuel Benbihy's Cities of Love series. A delegation of Bollywood producers also recently visited the city to scout out filming opportunities. And a new animation studio in the city, Animation Lab, has courted Hollywood producers to work on its first feature film, "The Wild Bunch," slated for release in 2012.

But I thought the Jews/Zionists already owned Hollywood! It gets so confusing...

Reuters, BBC and the Guardian celebrate an anti-semite

From Reuters:

His cartoons are edgy, bold, and a thorn in the side of the Arab world's tottering authoritarians -- a gift to protesters from the unlikely setting of an apartment in beach-side Rio de Janeiro.

Carlos Latuff, a 42-year-old leftist whose only family link to the Middle East is a Lebanese grandfather he never knew, has become a hero of the tumultuous Arab Spring with rapid-fire satirical sketches that have helped inspire the uprisings.

All he has needed is his pen, a passion for the region's struggles and a Twitter account that he uses to send out his cartoons.

Reuters is aping earlier stories by the Guardian and the BBC praising Latuff.

Later on Reuters writes:

Latuff's foray into the divisive world of Middle Eastern politics has made him plenty of enemies as well as friends. His uncompromising work depicting Israeli army brutality toward Palestinians -- one cartoon compares soldiers with Nazi Germans -- has drawn allegations that he is anti-Semitic, a charge he strongly denies.

So according to Reuters the only thing he ever drew that was potentially anti-semitic was one single cartoon that compared Israel to Nazis (which is prima facie anti-semitic anyway.)

Yet his sickening comparison between Jewish soldiers and Nazis is an obsession with Latuff, a theme he has hammered home many times. There is no iconic representation of the Holocaust that he has not appropriated in his zeal to demonize the Jewish state.

Here are just some of his cartoons on that theme:

Beyond that, he has touched on some other anti-semitic themes:

The all powerful Jewish lobby, controlling the US.

"Edgy."

Classic Nazi motif of Jew-as-octopus

A modern version of the charge of deicide.

These is not merely "edgy" and "bold." This is hate speech. This is incitement. And this is anti-semitism.

Latuff's cartoons against Arab dictators do not go nearly as far as these do; their imagery is typically more abstract. Although they are pointed, there is no hate; they are more in line with typical political cartoons. No dead children, no Holocaust imagery, nothing close to the vitriol he reserves for the Jewish state:

The only people he ever compares to Nazis are, of course, Jews.

In addition, Latuff has cartoons that lionize terrorists and "armed resistance":

Is this someone who should be praised in the pages of the BBC, the Guardian and Reuters?

August rocket calendar

G=Grad
Q=Qassam
M=Mortar
P=Unidentified projectile (includes mortars)
R=Unidentified rocket
S=Fell short in Gaza
E=fell in Egypt
F=Fatality (Green-Gaza, Red-Israel)
[] - Palestinian claims

August 2011

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
	1 1Q	2	3 2G	4 1Q	5	6
7	8 3M	9	10	11	12	13
14 1Q	15 1G	16	17	18 4G	19 30R	20 64R F _F_
21 35R 5M 8RE 1GS	22 6Q 1G	23 [6M]	24 1RE 17R 2M	25 5R	26 2Q	27
28 1G 1Q	29 1Q	30	31 2Q

History is irrelevant: Why Palestinian Arabs can never accept a Jewish State

In the Palestine Papers we find that, already in 2007, the PLO created a memo to fight against the very concept of a Jewish state. It gives a number of reasons, but one stands out:

Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination. Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine.

Notice the cynicism on display by the PLO. The actual truth that there is a Jewish people is too inconvenient for them, because if there is a Jewish people then they have the right to self-determination, which conflicts with the Palestinian Arab version of history. So it is better to pretend that there is no such people.

Facts and history are thrown away so that the PLO can strengthen their supposed claims.

A recent article in the Institute for Palestine Studies by former PLO negotiator Ahmad Samih Khalidi takes an even more hardline approach to the topic, and is in some ways even more cynical. It is entitled "Why Can’t the Palestinians Recognize the Jewish State?"

[I]f Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, then the lands that it occupies today (and perhaps more, for there are as yet no borders to this “homeland”) belong to this people by way of right. And if these lands rightfully comprise the Jewish homeland, then the Arab presence there becomes historically aberrant and contingent; the Palestinians effectively become historic interlopers and trespassers—a transient presence on someone else’s national soil.

This is not a moot or exaggerated point. It touches on the very core of the conflict and its genesis. Indeed, it is the heart of the Zionist claim to Palestine: Palestine belongs to the Jews and their right to the land is antecedent and superior to that of the Arabs. This is what Zionism is all about, and what justifies both the Jewish return to the land and the dispossession of its Arab inhabitants.

Clearly, this is not the Palestinian Arab narrative, nor can it be. Palestinians do not believe that the historical Jewish presence in and connection to the land entail a superior claim to it. Palestine as our homeland was established in the course of over fifteen hundred years of continuous Arab-Muslim presence; it was only by superior force and colonial machination that we were eventually dispossessed of it. For us to adopt the Zionist narrative would mean that the homes that our forefathers built, the land that they tilled for centuries, and the sanctuaries they built and prayed at were not really ours at all, and that our defense of them was morally flawed and wrongful: we had no right to any of these to begin with.

The demand for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people has yet another dimension. It places the moral burden of the conflict on the Palestinians, and consequently, not only exonerates Israel from the dubious moral circumstances of its birth but makes the Palestinians the historical transgressors. Indeed, by refusing to accept the Jewish claim to the land, we are to blame for what has befallen us: had we accepted Israel’s claim during the Mandate years, the entire conflict could have been averted; we should simply have handed the land “back” to its rightful owners from the time that they began to articulate, at the dawn of the twentieth century, their interest in it as an actual—rather than spiritual—homeland. From this perspective, it is Arab rejection that caused the conflict and not the Zionist transgression against Arab land and rights. This is of course precisely why this Israeli government and its most ardent Zionist supporters want to wrest this recognition from the Palestinians, as it would absolve Israel of its “original sin” and delegitimize the Palestinians’ version of their own history.

Taking this reasoning to its logical (if extreme) conclusion, recognition would give Israel the right to demand a measure of retributive justice. If the Palestinians caused the conflict, they should pay for their “sins”: the Palestinian refugees should not be compensated for their dispossession, and the Palestinian people as a whole should lose any claim to equality or equivalence in any political settlement premised on supposedly painful or generous Israeli concessions.

In both these cases the arguments are simple: If the Jewish people have a right to self-determination in their historic homeland, then it places Palestinian Arabs at a political disadvantage. Therefore, they cannot accept it.

Even if it is true.

Facts are not the currency being traded here. History is optional and can be discarded when inconvenient. The overriding concern is not to find the truth, or even a way to reconcile two narratives - it is to utterly reject the ancient, unbroken Jewish claim to the Land of Israel, no matter what the truth is. And in both these examples, the reasons given are not because Palestinian Arabs have a superior claim to the land - it is because the [implicitly but clearly] superior, antecedent Jewish claim is incompatible with modern Palestinian Arab nationalistic goals.

In short, the truth is not in the Palestinian Arab interest, so it must be discarded.

(See also my 2011 essay on this PLO memo reproduced here.)

Overnight open thread

Blogging may be light Tuesday, as I will be busy during the time I usually write most of my posts.

So here's an open thread until I catch up.

Today's quiz

Arrange the following from highest to lowest values:

A. Number of Palestinian Arabs killed by Israel or Zionists since 1900
B. Number of Palestinian Arabs killed by non-Israelis since 1900
C. Number of Arabs killed by other Arabs in the Arab Spring in 2011

Answer after the jump.

What has Israel ever done for peace? (HonestReporting video)

Cute:

Hamas' cash problems continue

Ma'an Arabic has an article about how the Eid ul-Fitr holiday is not looking too happy for many Gazans, who are in much worse financial shape than they were for last year's Eid.

The reason? Hamas has not paid full salaries since July. And Gazans are worried that the money crunch will continue into the winter months.

There have been multiple reports that Hamas' financial crisis is a result of Iran's withholding cash from the group, because of Tehran's displeasure over Hamas not actively supporting the Syrian regime in murdering thousands. Iran is assumed to give Hamas the bulk of its $540 million budget.

While the media is reporting that the reason for the cutoff is Hamas' actions vis a vis Syria, but it is possible that Western economic sanctions against Iran have played a role as well. .

Any money Syria has been giving Hamas can also be assumed to have dried up, and it is entirely possible that Hamas' support for a truce with Israel even after its own members were targeted is due to their worries about the cost of another war:

Hamas chiefs did not plan or want this confrontation; not now. They were concerned about being blamed that they are pulling the rug from under Mahmoud Abbas ahead of the September independence bid. Moreover, the economic situation in Gaza is worsening. The government is having trouble paying salaries, with the amount of money pouring into the Strip at this time being a fraction of past fund transfers.

There is an important lesson here: terrorists cannot work without money, and their actions can be dictated more by monetary considerations than ideological ones.

The EU sanctions against purchasing Syrian oil are belated but welcome. And economic sanctions against Iran must be more drastic yet. Autocratic, terror supporting regimes are more concerned with staying in power than outsourcing terror.

Imagine the positive effect on Lebanon if Hezbollah loses all its Iranian cash as well! That can only happen if the cash to Iran is stopped, and that includes purchasing Iranian oil.

Money really does make the world go 'round, and the West is only slowly waking up to that.

PA hides mild "condemnation" of TA attack inside condemnation of Israel

You call this a condemnation?

. From WAFA Arabic:

The president condemned all attacks directed against civilians, including the incident that was committed in Tel Aviv early today.

The president stressed in a press statement that he condemns the Israeli attacks on Gaza, and the wave of raids and arrests carried out against our people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

He reaffirmed his intention to seek membership and recognition of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders and with Jerusalem as its capital in the United Nations.

He said that “no attempts to divert attention will stop us from achieving our goal.”

The vague condemnation of the attack in Tel Aviv took up about 10% of the statement. The rest was a clear condemnation of specific Israeli actions.

Stung by the fact that people noticed that there was no condemnation of the Eilat attacks by the PA, Abbas created the most offensive "condemnation" possible by showing that he has no moral objection to deliberate attacks on civilians by his own people, and his only issue with them are that such attacks might distract from his goal of building a state where the national heroes are Dalal Mughrabi, Samir Kuntar and Yahya Ayyash.

Will "diaspora Palestinians" automatically become citizens of "Palestine"?

There has been an internal Palestinian Arab controversy about whether a declaration of a state would disenfranchise those of Palestinian descent.

A lawyer who helped draft the original Palestinian Declaration of Independence, Francis Boyle, is peeved at Guy Goodwin-Gill, the lawyer who claims that there is a downside to the unilateral declaration stunt in September:

In the Nov. 15 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence that was approved by the Palestinian National Council, representing all Palestinians all over the world, the executive committee of the PLO was set up as the Provisional Government for the State of Palestine --pursuant to my advice.

In addition, the Declaration of Independence also provides that all Palestinians living around the world automatically become citizens of the State of Palestine -- pursuant to my advice. So the executive committee of the PLO in its capacity as the Provisional Government for the State of Palestine will continue to represent the interests of all Palestinians around the world when Palestine becomes a UN member state.

Hence all rights will be preserved: for all Palestinians and for the PLO. No one will be disenfranchised. The PLO will not lose its status. This legal arrangement does not violate the Palestinian Charter, but was approved already by the PNC.

Unfortunately, Oxford professor Guy Goodwill-Gill [sic] has circulated a memo full of distortions. It is based on many erroneous assumptions. This professor is not aware of all the legal and constitutional technicalities that were originally built into the Palestinian Declaration of Independence to make sure that his doomsday scenario does not materialize -- at my advice.

The "Declaration of Independence" is an amusing document, filled with both lies about history and lies about the present, one that simultaneously praises terrorism while claiming to declare a peaceful state. The relevant section about citizenship seems to be this:

The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be. The state is for them to enjoy in it their collective national and cultural identity, theirs to pursue in it a complete equality of rights.

If this 1988 document is indeed the operative legal declaration of independence for "Palestine" then the "State of Palestine" can never be a democracy. Fair elections cannot be done when most of the citizens live outside the "nation" they are citizens of.

Moreover, having them become citizens means that the government cannot stop them from flooding into Ramallah to demand their rights to live in their country immediately. And there is no doubt that tens of thousand would want to do exactly that.

Boyle goes on to say that the PLO is actually the government of "Palestine" and not the pseudo-democratically elected PA. The West can wave good bye to their appointed darling, Salam Fayyad, who has no place in Boyle's (or anyone's) conception of "Palestine."

Boyle, of course, fails to mention that the PLO has done nothing for more than half its constituents, quite happy to let them rot as stateless second-class members of Arab countries. The PLO has roundly ignored the wishes of Palestinian Arabs who are sick of being treated like pawns for the singular purpose of pressuring Israel.

The entire September stunt is not good for Israel, but it can easily become a disaster for "Palestine" and possibly the entire Middle East as the millions who have been cowed into silence for decades start to believe they have a say in their own futures.

Syria attacks a Damascus mosque, imam

From BBC:

Syrian security forces have attacked protesters at a mosque in the capital, Damascus, activists say.

Security officials stormed the al-Rifai mosque in the Kafar Susseh district, the activists said, reportedly wounding the mosque's imam.

Unconfirmed reports say at least one person was killed in clashes with troops on Saturday.

The UN says more than 2,000 people have been killed since protests against Syria's president began in March.

A video shot at the mosque shows protesters chanting "the people demand an end to the regime", and calling for the execution of President Bashar al-Assad.

As security forces stormed the mosque, protesters tried to barricade themselves in with bookcases and shoe racks, reports say.

The imam, Osama al-Rifai, who is in his 80s, is said to have been beaten up.

Where are the mass protests in public squares of Arab countries?

Derfner fired from JPost, and pretends to be a martyr

And he remains clueless as to what he said that was wrong, instead lashing out at his seeming oppressors:

I got fired by The Jerusalem Post today. The paper got hundreds of notices of cancellations of subscription after my blog post (“The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror”) of Sunday last week; the reason being given for my firing, though, is the substance of the essay, despite the apology I published later. A page-one notice to this effect will be published in the Post tomorrow.

My apology was to have run in the Post yesterday, but a logistical mix-up prevented it. Today the paper ran a column by Isi Liebler titled “Justifying murder – an abomination,” which, like nearly all of the right-wing websites attacking my original essay (I took it down from my blog upon publishing the apology), it gives extremely short shrift to all the things I wrote that show my intent was not to encourage terror, but the opposite.

As I noted when he apologized, no one is saying that he supports or encourages terror. What he was doing, explicitly, was justifying it. And from what he has written, it seems that he truly believes that attacking civilians is a "right" even if he personally believes it is wrong.

That is what is offensive. His inability to realize that would be comical if it wasn't so sad.

Instead, he goes into martyr mode:

What bothers me most is not that I got fired, but that I’m not being given the opportunity to fill in the picture that’s been so distorted in today’s Post column and in right-wing Web commentaries. The parts of the picture being obscured or outright hidden would show that while I misspoke myself harmfully, my intent was not to support, endorse, advocate, encourage or call for terror against Israelis, but to end it. This intent was clear not only in my apology, but in my original essay. By skewing my words so badly, today’s Post column, the Web commentaries and Post publishes on page one tomorrow portray a writer announcing that he wants Israelis to get killed, instead of one who’s trying to stop that from happening.

I didn't read most of the other critiques of Derfner but I did not see any that claimed that Derfner personally wants Israelis to be killed. I am certain that my original denunciation of his essay was not predicated on the idea that he supports terror. And nothing he has written since disproves anything I wrote about his original essay - that he believes that Palestinian Arabs have a "right" to attack and kill Jews, and he cannot find a single ethical problem with Palestinian Arab terrorism, even if he personally doesn't approve of it.

(h/t CHA, Zach N)

Palestinian Arabs again rejoice at terror attack in name of Allah

Early this morning a Palestinian Arab man was stopped by Tel Aviv police from his plans to murder as many teenagers as he could find in a party at a nightclub. He still managed to stab eight people, one in serious condition.

It is clear that the terrorist, yelling "Allah hu Akbar," knew about the party and his intent was to kill as many of the youth there as he could find.

Which makes him a hero to Palestinian Arabs.

The Fatah-leaning Palestine Today has three comments on the story. Autotranslation of comments is often obscure, but the happiness is obvious:

Allah hu Akbar - Lord every day we hear news of Avatar Halnoa [?] be in the death of Jews and loyal to them

Victory for Men - God is great and the victory of Islam, here they are men of God lifting his registration and under Jmaaag captives, O Lord

You are handed your right hand and hit the collecting -Army man will not fail to see our mothers for giving birth to welding heroes

Notice how every comment uses religious imagery to justify an attack on Jews.

The PalDF message board is similarly filled with praise and happiness. The fact that the assailant yelled "Allah hu Akbar" is especially endearing to that crowd.

Once again, it is not possible to find a single dissenting opinion in the PalArabic media or comments about a terrorist attack aimed at innocent civilians. We are always told about how much Palestinian Arabs want peace and are against terrorism, yet apparently not a single one feels strongly enough about it to actually state that opinion online in reaction to attacks like these. (General Arab reaction is mostly positive but not quite as unanimous as Palestinian Arab reaction.)

Please, if you can find any counter examples, let me know - I will be happy to correct this post.

No doubt these Jihad lovers will be magically transformed into peace loving secular democrats by the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state.

The PA's water lies debunked (JPost)

A very important article in JPost exposes the depth of the PA's lies to the international community regarding their oft-stated claim the Israel "steals" their water:

On June 15, 2011 The Jerusalem Post published an article about the Palestinian water crisis, written by the head of the Palestinian Water Authority, Dr. Shaddad Atilli.

In his article, Atilli wrote that Israel’s ‘discriminatory policies’ are to blame for the lack of water in Palestinian society. He claimed that Israel uses the Joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC) to veto and delay Palestinian water projects. He also wrote that Israel illegally exploits 90% of the shared water sources.

Furthermore, he claimed that because of the Israeli theft of water and the destruction of water wells and treatment plants, people realize that the two-state solution is rapidly fading.

His libelous article, full of distortions, outright lies and false accusations, was yet another proof of the PA’s intransigence.

Recently our organization, Missing Peace, obtained authentic papers documenting meetings of the Joint Israeli Palestinian Water Committee (JWC), and correspondence between Colonel Avi Shalev, head of the International relations branch of COGAT, and Dr.Atilli. These documents paint an entirely different picture.

Contrary to Atilli’s outrageous accusations, the Palestinian Authority has been sabotaging the two-state solution by preventing the development of an independent water infrastructure for the future Palestinian state.

Since 2000 the PWA submitted 76 requests for permits to the office of the Civil Administration.

Subsequently 73 permits were issued by ICA and three denied because there was no master plan.

In a letter of June 8 2009, Shalev responded to Atilli’s complaint that ICA did not honor a PWA request to issue 12 of these permits. Shalev wrote that these permits had already been issued in 2001, and that ICA wondered why the PWA did not execute these projects.

Another 44 JWC-approved projects, the majority in Areas A and B, like the construction of a waste water treatment plant (WWTP) in Jenin that received approval in 2008 - have not been implemented. The German government even withdraw a plan to build a WWTP in Tulkarm when it concluded that the PWA could not handle the project.

When, back in November 2009, the PWA complained about a lack of funds, the Israeli government offered to finance water projects for Palestinian communities. The PA has yet to respond to this offer.

...The PWA did not implement projects in the Eastern aquifer that would have solved much of the Palestinian water crisis. More than half of the wells approved for exploitation of the Eastern aquifer have still not been drilled. The permits were issued in 2000.

In a letter written on April 4, 2001, the civil administration urged the PWA to execute these projects. A letter from June 8 2009 repeated that request.

Atilli also lied about Palestinian water consumption. In the JPost article he claimed that Palestinians are ‘limited to an average of just 60 liters.’ However, in 2009 his own PWA published a report that mentioned an average supply of 110 liters per capita per day.

Atilli’s level of chutzpa is best shown by his third claim, about Israel stealing water and destroying Palestinian water projects. In fact, Palestinians steal millions of cubic meters of water per year by drilling illegal holes into the water pipes of the Israeli water provider Mekorot. The Civil Authority fixes 600 of these illegal taps each year.

Furthermore, since 2008 Israel has asked the PA to re-establish the joint JSET water patrols that fought water theft before the El Aksa intifada.

The PA has refused.

Another reason for the loss of water is the poor maintenance of the Palestinian water infrastructure. A staggering 33% of the fresh water supply gets lost because of leaks, theft and poor maintenance.

Other documents provided solid evidence that the closing of 250 illegal wells was agreed upon in the JWC meetings. For example, minutes of the JWC meeting on November 13, 2007 show a consensus decision to destroy ‘illegal drillings and connections.’ Nevertheless, Atilli acted as if he never attended these meetings or co-signed the joint decisions.

He even had the gall to write urgent appeals to the international community as soon as ICA, after numerous appeals to the PWA to follow up on the agreed closure of illegal wells, finally closed those wells....

Read the whole thing.

The Dutch-language Missing Peace site is a fantastic resource for source materials that debunk Palestinian Arab claims and dig up the truth about the Middle East.

(h/t Yerushalimey)