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PA: Intifada Was Planned
Stewart Ain - Staff Writer
Masked Palestinains in Old City hurl rocks at Israelis, part of what the Palestinians now say is planned violence.    RNS-Reuters

Israelis are telling the international commission investigating the renewed intifada that the rioting was orchestrated by the Palestinians to win back international support after Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s generous concessions at the Camp David summit in July.

Israeli representatives have made that assertion here repeatedly in recent weeks. Among them is Major Gen. Giora Eiland, head of operations of the Israel Defense Forces, who told a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that the rioting was a “deliberate Palestinian answer to the proposals” Barak put forth at Camp David.

The Palestinian minister of communications, Imad Al Falouji, confirmed as much at a symposium of journalists in Gaza on Dec. 5. According to the daily Al Iyyam, he said the Palestinian Authority began preparing for the outbreak of violence the moment Yasir Arafat returned from Camp David — at the explicit direction of Arafat himself. He said the Palestinian leader saw the eruption of violence as a consolidation of the “firm Palestinian stand” in negotiations with Israel and not simply to protest Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon’s Sept. 28 visit to the Temple Mount. The Palestinians had claimed that the violence was a spontaneous response to the visit.

Israelis monitoring the Palestinian media also report that Palestinians now acknowledge the intifada was a carefully planned effort to achieve Israeli withdrawal and Palestinian statehood.

The five-member international commission, chaired by former Sen. George Mitchell, has already met with Arafat and Barak and is expected to spend most of its time in Washington reviewing written material submitted by both sides. Israelis insist the commission is not an independent fact-finding body, as the Palestinians wanted, but rather one with a limited mandate. That prevents it from conducting spot interviews on the ground or any interviews without both sides knowing. It is expected to issue its findings in March.

Eiland said Arafat “understood he couldn’t get in negotiations more than what had been offered to him [at Camp David], and he couldn’t accept it even though the differences were very small. He thought that by violence he would get international involvement in the situation … and that this solution would be better for the Palestinians than what they could get by direct negotiation. He also thought that by violence he could change Israeli public opinion. He saw [Israel’s] unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and thought Israel might adopt the same model and withdraw from the Gaza Strip.”

Arye Mekel, director of the Information Center at the Israeli Consulate General in New York, told an Israeli economic conference here last week that even though Barak agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state and the return of a vast majority of the West Bank to the Palestinians, Arafat balked.

“He doesn’t want a Palestinian state as a gift,” said Mekel. “He wants to win it in a war of liberation. He wants to go down in history as a freedom fighter and not as the guy who sold out to the Jews and the Americans. He believes he can get the advantage in the media by using kids [as martyrs] and in trying to get UN observers to internationalize the conflict.”

Mekel stressed that Israel “won’t allow him to carry out his scheme. We believe in the negotiating table. The next prime minister will still work for peace and not allow violence to be the determining factor.”

Eiland agreed that Israel would not bow to terrorism or international pressure and “make compromises on things that only five months ago our prime minister said were vital areas. We are not going to say that since the Palestinians chose violence, our only response would be to use force to destroy their ability as a political entity. We do not want even a limited war with the Palestinians. We want to show the Palestinians that they suffer more than us and that by force they gain nothing.”

Lt. Col Erez Winner, commander of the 600 Israeli troops stationed at the outskirts of Ramallah, said during an interview at a Friends of the IDF concert on Long Island that blame for the violence lay squarely with the Palestinian Authority.

“Not only did it not prevent the violence but it actually encouraged people to continue doing things that in their minds would serve their cause,” he said. “All of the riots—the Palestinian demonstrations, the hundreds and thousands of rocks and Molotov cocktails thrown and guns fired – came from Palestinian areas in big cities, from places that are 100 percent under the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority encourages people to go out and cause trouble.”

Winner pointed out that during the first four days of the violence, Israel did nothing to stop Palestinian movement, including allowing Palestinians to go to their jobs in Israel. But on the fifth day of the violence, Israel closed the Gaza Strip after learning that the Palestinian Authority had released 80 terrorists from their jails who had been involved “in some of the most awful terrorist attacks in Israel. So we had to restrain Palestinians from entering Israel [to keep out these terrorists].”

Winner said he promised Mary Robinson, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights, that the closure would end as soon as the Palestinian Authority rearrested the 80 terrorists.

“She said the proposal was not fair because I was asking the Palestinians to make the first move,” he said. “I said I thought it was a generous proposal. … The Palestinian Authority tries to get all of the privileges of a state, but behaves like a bunch of people who are not responsible for anything. We have clear evidence that this situation was directed from the top to the bottom.”

The Palestinian Authority has told the commission that Israeli forces have used excessive force in combating the violence, a charge Winner heatedly denied, asserting that at least 95 percent of the more than 4,000 shooting incidents over the last 10 weeks were initiated by Palestinians.



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