Posted on 04/17/2006 5:48:50 AM PDT by SJackson
Last Thursday morning Palestinian police found the burned body of Muhammad Abu al-Hawa in his torched car in Jericho. He had been shot seven times in the head and chest, and according to the Jerusalem Post’s intrepid Abu Khaled Toameh had been “brutally tortured before his car was set on fire.” In Haaretz’s version, he had been “beaten around the head” before being killed.
Al-Hawa, a father of eight from the Arab A-Tur neighborhood on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, had been accused of something that has long been a capital offense in the Palestinian Authority—selling a residence, in this case his four-story apartment building, to Jews. Taking the claim for the impromptu “justice” were gunmen from Fatah—or more specifically, in ynet’s variant of the story, members of the Fatah offshoot Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. It is not clear whether they abducted al-Hawa to Jericho or found him there. As Toameh explains, “In 1995, the Palestinian Legislative Council voted unanimously in favor of the death sentence for land brokers who sell land to Jews.” That same year “the PA mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikremah Sabri, announced a fatwa . . . authorizing the killing of any Arab who sells property to Jews. The fatwa also forbids Muslims from burying the perpetrators in Muslim cemeteries.” In 1996, Toameh continues, “at least seven Arabs were kidnapped and murdered on suspicion that they had been involved in real estate transactions with Jews.” In a follow-up report published on Sunday, Toameh writes that “dozens of suspected [PA] land dealers have been murdered over the past years after being accused of [that same transgression].” In al-Hawa’s case, he was thought to have sold his building in A-Tur to Elad, a nonprofit organization that buys East Jerusalem homes for Jewish families and companies. Elad recently bought two other A-Tur residences from Arabs as well. The Mount of Olives, where A-Tur is located, is the site of a Jewish cemetery going back to ancient times and overlooks the Temple Mount and the Old City of Jerusalem. Although even the left-wing Haaretz reports that “police officials say the buildings were purchased legally and there was no legal obstruction to their occupation,” the local Arabs’ reaction to Jews moving into the neighborhood has not been positive. “Over the past few weeks,” Toameh relates, “residents have clashed repeatedly with the police and members of a private security firm hired to guard the apartments. . . . Earlier this month, dozens of protesters torched a restaurant owned by a member of the [al-Hawa] clan in the neighborhood.” Toameh also notes that “immediately after the deal became public, some members of the Abu al-Hawa clan were either kidnapped or summoned by PA security forces to Ramallah and Jericho for questioning,” while in Haaretz’s telling it was Muhammad Abu al-Hawa himself who was “abducted to Ramallah for questioning by Palestinian security forces.” Some reports also say al-Hawa claimed he was hoodwinked into the sale by Arab businessmen and did not know the real buyers were Jews. The family published ads to this effect in Arab newspapers in an effort to “clear” their name. It didn’t help. Toameh’s follow-up article, “Neighbors block burial of man killed for selling home to Jews,” informs us that on Friday morning A-Tur residents—consistent with Sheikh Ikremah Sabri’s fatwa—“prevented the burial of Muhammad Abu al-Hawa . . . in a local cemetery. The victim’s family was eventually forced to bury him in a makeshift cemetery on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.” Notable in this story is the absence of any involvement—except possibly in the interrogation in Ramallah or Jericho of Abu al-Hawa and/or his relatives—by Hamas. The law forbidding land sales to Jews on pain of death was ratified back in 1995 when the PA was thoroughly under Fatah rule and a Hamas takeover still seemed a fantasy. Sheikh Ikremah Sabri is not affiliated with Hamas but with the older, pre-Hamas PA. The murders of PA Arabs accused of real estate transactions with Jews began in 1996. The gunmen who tortured, shot, and burned Muhammad Abu al-Hawa last week were from Fatah. The A-Tur residents who torched a restaurant and later blocked his burial had no particular Hamas connection. The Bush and Olmert administrations’ approach to newly-elected Hamas is to try to starve it of funds and pressure it to collapse—on the assumption that the PA’s reversion to rule by Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah would usher in modesty and chances of peace. Although Hamas is indeed more unified, energetic, arguably more fanatic, and hence probably even more dangerous than Fatah, exaggerating the difference between the two is another way of denying the basically xenophobic, pathological nature of the Palestinian Authority and of Muslim-Arab society in general.
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How will the MSM spin this as a he got what he deserved story??? OK, maybe they will just ignore it.
When news goes against the agenda it is non-news and is not reported. Sand-Nazi's and Paper-Nazi's must band together in the effort to cleanse the world of Jews...
This shows how blind the Israelis were to the Palestinian intentions as far back as 1995. If they were really part of a peace process would they have been murdering their own people for dealing with Jews? Well this does not look good. Arabs kill people willing to live with Jews and Jews beat their own people who want to live in disputed land. Guess who is going to wind up with that land with those forces at work? By the way the nastiness won't stop at the green line.
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