Letter From Bethlehem

I never wanted to lose hope of peace and reconciliation. I was always afraid that the day would come when this hope would disappear. I always pray and try to push this fear to the back of my mind thinking that the Israelis would come to terms with the fact that the Palestinians want to live in dignity and freedom, and that they can’t continue to deny that with their lies. But for the past five days, the Israeli tanks and bulldozers have been roaming freely in the streets of Bethlehem, shooting and killing the Palestinians left and right, not caring about being condemned. They know very well that they can get away with murder, as usual.

One of my students called me on Friday, right after the assassination of one of her relatives, and said, “What you are teaching us of love and forgiveness is not convincing anymore. How can you ask us to love our “enemy” when they are shooting and hunting us like animals? I feel so angry and frustrated. Five members of our [extended] family were shot and killed in three days. I hate them.” I found no words and I felt helpless. What can I tell this 18-year-old student? How can I calm her down under the circumstances? We, the Palestinian teachers, do not teach hatred of Jews, they teach it to us because of their actions against civilians. Every time I talk to a foreign audience about the Palestinian struggle, the Palestinians are accused of teaching hatred against the Jews. The ugly crimes against the Palestinians breed retaliation. I don’t know why the Israeli people don’t yet understand that. I thought they were smarter than that. Israeli right-winged fundamentalists scream and demand more severe actions against Palestinians to teach them a lesson. Don’t they know that people fight back when they are cornered? Don’t they know that they used their power and control to impose their demands on others to get what they want? Do they think that the world revolves around their fingertips and gives them what they want without any consideration to other human beings? So many questions that are left unanswered hover in my head, but the strongest question is WHY?

A mother was shot and killed while running away with her children from Beit Jala to her parents’ house in Bethlehem. She thought it was safer for her kids to be there. The Israeli sniper shot her in the neck killing her on the spot. Then two teenage boys, one of 16 years of age in the Nativity Square going home from church. The other of 19 in his own home in Beit Jala while he was trying to get a blanket for his younger brother from the second floor of the house. Another mother of six was killed in her own home in Aida Refugee camp, and another pregnant woman going from a nearby village to the hospital in Bethlehem to deliver her baby; the Israeli soldiers refused to let her go, so she died together with her unborn child. And the list gets longer and longer with every passing day, and the fear of being shot at by snipers is growing, to an extent that we don’t even go near our own windows or doors.

Tonight, Monday 22nd, the Holy Family Maternity Hospital was bombed and shelled and the doctors and staff hurried to remove the newborn babies to a safer place. Are those little ones terrorists too? Or does their God justify the killing of innocent people? I wonder!

I am tired of trying to convince the foreign public of our cause and defending our struggle against the occupation. How can anybody believe our struggle as legitimate when they are poisoned and brainwashed by the Israeli lies? This land belonged to the Jews three thousand years ago and now they have the right of return. The Israelis try hard to prove that they were here first, and we, the Palestinians, have no right to share this land. It’s OK for them to shoot, kill, confiscate, demolish and assassinate in the name of survival and security, and our fight of survival is called “terrorism”. When will they acknowledge the fact that they won’t have their security as long as we are oppressed. I don’t agree with violence, don’t misunderstand me, but every country had to fight for freedom, all you have to do is read the history of the different countries to realize what I’m talking about. Why can’t we fight to get our freedom when the so-called peace talks were given a chance many times but to no avail? I truly believe that the present Israeli government does not want any peace with the Palestinians and they come up with the different excuses every time we come close to an agreement.

'They're shooting to kill, regardless of the target'

Doctors struggle to cope with the victims of Israel's bloody assault on the West Bank in pursuit of 'terrorists'

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor, in Beit Rima
Sunday October 28, 2001
The Observer

He was at his checkpoint under an olive tree, at the entrance to the West Bank village of Beit Rima, when the Israeli soldiers ambushed and killed him. Kamal Barghouti was not on any list of terrorists wanted by Israel forces. In all likelihood he was sleeping. They killed him just for being in their way.

Kamal was a handsome 20-year-old before a bullet wrecked his face. An agricultural labourer in need of money, who worked among the olive groves that ring Beit Rima, he had signed on two months earlier as a 'soldier' in the National Security force of the Palestinian Authority, to earn a regular wage.

The work they gave him was a 'beginner soldier's job', said his sister Wafiyeh, speaking a few hours before his burial - one of five victims of last week's brutal Israeli raid on Beit Rima.

They gave him a uniform and a gun - a big deal for a poorly educated young man in the villages of the West Bank. They told him to check the cars that came into the village. That was Kamal's death sentence.

On Tuesday, the night before he died, he had a shower and dinner in the pretty, old stone house his parents own in the village next to the cemetery where he was later to be buried with full military honours.

He spoke then of his fears of being a soldier amid the cycle of retributive violence that has followed the assassination of the racist Israeli Cabinet Minister Rehavam Ze'evi and claimed dozens of Palestinian lives.

'He asked us, "If I die, will you remember me and love me still?",' said his sister tearfully. His family will remember him. But the men who killed him did not even know his name.

They arrived at his checkpoint under the olive tree in a van in the early hours of Wednesday. According to his commander, Colonel Kamal Khadami, the van was packed with a small unit of plainclothes Israeli troops from the elite Dov Dovan - Cherry Brigade - disguised as Palestinians.

They fired without warning, killing Kamal in one of the first bursts. Moments later a second undercover unit attacked Beit Rima's police station.

Taking their cue from their colleagues firing down the road, they burst into the police post shouting 'What's happening?' in Arabic before they too opened fire.

In the gun battle that followed, at least five men - by the Israeli account - were killed. The Palestinians claim up to nine may have died. They say some of the dead are 'missing'.

One thing seems certain. The Palestinian account of a lethal ambush on Beit Rima, launched without warning by a massively superior force equipped with tanks, helicopters and elite combat troops against half a dozen men, is given credence by the stories of the assault troops of the Nahal Brigade who attacked them.

We met them at dusk on Wednesday walking out of the village, two lines of young Israeli soldiers, heavily armed, their faces blacked up for night fighting. Reaching the Israeli checkpoint that blocked the entry of reporters into the village, they hugged and cheered each other.

What had they done, we asked? 'We killed some Arab terrorists,' the young men replied. It was, they told us, an 'easy operation' despite some Israeli injuries. Combat, they added, had been short - resistance light after the first assault by the undercover soldiers. This contradicted the claims of army spokesmen that the 'gunmen' had been killed during 'fierce fighting'.

Was the fighting fierce, we asked? They laughed and shook their heads. It was not fierce, say Palestinians, because some of those who died - like Kamal - were executed as they slept.

This is a view endorsed by Dr Bassem Rimawi, who said he was escorted by Israeli soldiers to inspect some of the dead and wounded five hours after the raid. 'This man was lying right next to his bed under the tree. It was obvious he was shot dead in his bed and fell as he was dying.'

And we had seen one of the 'terrorists' arrested in the operation a few moments before meeting the young soldiers on the road, among another crowd of soldiers who had already come out of the village - older and tougher-looking men, equipped with sniper rifles, night vision goggles and hand-held rockets.

We were instructed not to take any pictures and we watched as a slight man in a striped shirt with hunched and frightened shoulders was led from one of their armoured trucks, his hands bound tightly behind him, a bag over his head. He stood there for a minute, before a sea of khaki bodies crowded round and blocked our view.

The raid on Beit Rima has been portrayed by senior Israeli officials and by politicians as an arrest operation to find the killers of Israel's ultra-right-wing Tourism Minister, assassinated on 17 October by gunmen of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

It is a village, say officers of the intelligence agency Shin Bet, that was 'a viper's nest crawling with major terrorists'. Israel's Defence Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, was even more forthright: 'We are talking about a very large concentration of murderers and very dangerous terrorists. We arrested close to 11 people including the murderer's brother.'

The version of events that is beginning to emerge is bothering some even in the Israeli media. The details of the raid on Beit Rima do not stack up. Indeed, according to Ha'aretz, the raid on Beit Rima was planned two weeks before Ze'evi's killing.

It is true that the flag of the PFLP was flying in Beit Rima on Thursday during the funerals of some of those who died. It is also true that suspected 'terrorists' have families here, among them the mother, brother and sisters of Bilal and Abdullah, whose family name is also Barghouti. Both were active in Hamas, according to their neighbours.

It is also true that the brother of the alleged killer of Ze'evi lived in the village. The brother. Not the killer.

The last issue aside, however, the same could be said of most larger Palestinian villages and towns, radicalised by decades of occupation. All have their men from the PFLP, from Hamas and the Tanzim. There can be few without brothers, mothers or cousins.

Instead, it seems what marked out Beit Rima for last week's military action was what marked it out for attention in the first place - a geographical peculiarity. Surrounded by the huge Israeli settlements around Halamish to the west, it is a village easily cut off at the end of a solitary road.

The suspicion that is emerging is that Beit Rima was selected for no other reason than it was an easy target for Israeli forces to make a lethal demonstration. Next time - the warning is explicit - it will be the Palestinian state, not just a village, which will be the target.

For while the soldiers did not catch Bilal or Abdullah, whose organisation, in any case, has not been linked to Ze'evi's killing - they took some men whose links to Ze'evi's death may be tenuous at least. What they did do was force their way into the homes of three families with links to suspected terrorists. Once in the houses they destroyed them.

Among the houses demolished was that of Bilal and Abdullah's Barghouti's widowed mother, Hana. We found her with her daughters and her neighbours sitting beneath an olive tree outside the collapsed wreckage of her home, one of three demolished by Israeli soldiers.

'They came to the house at 5am,' she told us. 'They ordered us out of our house and brought dogs to search it. They found nothing. They made us sit on the steps for eight hours, while they rested in our house and ate our food. Before they left they blew up my home.

'I was a rich woman,' she added, close to tears. 'Now I have nothing.'

In nine days of military operations, since Ze'evi's death, against six Palestinian cities - and Beit Rima - Israeli politicians and senior army officers have been crowing over their success. Thirty people have been killed, they claim - 40 by the reckoning of others. The majority of them, they say, were 'terrorists'. Among those 'terrorists' have been at least 16 unarmed civilians - including four women and five children.

And it is not only the dead and injured who are victims. For if it is enough for Hana Barghouti to be punished as a proxy for her Hamas sons, it is sufficient simply to be a Palestinian to share in the punishment for what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decreed as the collective guilt for Ze'evi's killing.

The military operations against six Palestinian cities in the past week became a vast reprisal raid against the entire Palestinian people.

In Ramallah and in Bethlehem, in Tulkarm, Jenin, Kalkilya and Beit Rima, it is ordinary civilians who are being given a brutal lesson in the exigencies of the overwhelming nature of Israeli military power and being punished simply for existing.

Last Monday in the El Bireh suburb of Ramallah, the centre of the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, we watched Israel's soldiers at work.

Tanks and armoured personnel carriers tore up and down the road, intimidating the local population, their crews seizing the keys of drivers foolish enough to go out on the road.

Occasionally a Palestinian gunman would fire a pointless burst of shots from a long distance. In reply Israeli tanks used shells and heavy cannon fire against surrounding buildings.

Ha'aretz 's courageous Palestinian affairs correspondent, Amira Hass, who lives in El Bireh, recorded this exchange from an Israeli tank as they met a group of residents examining a broken water pipe by a demolished building.

'Break up this demonstration,' ordered one soldier in the tank. 'Throw a stun grenade,' urged another. They were the same men, I suspect, in the same tank, who made as if to crush The Observer's car beneath their tracks during an interview with a similarly terrified group of local people a little later.

But for all the firing and intimidation in El Bireh, it has been a picnic compared with the violence in Bethlehem, reputed birthplace of Jesus, and one of Christianity's most holy sites.

At Beit Jala hospital on the outskirts of Bethlehem, I met Dr Peter Qumri, the hospital's director. On our first meeting, three days into the fighting, he appeared exhausted, blinking haphazardly with darkened eyes. He said he had been sleeping with his head on his desk. His surgeons had been sleeping on chairs next to the emergency theatre.

Qumri listed the fatalities brought in. They were all killed, he said, by shots to the head, the neck and chest.

'They are shooting to kill,' he said, 'regardless of whether they can identify the target.'

We met again last Wednesday. A lull in the fighting had allowed him to dash to his home a kilometre away to grab a shower and clean clothes. He showed us around the hospital, pointing out the walls where two Israeli tank shells had exploded; a bullet-shattered window on an upper floor.

On this occasion he took us to meet Amjad Balawi, one of his young staff, an anaesthetic technician shot in the leg last week during heavy fighting when, he said, Israeli tanks fired in the direction of the hospital itself.

Balawi was going to the assistance of a patient shot - and killed - by a bullet through the chest the moment he left the hospital compound as Israeli tanks were fighting in the street outside.

He was close to tears as they changed the dressing. The bullet destroyed seven centimetres of bone. He may not have known it yet, but he will be crippled.

'I was walking from the residential block next door,' he says. 'I was wearing my uniform. My white coat. I decided to walk round the front, down the main road, about 50 yards, as there was no firing. I had just come through the main entrance of the hospital when I heard a shot and heard a man shout for help. He had been shot through the chest as I stepped across to help him I felt the bullet hit my leg.'

Balawi was not alone among his staff in being injured.

The previous day a doctor who volunteered to go with a UN ambulance to evacuate the wounded from Ayda refugee camp near Rachel's Tomb also came under what he said was Israeli fire, being shot through a borrowed bullet-proof jacket and wounded in the side.

Qumri took us next to the children's ward. The night before there had been 14 children sleeping in the corridor. But with the fighting so bad, their mothers took them, untreated, back home.

The only children who remained were three suffering from leukaemia. Among them was Rariman Maswadeh and her three-year-old son Mohannand. Rariman had arrived that day with her child for chemotherapy at the only haematologyunit in the southern West Bank. Unable to get Israeli health insurance, taking a taxi into a city under fire was her only option.

'I had a choice,' she said. 'I could stay at home in Hebron and my son would miss his treatment or I could risk being shot bringing him here. I had no choice and so I came.' Qumri looked exasperated and I recalled a conversation we had nearly two weeks earlier at our first meeting.

'I don't know what they are doing,' he said then. 'Is it just to punish the people of Bethlehem as a whole? Or do they have something else in mind? Do they want to have Bethlehem back and turn it into part of their metropolitan Jerusalem?'

The "75 year old Israeli cabinet minister" was a hard-line right-winger who called for the mass depoirtation of Palestinains, whom he termed "lice" and a "cancer" to be cut out.

Here is what your Imams and Muftis like to spout. Yet they never get gunned down.

Islam's War Against the Jews: Quotes from the Palestinian Authority

By: Itamar Marcus

Throughout history, religious wars have been fought in the name of different gods. The premise of the Oslo Accords was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not an irreconcilable religious war, but one over borders. However, the Palestinian religious leaders, all appointees of the PA political leadership, are publicly preaching that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is part of Islam's eternal religious war against the Jews. Jews are portrayed as the eternal enemies of Allah, and the killing of Jews as Allah's will. On the national level, Allah prohibits acceptance of Israel's existence and will destroy it.

This ideology is preached in sermons and religious lessons that are broadcast every Friday on official Palestinian TV and radio, and from the religious lessons appearing in PA newspapers and children's textbooks.

The Palestinians have redefined the conflict from one over borders, in which compromise may be a solution, into a religious war in which compromise is heretical. The implications for future peace are ominous.

This report is not brought as a critique of Islam's religious traditions, nor does it claim to represent authentic Islam. Rather it demonstrates the way Palestinian Authority religious leaders are selecting, interpreting and teaching Islam. Although Islam has positive references and traditions regarding Jews, the PA religious leaders have chosen to cite only negative references in their religious teaching, using the traditional sources to justify and even to demand uncompromising hatred of Jews and Israel.

The religious ideology of the Palestinian Authority religious leaders can be summarized by eight essential principles:

Regarding the Jews:

Jews are the enemy of Allah.

Islam is fighting a continuous religious war against the Jews.

The killing of Jews is a religious obligation.

Palestinians are the vanguard in this war against the Jews, and all Islamic nations are obligated to assist in this war.

Regarding Israel:

- All of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (which includes all of Israel) is a religious Waqf -- an Islamic religious trust. Any Moslem who relinquishes any part to Israel is damned to Hell.

- All agreements with Israel are inherently temporary in nature, and are signed only because of Israel's temporary balance of power advantage.

- Allah will replace Moslems who shirk their obligation to battle Israel.

- The ultimate destruction of Israel is a certainty.

The Palestinians repeatedly use Islamic sources to defend this religious hatred, even demanding the killing of Jews as a current obligation and the will of Allah. At least four times in recent months, Palestinian religious leaders have taught publicly that the following Hadith (Islamic traditions attributed to Mohammed) is an authoritative directive of Islam today, expressing Allah's will that obedient Moslems kill Jews. According to Sheikh Muhammed Abd al Hadi La'afi, quoted in the official P.A. newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (May 18, 2001), and Dr. Muhammed Ibrahim Madi, delivering the main Friday sermon on Palestinian TV (April 13, 2001), the Hadith itself states:

"The Day of Resurrection will not arrive until the Moslems make war against the Jews and kill them, and until a Jew hiding behind a rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: 'Oh Moslem, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'"

On Palestinian TV (March 30, 2001) the preacher Dr. Muhammed Ibrahim Madi attacked Arab-Moslem world leaders because they are avoiding attacking Israel with missiles and tanks, and threatened them that Allah is liable to "replace them with other men... that fight for Allah... to liberate the lands from the defilement of the Jews."

These broadcasts by officially appointed religious leaders, presenting the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as an eternal religious conflict, have been preached long before the current violence began. This preaching it is not a reaction to the present violence, and possibly the opposite is true. The PA's religious worldview, that sees agreements with Israel as inherently temporary and war against the Jews as an expression of Allah's will, has in all likelihood fueled the hatred that has lead to Palestinian terror and violence.

This report presents representative selections from sermons broadcast during recent years:

* * *

Eternal Islamic War against the Jews is led by Palestinians; the Jews are enemies of Allah.

"We the Palestinian nation, our fate from Allah is to be the vanguard in the war against the Jews until the resurrection of the dead, as the prophet Mohammed said: 'The resurrection of the dead will not arrive until you will fight the Jews and kill them...' We the Palestinians are the vanguard in this undertaking and in this campaign, whether or not we want this..." (Palestinian TV, July 28, 2000)

"Blessed is he who fights jihad in the name of Allah, blessed is he who [goes on] raids in the name of Allah, blessed is he who dons a vest of explosives on himself or on his children and goes in to the depth of the Jews and says: 'Allahu Akbar, blessed be Allah.' Like the collapse of the building upon the heads of the Jews in their sinful dance-hall, I ask of Allah that we see the Knesset collapsing on the heads of the Jews." (Palestinian TV, June 8, 2001)

"The battle with the Jews will surely come... the decisive Moslem victory is coming without a doubt, and the prophet spoke about in more than one Hadith. And the day of resurrection will not come without the victory of the believers [the Moslems] over the descendents of the monkeys and pigs [the Jews] and with their annihilation." (official P.A. newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 18, 2001)

"The Jews are the Jews. There never was among them a supporter of peace. They are all liars... the true criminals, the Jewish terrorists, that slaughtered our children, that turned our wives into widows and our children into orphans, and desecrated our holy places. They are terrorists. Therefore it is necessary to slaughter them and murder them, according to the words of Allah... it is forbidden to have mercy in your hearts for the Jews in any place and in any land. Make war on them anyplace that you find yourself. Any place that you encounter them -- kill them. Kill the Jews and those among the Americans that are like them... Have no mercy on the Jews, murder them everywhere..." (Palestinian TV, October 13, 2000)

"My dear brothers, so continues the struggle between the Moslems and the Jews from the past, both near and far, in the present and in the future. And in this matter the word of Allah will be fulfilled: 'There will not be found [anyone] more hostile to the believers than the Jews and the idolaters." (Palestinian TV, April 13, 2001, quoting the Koran - Sura 5,84)

A repeated goal of PA religious teaching is to defame Jews and Jewish tradition:

"...The Jews are used to deceit... They fake the facts and changed the laws of Allah... The Torah was brought down with contained guidance toward the path of righteousness and light, just as every book which Allah brought down... [The Jews] switched the law of Allah and by this rebelled on His ruling and religion and way, and therefore they merit to be heretics and to be banished from the Allah's mercy... They faked the words of Allah and changed their religion and laws and they are the wicked. And whomever does not rule according to what Allah brought down, whomever rebelled against this... is in a rebellion against Allah, and is a descendant of Abelis [ghost], the descendant of the Satans, and worthy of receiving the punishment of the sinners..." (Palestinian TV, February 16, 1999)

"...Their Bible [of the Jews] today has no light and no teachings. Their Bible today is just a bunch of notes that were written down by people who lie about God, his prophets and his Bible... Those who do these kinds of things are the descendants of Abelis, meaning the descendants of the satans... They fabricated a Jewish history book full of promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that He will give them the land of Palestine..." (Palestinian TV, November 3, 1998)

* * *

All of the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is Holy Islamic Wakf (Moslem religious trust).

Shiekh Yuosouf Abu Sneina, official preacher of the Al Aqsa Mosque, referred to the Israeli cities of Haifa, Lod, Jerusalem, and Nazareth, on Palestinian Radio (April 30, 1999):

"The Islamic Land of Palestine is one and cannot be divided. There is no difference between Haifa and Nablus, between Lod and Ramallah, between Jerusalem and Nazareth. Dividing Palestine into cantons and giving recognition to the occupation is prohibited by Sharia (Islamic religious law), since Palestinian is Wakf (Islamic Trust) for all Moslems in the East and in the West. No one has the right to give it up or to forsake it. The liberation of Palestine is a mandatory obligation for all Moslems and not only for our Palestinian nation."

Demonstrating the consistent ideology, a nearly identical speech was broadcast one year later (Palestinian TV, September 8, 2000)

"Allah made it clear to us through the laws of the Sharia (Islamic religious law), and we say: The Islamic Land of Palestine is one and cannot be divided. There is no difference between Haifa and Nablus, Lod and Ramallah, Jerusalem and Nazareth or Gaza and Ashkelon. Palestine is Wakf land that belongs to Moslems throughout the world and no one has the right to give it up or to forsake it. Whoever does this is a traitor to the trust and is nothing but a loathsome criminal whose end shall be in hell."

Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, the Palestinian Authority appointed Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, referred to the Israeli cities of Jaffa and Acre on Palestinian TV (January 11, 2001):

"We are discussing the current problems and when we speak about Jerusalem it doesn't mean that we have forgotten about Hebron or about Jaffa or about Acre... We are speaking about the current problems that have priority at a certain time. It doesn't mean that we have given up... We have announced a number of times that from a religious point of view Palestine from the sea to the river is Islamic."

As broadcast on Palestinian TV (October 13, 2000), again referring to Israeli cities and regions:

"Even if agreements were signed [regarding] Gaza and the West Bank, we will not forget Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, the Galilee Triangle, and the Negev. It is only a question of time..."

"It is forbidden for anyone, Arab, Palestinian or Moslem to forgo one grain of soil of the land of Palestine, Jerusalem and Al Aksa... Whoever forgoes even one grain of soil his sin is upon him, and all the sins of the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Moslems, forever and ever..." (Palestinian TV, September 8, 2000)

"...The Jews gathered from all ends of the earth in our beloved Palestine, from Rosh HaNikra in the north to Eilat in the south... from sea to river, it was all a land of Moslems... Palestine's borders, the promised Palestine, is from the sea to the river..." (Palestinian TV, August 18, 2000)

* * *

The Oslo Agreements are only temporary; future generations will complete the war.

In an interview on Palestinian TV (September 1, 2000) an Israeli Arab Knesset Member, Abd-Al Malek Dahamshe, defined the agreements with Israel as "Hudna" -- a temporary cease fire. In response to a viewer who called in to the studio and commented that, "Our problem with Israel is not a border problem, but an existential one," Knesset Member Dahamshe responded: "We exaggerate when we say 'peace'... What we are speaking about is 'Hudna.'" This idea of accepting "Hudna," temporary agreements until some future liquidation of Israel, has also been expressed by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, leader of the Hamas terrorist organization, as quoted in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, Al Hayat-Al Jadida (July 24, 2000):

"We are speaking of 'Hudna', [a cease fire] for a while, but not of the end of the conflict. In exchange for this should include a complete withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza..."

The newest Palestinian school textbooks, published in September 2000, teach this prohibition of leaving Islamic land in Israel's hands. In sixth grade "Islamic Education," the following is taught:

"Patriotism in Islam: In Islam, it is not improper for a Moslem to love his homeland. To the contrary, Islam encourages this, and established its defense as an obligatory commandment for every Moslem if even a centimeter of his land is stolen. I, a Palestinian Moslem, love my country Palestine..." (Part A, p. 68)

The same theme is echoed by preachers at the mosques, as broadcast on Palestinian TV (July 28, 2000):

"All of the agreements entered into [with Israel] are temporary, until the decree comes from Allah and until the destiny from Allah is realized."

And as proclaimed by Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim Maadi, in the Friday sermon on Palestinian TV, (June 8, 2001):

"Who is responsible for the loss of Palestine... and [for] deceitfully labeling it Israel?... The Prophet [Mohammed] soothes us with many Hadiths that Palestine shall return to its former days... We must prepare a foothold, for the coming army of Allah, by divine predetermination. May it be Allah's will [that] this oppressing state shall pass, Israel shall pass. This oppressing state, America, shall pass. The oppressing state Britain, shall pass, [those] that brought this catastrophe [nakba] of this nation..."

And then in the Friday sermon on Palestinian TV (May 4, 2001):

"...In our holy books [it is written] that when a state for the Jews is established in Palestine, it will not last more than 67 years. In other words -- the year 2022. And I beg Allah to bring an end to the country of the oppressor in America, and the country of the oppressor Israel in Palestine, by that date... Therefore, it is our hope that this oppressive country [Israel] will be terminated, as in the words of Allah..."

* * *

The destruction of Israel is a global Islamic responsibility.

"Arab and Moslem rulers! The weaponry that will not be used against the enemies of Allah will rust and you will use them against one another, as happens periodically. Aim your arrows once and make war, as they war against you. Why this fear of the State [of Israel] that is surrounded by Arabs and Moslems? Why this fear? Because you do not fear Allah -- whoever fears Allah, all else will fear him." (Palestinian TV, March 30, 2001)

"There are Hadiths (Islamic traditions attributed to Mohammed) regarding our struggle against the Jews. And it is given: 'The day of resurrection will not arrive until the Moslems make war against the Jews and kill them, and until a Jew hiding behind a rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: 'Oh Moslem, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!' This Hadith clarifies to us the characteristics of the campaign between us and the Jews. The tree and the rock do not say 'Oh, Palestinian,' 'Oh Arab,' or 'Oh resident of the Middle East.' Rather they say: 'Oh, Moslem, Servant of Allah.'" (Palestinian TV, March 30, 2001)

"The Arab rulers and the Moslems, and our people everywhere. If we don't support Allah, He will replace us with other men... The courageous over the infidels, make war for Allah and are not afraid... This is the depiction of the army of Allah that will come at Allah's decree, from here or from there, to liberate these lands from the defilement of the Jews, for Allah was angry with them in his book and called them once 'monkeys,' once 'swine,' and once 'donkeys.'" (Palestinian TV, March 30, 2001)

"Oh, our Arab brethren... Oh, our Moslem brethren... Don't leave the Palestinians alone in war against the Jews... Even if it has been decreed upon us to be the vanguard... Jerusalem, Palestine and Al Aksa, the land that Allah blessed and its surrounding areas will remain at the center of the struggle between truth and falsehood, between the Jews and the non-Jews on this sacred land, regardless of how many agreements are signed, regardless of how many treaties and covenants are ratified. For the truth is in the Koran, as verified by the words of the prophet Mohammed, that the decisive battle will be in Jerusalem and its environs: 'The resurrection of the dead will not occur until you make war on the Jews...'" (Palestinian TV, August 11, 2000)

"All the members of this nation must take part in this struggle against the enemies of Allah, so that through us the saying of Allah will be fulfilled: 'You will not find people more hostile than are the Jews.'" (Palestinian TV, April 13, 2001)

"Palestine... causes the Jews to lose sleep, causes the enemies of Allah throughout the land to lose sleep... It is a bleeding wound, and it will continue to bleed forever and ever... Jerusalem is a symbol... to the Moslems and to their war of Jihad forever and ever." (Palestinian TV, August 11, 2000)

"The victory is coming, the victory is coming, the victory is coming! Allah, show us your marvels against the Jews! Show them a black day, like the day of A'ad and Tha'mud (tribes that were defeated and destroyed). Because they boasted to us of their strength! Show us the prince against them, show them a black day! Allah, transform them into the Moslems' spoils of war! Allah, transform them into our spoils of war!" (Palestinian TV, April 13, 2001)

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Palestinian kindergarten children are brought out of school to wave balloons and watch a parade of Hamas members march by in the West Bank town of Nablus on Saturday, Sept. 29, 2001 to mark the anniversary of the start of the second Palestinian uprising or Intefadeh which was sparked on Sept. 28, 2000. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
A Palestinian boy carries a toy plastic gun during a rally of the militant Islamic group Hamas in the West Bank town of Bethlehem September 7, 2001. The rally was to support and hounor the relatives of those who have given their lives in the fight against Israel, Hamas announced. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause	A Palestinian boy holds a toy gun during a Hamas rally supporting suicide bomb attacks against Israel, at the Al Noserate refugee camp in Southern Gaza Strip, September 14, 2001. Israel and the Palestinians pressed ahead on Friday with efforts to arrange truce talks after a surge in violence overshadowed by the terror attacks in the United States. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)