PA Minister Admits Initfada Was Planned
PA Minister Admits Initfada Was Planned
Palestinian Authority Communications Minister Imad Faluji confirmed on Friday what Israel has known and attempted to relay to the international community since Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in late September – that the renewed Palestinian intifada was pre-planned.
At a PLO rally in the Ein Hilwe refugee camp in South Lebanon on Friday, Faluji told the crowd that the five-month-old intifada was not a spontaneous reaction to Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, but was planned after Israeli-Palestinian peace talks failed in July at Camp David.
“It [the uprising] had been planned since [Palestinian Authority] Chairman [Yasser] Arafat’s return from Camp David, when he turned the tables on the former US president and rejected the American conditions,” Falouji said.
PA officials were angered by Faluji’s statements. One said Faluji was giving his own interpretation of events. Another PA source said the minister is closer to Hamas than the PLO, and does not represent the PA’s view of events.
Falouji also said the PLO is reviving its “military action” groups to escalate the fighting against Israel. Faluji told a cheering crowd of nearly 2,500, among them local Palestinian leaders, that “the PLO is going back to the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. The Fatah Hawks, the Kassam Brigades, the Red Eagle, and all the military action groups are returning to work.”
Attempting to explain the real significance of the events surrounding the start of the violence, one PA source said the response to Sharon’s visit to the site symbolized the Palestinians’ frustration over Israel’s reluctance to completely cede sovereignty over the Mount.
Another PA source did not deny that a limited uprising had been planned once it became clear that Sharon would visit the site. Its aim was to bring the issue of Jerusalem to world and Arab attention, especially ahead of October’s Arab summit at which Arafat sought Arab support for his positions.
Palestinian security officials had warned Israeli negotiators against the visit, predicting that it might trigger an uncontrollable cycle of violence. But in its report to the Mitchell commission of inquiry, the PA stated that that the uprising was the result of the Palestinians’ frustration with the failure of the Camp David summit and Israel’s reluctance to implement UN resolutions. The Sharon visit, the report said, was only the trigger that set off the intifada. In its own report to the commission, Israel also denied that Sharon’s visit was the real source of the violence and instead cited widespread PA incitement leading up to the outbreak.
Used with Permission from International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.