Arafat's doublespeak continues

Arutz Sheva News Service, September 20, 2001

For the sixth time this year, and the first time in Arabic, Yasser Arafat announced a ceasefire in his war against Israel this week - but it is not working.
The "quiet" was slightly marred on the first day of Rosh HaShanah (Tuesday) with the hurling of some 60 grenades at an IDF post in southern Gaza, together with shooting there and at Netzarim. Shots were also fired in Hevron, at the Ayosh Junction north of Ramallah, Migdal Oz, Psagot, and elsewhere. Yesterday, firing and attacks continued in Hevron, Gaza, and elsewhere. It was around this time - 8:50 PM Israel time, to be precise - that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters in Washington that he had
"earlier today [spoken] to both Chairman Arafat and to Prime Minister Sharon and expressed my satisfaction that the first 24 hours of the arrangement they made yesterday has resulted in a significant decrease in the amount of violence in the region."

Precisely as Powell was speaking, a patrol jeep of the Yesha community Oranit, just northeast of Petach Tikvah, was rocked by a large Lebanon-style roadside bomb. Both of the civilian guards in the jeep were wounded - one seriously, and one moderately. The "ceasefire" continued when Arabs in Gaza threw dozens of homemade grenades on IDF forces near Rafiach, and fired two mortar shells towards Israel.

This morning, Arafat's terrorists committed an infinitely more serious attack when they murdered Sarit Amrani, 25, a mother of three. She and her family, of the eastern Gush Etzion community of Nokdim, were on their way home from Jerusalem; her husband Shai was seriously wounded in the attack, but their three children, aged 4 and younger, were not hurt as they lay sleeping in the back seat.
The shots were fired from a passing car that then escaped towards the PA-controlled town of Beit Sahour, south of Bethlehem. A group associated with Fatah, Arafat's original terrorist organization, took credit for the murder. Sarit's funeral set off to Jerusalem this afternoon from Kiryat Arba, where she and her husband grew up.

The Amranis' neighbor Yossi Heiman happened on the scene minutes after the murder. He told Arutz-7:
"I was driving along from Nokdim and I noticed something strange when I saw the Arab children who usually walk to school there scattering in different directions. Very shortly afterwards, I came upon my neighbors' car in the middle of the road, with Shai lying outside. I went up to him, but he directed us, with a weak whisper, to his wife whom he said was in worse condition. In the meanwhile, other people had joined, including army medics, and we went to her and tried to resuscitate her, but unfortunately we could not... Sarit was much loved by everyone in our community for her very fine and quiet nature..."

This afternoon, five Israeli soldiers were slightly wounded during an Arab attack on an IDF position near the greenhouses of Kfar Darom, just north of Gush Katif. The terrorists shot and threw grenades from a passing car, and IDF return fire killed one of the attackers. Just south of there, Arabs threw seven grenades in two separate incidents at an IDF post on the Israeli-Egyptian border.

PA senior official Marwan Bargouti of Ramallah summed up the situation when he said today that despite Arafat's call for a ceasefire, there would be none until Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 lines.
Another senior Fatah figure, Amin Makbul, explained that the ceasefire ordered by Arafat was merely a political maneuver to offset the worldwide impression of the Palestinians in light of the attacks in the U.S. and the public expression of Palestinian joy. Makbul made the remarks at a gathering in A-Najah University in Shechem, and they were published in the official PA newspaper, Al Hayat al-Jadida:
"This [cease-fire] declaration is nothing more than a tactical initiative and a political maneuver on the part of the [Palestinian] Authority, so that the Palestinians won't be perceived as hostile towards the peace process." [Amin Makbul, Member Fatah World Leadership and Fatah Delegate in Shechem (Nablus) in the Palestinian Authority official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, September 20, 2001]