Arafat Letter Incites Israeli Arabs Against Israel

Among the documents captured by the IDF during Operation Defensive Wall is a statement of policy sent to Arab notables in Israel through the "Liaison Committee" with Israeli Arabs, which operates from Arafat's bureau. The statement, which bears the emblem of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the President's Bureau, was issued on September 30th 2001 to mark the Intifada's first anniversary. It is concerned mainly with the incitement of Israeli Arabs to take part in the violent events. The statement disseminates a deep hatred for the state of Israel and its citizens, making false and mendacious accusations. In particular, the letter

• Incites the Israeli Arabs to take part in the Intifada and its violence in order to promote the Palestinian goals together.
• Expresses an unwillingness to recognize Israel's right to exist and promotes efforts toward establishing an independent Palestinian state, "one homeland", which belongs to "one people" with Jerusalem as its capital. The reader of the statement understands that this is to be accomplished over Israel's ruins and not at its side.
• Contains no hint of peace or coexistence. The peace process, the Oslo agreement, the existence of Israel within the 1967 borders are all absent from the statement.

Following is the English translation of a letter written by Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in which he incites Israeli Arabs against the state.

"Palestine Liberation Organization
The Palestinian National Authority
The President's Office

"In the name of merciful Allah, position statement by the Liaison Committee to mark the first year of the Aksa Intifada.

"Woe to our Palestinian nation, the masses who cling [to our land], stand strongly and patiently, whose roots are in the land of their fathers and grandfathers. You, who realized by means of your determined position and hold [on the land] from the time Allah desired it, for more than half a century, while you are fighting the occupation that steals our land and homeland.

"It has been decreed upon you and the generations that follow, until the resurrection, to protect this homeland. You are guarding this pledge [that depends] on your necks and the necks of your grandchildren, because you are the protectors and guardians [of the homeland], and live on it, and are its original and legal owners, and its inheritors until the day you will be resurrected.

"We mark with you and by means of you, the first anniversary of the breaking out of the spark of the intifada... the blessed Aksa Intifada, which our nation is carrying out in the liberated territories and the occupied territories, in the Diaspora, which emphasizes the intensity of its struggle imbedded in its soul to explode the spark of built-up rage in the face of the robbers of the century, the manufacturers of world terrorism, the killers of children, women, and the elderly, the stealers of land and livelihood, the destroyers and burners of land, seeds, and stones.

"Indeed, the nation, including all its parts and groups, broke out in the intifada in every place it is found. The ties of connection are interwoven between the residents of Jerusalem and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the residents of the occupied cities of old. [Israeli Arabs], who have forever been the natural continuation and wall and fortification of our Palestinian nation and its just problem.

"The [Palestinian] nation, indeed, broke out its intifada in order to pave with its pure and clean blood the sidewalks, alleyways, and roads of the holiest of holies, the capital of the independent Palestinian state.

"The stone and the man, the bird and the tree, broke out the intifada in the alleyways of Jerusalem and its holy places and the hills and valleys of the West Bank, and the Gaza coast and its refugee camps, and the plains and hills and summits of Palestine, in cities and villages of Palestine, occupied since 1948.... Yes, we will still write in blood the map of the one homeland and one nation.

"Indeed, we are still to draw the lines and demarcations of the nobleness of the national struggle against the nations of darkness, racism, requisition, deportation, and intentional banishment, [steps] taken against the Palestinian man, as the international community [disappeared, and with] imagined justice.

"Today, we do not have any expectations from the leaders of the [Arab] nation who are overcome by sleep and fettered by silence, and in which cowardliness has increased. We look and follow with nationalistic eyes, dreaming about our families and great nation in villages and cities that stand strong since the year 1948. For they are partners of the goal and the fate, partners of the one national dream.

"al-Aqsa Intifada and independence have realized the national unity among all the Palestinian people that stands strong, despite the roadblocks of the occupation, despite all acts of massacre which have been carried out by the Zionist gangs since the nakba [disaster] of 1948.

"To commemorate this... memory, we emphasize together and equally the will of this one nation, the life of ennobled freedom. Despite the nations of oppression and the darkness of racism which is being carried out against us by the worst soldiers of occupation history has ever known, in order to express in fury the historic oppression which has fallen upon us since the beginning of our historic times by means of the intifada of stones, the intifada of built-up rage...

"Today, no voice is louder than the voice of the intifada. It will continue to be the intifada of the one nation, erupting with one flowing blood.... It will continue to be the intifada of ongoing fury... the intifada of ongoing independence... the intifada of generations that will continue until the realization of our sublime national dream.

"Indeed, we are the owners of the land and the legal truth, the owners of the independent homeland and the independent state.

"Therefore, with you and by means of you, and by means of our noble Arab and Islamic nation, and by means of freedom-seeking people in the world, we will establish our independent Palestinian nation and its holy capital of Jerusalem... with you and by means of you we will liberate our holy al-Aqsa Mosque so that the free Palestinian flag will wave in the skies of Jerusalem, the cradle of heavenly religions, the land of the messengers, the land of the gathering of creation on the day of judgement.

"Glory and eternity to our innocent victims, speedy recovery to our brave wounded, freedom to our brave prisoners, disgrace and shame to the agents [collaborators] and those who sinned, this is a revolt until victory.

"Liaison Committee of the President's Office, Sunday, 30 September 2001"