Another Free Pass to The Palestinians

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 23, 2005

The Palestinian Authority has yet to comply with even one agreement they have signed since the Oslo Accord. They have violated the Oslo agreement Oslo II, and the Road Map. Each agreement required the PA to disarm its terrorists and to empower its “security forces” to protect the safety of Israelis as well as Palestinian Arabs.

On September 13, 1993, after Arafat signed a Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, he appeared on Jordanian TV to explain that the agreement was simply part of the PLO’s staged plan for Israel’s destruction. “Since we cannot defeat Israel in war,” he said in that broadcast, “we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.”

Indeed, from 1993 through September 2000, while the Oslo negotiations were still ongoing, the Palestinians killed 256 Israeli civilians and soldiers and wounded thousands more. Since then, 1,086 more people have been killed, and nearly 6,5000 were wounded in more than 26,000 Palestinian terror attacks.

Not to break with tradition, the PA announced plans to breach the Agreed Principles for Rafah Crossing, implementation of which was scheduled for November 25. The agreement requires, among other things, that “a liaison office, led by the 3rd party, will receive real-time video and data feed of the activities at Rafah and will meet regularly to review implementation of this agreement, resolve any disputes arising from this agreement, and perform other tasks specified in this agreement.”

But PA Director of Borders and Crossings, Salim Abu Safiyyeh declared on November 17, “that there won’t be any live video streams to the Israeli side via the surveillance cameras installed in Rafah terminal,” according to a press release posted by the Palestinian National Authority State Information Service. He went on to elaborate that “even the joint control room will not receive these live feeds, and will be only for the presence of the third party that will monitor the borders.”

The Rafah Crossing agreement was initiated by the European Union, which is also, the 3^rd party assigned to observe its fulfillment. The PA, encouraged by the EU’s lack of respect for international law as was demonstrated by its refusal to designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization, declared that it will not honor the agreement.

In October, EU officials met with Hizballah representatives in Lebanon, arguing that such meetings would help to moderate the organization. Today’s attacks on Israel by the Hizballah, attest to the complete failure of such diplomacy.

The EU’s willful blindness concerning terrorism against Israel is not limited to Hizballah. The EU was the major funding source for the PA’s security services during the Intifada. Not even Palestinian records documenting that EU funds were diverted to pay for terror attacks against Israel, committed by PA security forces (Tanzim, Force 17, al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade), convinced the EU to stop its funding.

Considering the past, if the US is serious about achieving peace in Israel, it should not leave this task to the EU, but demand that the PA comply with the Rafah agreement as well as all the other agreements it failed to keep.

Alyssa A. Lappen

Alyssa A. Lappen is a U.S.-based investigative journalist. She is the former Managing Editor at the Leeb Group (2012-2017); a former Senior Fellow of the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008); and a former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991). She served six of her 12 years at Forbes (1978-1990) as an Associate Editor. Ms. Lappen was also a staff reporter at The New Haven Register (1975-1977). During a decade as a freelance, her work appeared in Big Peace, Pajamas Media, Front Page Magazine, American Thinker, Right Side News, Family Security Matters, the Washington Times and many other Internet and print journals. Ms. Lappen also contributed to the Terror Finance Blog, among others. She supports the right of journalists worldwide to write without fear or restriction on politics, governments, international affairs, terrorism, terror financing and religious support for terrorism, among other subjects. Ms. Lappen is also an accomplished poet. Her first full-length collection, The Minstrel's Song, was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in April 2015. Her poems have been published in the 2nd 2007 edition of Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust and both 2007 issues of Wales' award-winning Seventh Quarry: Swansea Poetry Magazine. Dozens of her poems have appeared in print and online literary journals and books. She won the 2000 annual Ruah: A Journal of Spiritual Poetry chapbook award and has received a Harvard Summer Poetry Prize and several honorable mentions.