Mideast situation/Palestine question – Letter from Israel

Letter dated 23 May 2002 from the Permanent Representative of Israel

to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

I am writing to draw your attention to some extremely troubling documents recently discovered by Israel which constitute clear evidence that the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman, Yasser Arafat, have been directly and actively involved in organizing, inciting, and financing acts of terrorism directed against Israeli citizens.

Many of these documents are written on official Palestinian letterhead and several even contain the signature of Chairman Yasser Arafat himself. Photos of the original documents, and their translations, as well as other materials that continue to be discovered by Israeli forces, are available on the web site of both the Israel Defense Forces (http://www.idf.il) and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( http://www.mfa.gov.il) and delegations are urged to view them online in their original format. New information as it is uncovered is posted on these web sites regularly.

One document, dated 30 September 2001, is a statement issued by Chairman Arafat’s office addressed to the leaders of the Israeli Arab community in which he urges them to use violence and terror to liberate “the cities occupied since 1948”. He exhorts them to “draw up with blood the map of one homeland” and pledges that the Intifada will last for generations. This letter represents clear proof not only that Chairman Arafat has encouraged the use of violence against Israelis, but his reference to the territories of “1948” makes clear that he has no interest in a peaceful political settlement on the basis of Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), and on the vision of two states as referred to in resolution 1397 (2002), but rather only in “revolution until victory”.

Another document, written on the letterhead of the “AL-AQSA Martyres Troops” and found in Chairman Arafat’s Ramallah compound in the offices of Fuad Shoubaki, the chief procurement and finance officer of the Palestinian Authority, is a request for funds for Al Aqsa’s terrorist operations. The list of expenses includes bullets for Kalashnikov and M-16 rifles, electronic materials, chemical materials, explosive materials and explosive charges. The document further calculates the monthly cost of Al Aqsa’s bombing campaign, based on an estimate that each explosive costs 700 shekels, and that the desired rate of bombing is 5 to 9 blasts per week. The document also requests funding for posters and other promotional materials that publicize and glorify the actions of suicide bombers. It should be recalled that the United States Department of State has placed the Al Aqsa Brigades on its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).

The financial links between the Palestinian Authority and known terrorists are further demonstrated in another document that requests financial aid for three Palestinian terrorists. One of the men listed is Ra’ed el Karmi, the leading member of a terrorist cell in Tulkarm who was responsible for scores of attacks against Israeli civilians and the deaths of at least six Israelis, including two Israeli restaurateurs who were kidnapped and murdered in an incident referred to in my letter dated 25 January 2001 (A/55/748-S/2001/81). The request was approved by Chairman Arafat, who in his own handwriting, instructed the Palestinian treasury to allocate $600 (U.S.) to each of the three. Just below these instructions is the signature of the Chairman himself.

The documents I have referred to above constitute but a fraction of the materials that have been discovered in Chairman Arafat’s compound and elsewhere in recent weeks. Taken together, they amount to overwhelming proof that the terrorist campaign against Israeli civilians has been managed and orchestrated by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. They further show that funds for terrorist expenses and operations were transferred from Palestinian Authority coffers to the leaders of terrorist cells with the express written consent of Chairman Arafat; that requests for funding for ammunition and explosives were submitted to, and approved by, Chairman Arafat and his deputies; and that Chairman Arafat has personally encouraged and incited violence and terror against Israel.

The discovery of this evidence must be treated with utmost concern by the international community. This evidence, together with other known aspects of the Palestinian Authority’s involvement in terror — such as its use of the official media and the educational system to incite violence and terror, its revolving door policy of arresting terrorists only to subsequently release them, and the glorification of suicide and mass murder in Palestinian society — prove that the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman have fundamentally and brazenly abandoned any and all commitments they have made to renounce the use of terrorism and violence.

The serious questions regarding the conduct of the Palestinian Authority and Chairman Arafat raised by these documents cannot be conveniently ignored. They serve to highlight the urgency with which the international community and the United Nations must exert pressure to compel the Palestinian leadership to end, once and for all, its strategy of terrorism in accordance with its signed commitments, international law, and Security Council resolution 1373. 

I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the text of the present letter circulated as a document of the fifty-sixth session of the General Assembly, under agenda item 166, and of the Security Council.

(Signed) Yehuda Lancry
Permanent Representative

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