Why Netanya?

From Israel National News by David Bedein Dec 05, '05 / 4 Kislev 5766 . . .

--- November 2000, I lectured ---in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya, to discuss the PLO demand that all Arabs who have wallowed in UN refugee camps for the past 50 years have the "right to return" to villages that they left in 1948. I showed the audience the map of a "future Palestinian State," which the PLO Orient House headquarters provided in Jerusalem. The map marks the 531 Arab villages that are slated for return, all of which had been overrun in 1948.One of those villages was Umm Khalid, which, according to the PLO, had been illegally absorbed by Netanya.

The PLO, therefore, defines Netanya as one of Israel's "illegal settlements" under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention, enacted in 1949, which forbids a conquering nation from moving its citizens into a conquered area.

The implications: the PLO will justify any attack on any such settlement that it views as "illegal" under international law. The head of the PLO Refugee Department, Daoud Barakat, confirms this.

In January 1995, following Hamas terror bombs that killed 21 people at a bus stop at the Beit Lid/Netanya junction, the PLO secretary-general Marwan Barghouti, now in prison for the first-degree murders of 13 people, calmly told MBC Saudi television why the PLO would justify an attack on Netanya: "This is an area that we have yet to liberate." (We have that video readily available.)

Meanwhile, the December 1995 PLO-Hamas accord, signed in Cairo by both Palestinian factions, allows Hamas to carry out operations in areas within Israel proper that have "not yet been liberated."

The Palestinian spin on the "right of return" plays out in many ways that have escaped public attention. Over the past seven years, the PLO has developed a computer data base at palestineremembered.com that helps Arab refugees locate their homes from before 1948. This is to enable their imminent right of return to places like Umm Khalid - by force, if necessary.. . .