By Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

The unnecessary death of six Palestinians, including two resistance fighters, by Palestinian hands in Qalqilya on Sunday, 31 May, will be an indelible and everlasting stigma of shame on the forehead of Israel’s Palestinian puppets.

Palestinian (PA) officials, who think that dishonesty is the best policy, claimed that the killings were necessitated by commitments to keep law and order and protect the “national scheme.”

However, this vacuous and mendacious pretext is itself worse than a crime. After all, what “national scheme” can possibly justify the hounding and killing of people who have spent the prime of their youth, resisting the criminal occupiers of their country and cruel tormentors of their people?

Indeed, in any country that respects itself, people as such are accorded a high place of honor, not hounded and killed and called “outlaws.”

In Qalqilya, all the blood shed was a Palestinian blood, including the blood of three PA soldiers who had been duped and brainwashed into thinking that Hamas was the enemy, not the Israeli occupation army which continues to murder and oppress the Palestinian people. Isn’t that a real tragedy?

I have no doubt that the PA is completely responsible for the death of six Palestinians, all of them victims of Israeli oppression and criminality.

The PA security apparatus could have handled the incident differently. The PA did ask the two fighters who were hiding inside a home to surrender. However, given the close and treacherous coordination between the Israeli army and forces loyal to ex-PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the last thing that would have assured them was the suggestion that they should hand themselves over to PA forces.

Moreover, the rampancy of torture in PA jails and dungeons allowed no chance for a different outcome to this tragic episode. The two fighters apparently preferred to die rather than the prospect of being tortured and humiliated by those who have given up every shred of human decency in order to appease Gen. Keith Dayton.

The PA security apparatus, which is holding hundreds of Hamas sympathizers, mainly in order to punish them for the ousting by Hamas of American-backed Fatah elements from the Gaza Strip three years ago, could have simply allowed the two men to withdraw or escape.

This could have saved the lives of six Palestinians and prevented a tragedy that also befell their respective families.

However, behaving wisely and especially patriotically is not a character particularly known of PA security personnel who are more interested in receiving testimonies of praise from Washington and Tel Aviv than in saving Palestinian lives.

Actually, the willful misconduct of the PA security forces was apparent before as well as after the tragic event, which underscores their ill-will and malicious intents.

Thus, instead of apologizing to the Palestinian people for the murderous episode and immediately sacking the officers who gave the orders to open fire on the two fighters, PA officials from bottom to top indulged in spreading disinformation thinking the hastily orchestrated lies would whitewash the crime and exonerate the PA before the Palestinian people.

They claimed that the two fighters began firing at a passing PA patrol.

Well, that is a lie, because thousands of people in Qalqilya witnessed with their own eyes PA forces and reinforcements converging at the Kfar Saba neighborhood as if the henchmen of Oslo were celebrating the liberation of Jerusalem.

Then Abbas himself followed suit with his own fantastic narratives of the killings, saying that “we will confront with an iron fist all those who are trying to undermine our national gains.”

What national gains is this man talking about? Does he really think the West Bank is a liberated territory? Does he think that he and his Oslo charlatans really enjoy independence and sovereignty in Ramallah?

Or perhaps he may be thinking that the killing of two Palestinian fighters, at the expense of the death of four other Palestinians, would make Israel relent and give him a state on a silver platter.

Abbas is deadly mistaken if he thinks so. His predecessor Yasser Arafat made every conceivable “gesture” to appease Israel. He imprisoned and tortured political opponents, and for that purpose, he created “the State Security Court” …Yes, a “state” Security Court to serve a police state without a state.

Arafat even traveled to Tel Aviv where he kissed the head of Isaac Rabin’s widow as a sign of respect for the very man who had ordered his soldiers to break the bones of Palestinian boys.

None the less, and as things became eventually clear, all of Arafat’s tactless feats failed to impress an arrogantly racist Israeli leadership which thought that non-Jews were sub-humans at the very best. And when bush came to shove, Israel humiliated Arafat with conspicuous vindictiveness at his headquarters in Ramallah.

Eventually, Israel may have poisoned Arafat in one way or the other, possibly through one of his aides.

Doesn’t Abbas learn from Arafat’s mistakes?

One PA official, who apparently doesn’t distinguish between veracity and mendacity, claims that the tragic incident in Qalqilya showed that Hamas “was amassing forces in preparation for carrying out a coup and taking over the West Bank.”

What IQ do these people have? Are they blind? Are they hopelessly stupid? You see, even at lying, these people are lousy liars. They are lousy liars because in order for Hamas to even imagine carrying out a coup against the Ramallah regime, it would have to be militarily stronger than Israel and its guardian ally the United States, which is committed to Israel’s security.

None the less, PA operatives are advised not to bask for too long in their ignorant illusion about the continuity of their ramshackle fiefdom.

The Palestinian masses know the truth too well. They see on a daily basis the futility of having a failed state apparatus functioning submissively under the sinister Israeli military occupation.

In the final analysis, the Palestinian people are not naïve. They bear the unbearable, but they never forget. Eventually, the winds of fury will smash the ranks of the traitors.

Hamas hopes UN fact-finding mission would end in trial of Israeli war criminals

Gaza- Hamas on Monday welcomed the arrival of the UN independent fact-finding mission into Israeli war crimes committed during the latest Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

Fawzi Barhoum, the Hamas's spokesman, said in a statement that his Movement would fully cooperate with the mission and table all evidence documenting the Israeli war crimes with its members.

He hoped that the investigation would end up with the trial of Israeli war criminals at the international court of justice.

He said that the Israeli government's refusal to cooperate with the UN mission as the biggest proof of its involvement in war crimes in Gaza.

Dr. Mohammed Awad, the secretary of the Palestinian government, voiced a similar statement when he said that his government would extend all assistance to the UN committee.

He added in a statement that the team members would be allowed to freely tour the Gaza strip to see for themselves the bulk of devastation inflicted by the Israeli war other than the thousands of casualties.

The UN fact finding committee arrived in the Strip on Monday from the Rafah border terminal to investigation war crime allegations committed by the Israeli occupation forces during the war on Gaza.

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source: Palestine Information Center By Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah