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Subj: [IAP NEWS] Palestinians: "We are facing genocide and have to defend ourselves"
Date: 4/1/02 8:50:36 AM Mountain Standard Time
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Palestinians: "We are facing genocide and have to defend ourselves"

Hebron: West Bank, 1 April, 2002 by Khalid Amayreh

Palestinians from disparate political and ideological orientations have
strongly rejected remarks by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres
condemning "suicide bomb attacks" as immoral.

"Instead of blaming the defenseless victims for defending themselves he
should ask his Nazi-like army to stop its genocide of a people who are
struggling for freedom from occupation," said M. Natshe, a Fatah leader in
the West Bank town of Hebron.

On Sunday, Peres condemned "suicide bombers" as "human sacrifices to the
altar of political ambitions."

"The idea to return to human sacrifices to the altar of political ambitions
is barbaric and dangerous," Peres was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem
Post Monday.

Natshe accused Israel of pursuing a policy based on genocide and ethnic
cleansing towards the Palestinian people.

"Peres and his criminal cohorts are offering us either annihilation or
perpetual enslavement and occupation, we shall not accept either, we insist
on freedom and we are willing to sacrifice our souls for it."

"People fight and die for their freedom, don't they? I don't understand why
(US President George) Bush can't understand this?"

Ahmed Hassan, a local Islamic leader in the town of Dura, 13 kilometers
south west of Hebron, also blamed Israel for "pushing the Palestinians to
the martyr-bombing phenomenon."

"Martyr-bombing is not our strategy; it is not our goal, our strategy is
freedom from this diabolic military occupation, no nation on the face of
earth can accept perpetual rape and domination by another nation."

He pointed out that the Palestinian people who, he said, were going through
a situation similar to that which the Jews faced during WWII, had no choice
but defend themselves with their bodies.

"We don't have an army, we don't have an air-force, we don't have tanks, we
don't have anything. The Arab world is totally powerless and impotent, and
the United States is telling Israel 'keep up the killing.' So, what are we
supposed to under these circumstances?

Abed Da'ana, an activist affiliated with the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) described Israeli officials remarks about
suicidal bombings as "misleading and mendacious."

"It is the Palestinian people who are facing a looming holocaust, not the
Jews. The inescapable truth now is Israel in 2002 is acting like Nazi
Germany in the 1940s, and the Palestinians are the victims, very much like
the Jews of Europe were more than 50 years ago."

On Sunday, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat yesterday compare
the Israeli blitz against Palestinian population centers to the Nazi
atrocities against Jews.

Some Jewish intellectuals agreed with Arafat, citing moral degeneration
among Jews, especially in Israel.

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Why do you not address the main point of the Peres statement, which is:

"No one in Israel can understand why the Palestinians are fighting and killing, since whatever they are demanding was offered to them at Camp David, namely a Palestinian state. What they are trying to achieve by murder they could have gotten on the negotiating table."

Israel's violence is not directed at random citizens in restaurants and mosques, nor do they place bombs in centers of population to go off and randomly kill whoever may be near. Israel only acts to protect its citizens from the incessant danger of attack. The strikes are targeted. They are directed at the source of the problem: the leaders who cynically tell their citizens to martyr themselves for the cause, while staying tucked away in their fortresses and ostensibly seeking peace.