PA’s “Crackdown” on
Terrorists is a Farce

NEW YORK- The Palestinian Authority’s “arrest” of a “suicide bomber,” which made headlines throughout the world this week, has turned out to be a farce—the teenage girl they arrest is not a terrorist, after all.

On July 6, 2003, the PA claimed it had arrested “a would-be suicide bomber” in the Gaza Strip, and that she had left behind a note describing her intention to carry out a terrorist attack. But now the New York Times reports (July 8, 2003) that, in fact, the “bomber” was actually a distraught, unarmed teenage girl who “left behind a note describing her troubles with her family and had then run off … ‘We found her crying,’ a Palestinian Preventive Security official said. “She was sitting there and crying. He said security officers had questioned the woman, who was not carrying an explosive, and then released her.”

During the past decade, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, the PA would often make “arrests” of individuals as “proof” that it was “cracking down” on terrorists—only to have it later turn out there had been no arrests, or that the people detained were not actually terrorists.

The PA is thus continuing to violate President Bush’s Road Map, which states that the PA is required to “undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on anywhere.”

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: “Abu Mazen continues to make a mockery of President Bush’s requirement that he arrest terrorists—yet the Bush administration is silent, and is even drastically increasing U.S. aid to the Palestinian Arabs (from $213-million to as much as $1-billion). This U.S. policy sends a message to Abu Mazen that the U.S. will turn a blind eye to his blatant violations of the Road Map. The Bush administration has apparently not learned the lesson of the failed Oslo accords— that ignoring Palestinian Arab violations only encourages more violations.”