Vice-PM Shalom & Min. Landau:

Outlaw Islamic Movement

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has urged Israel and the United States to reconsider the appropriateness and wisdom of continued negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) in light of their renewed incitement and promotion of violence against Israel and Jews in recent days. It should also outlaw violent Islamic organizations in Israel. It has also strongly commended and supported the positions taken by Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom and National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau, who have urged the government to outlaw the Israel’s Islamic Movement Northern Branch and indict and prosecute its senior figures, including Sheikh Raed Salah, for inciting violence in Jerusalem and to cease paying their salaries and supporting their institutions with taxpayer money.

Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom and National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau called for the Islamic Movement Northern Branch to be outlawed for inciting the violence. While Shalom praised the police force for doing its job, he stressed that “it’s time for the state prosecution to start acting.” Landau called for the indictment of those Muslim leaders who were calling for violence and confrontation in the capital, and encouraging hateful anti-Israeli sentiments, among them “Sheikh Raed Salah and his ilk … Israel must stop paying the salaries of imams and heads of mosques who engage in incitement against the state of Israel” (‘We’ll pay any price to defend Al Aksa,’ Jerusalem Post, October 6, 2009).

Shalom has written to Cabinet Secretary Tzvi Hauser, asking that the banning of the Islamic Movement Northern Branch be included in next Cabinet meeting agenda. The Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, founded in 1996, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and has as its motto, “Allah is our goal, the prophet [Muhammed] is our leader, the Koran is our law, Jihad [religious war] is our way – and death in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Shalon said, “It’s time we remind everyone that we are the sovereign in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount … The Prosecution and the police must stop the Palestinian take-over of Jerusalem, and must act with full force against the Islamic Movement’s wild incitement. There are times when the gloves must be taken off… The Islamic Movement must be outlawed – immediately. The movement’s leaders must be arrested and placed behind bars for many years.”

Landau, a former Public Security Minister, says that this week’s Arab riots in Jerusalem “demand that we implement a simple and clear policy against the Islamic Movement. In Ariel Sharon’s first government, Raed Salah was tried and sat in prison… If we show weakness towards him and towards other Arab imams who incite to violence, this will bring upon us even worse riots in the future” (Hillel Fendel, ‘Ministers: “Outlaw Islamic Movement!”’ Israel National News, October 7, 2009).

Riots in recent days have taken place in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem as Muslim leaders and the PA called to “protect Al-Aqsa [Mosque]” and “prevent the Judaization of Jerusalem” – calls used in the past to rouse Palestinian Muslims to violence against Jews. (Sheikh Salah is also on record having once urged President George W. Bush to convert to Islam, as a way of solving American problems with the Muslim world).

PA president Mahmoud Abbas said that while Israel and “world Zionism” act every day to “Judaize” the city, Arab efforts to make the city Arab are “paltry … The Palestinians are working and are getting killed …The second intifada erupted because of [former Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon’s visit to [the Temple Mount] and the [alleged] desecration of the mosque, and it lasted seven [eight] years. This time, therefore, the matter of Jerusalem requires a much greater effort, something much more practical. It’s not enough to talk about Jerusalem in books, nor to give sermons in mosques; there is a need to work for her” (Hillel Fendel, ‘Jewish purchases in Jerusalem fuel PA fears,’ Israel National News, October 6, 2009).

The PA also issued a call by the so-called “moderate” PA prime minister Salam Fayyad, who said that “The world must force Israel to halt her efforts to take control of Jerusalem and Judaize it.” Fayyad also accused “extremist settlers” of planning to break into the Al-Aqsa compound. At least one police officer was wounded by rock-throwing Arab youth over the course of the day, and a soldier was stabbed in the neck by a PA Arab teen during the routine inspection of a bus (Maayan Miskin, ‘As Israel Seeks to Quell Riots, PA Tells Muslims to Fight,’ Israel National News, October 5, 2009).

Several rioters have been arrested for allegedly attacking police officers and Jewish civilians with stones. Police revealed Monday that wheelbarrows filled with heavy stones of the type used recently by Muslim Temple Mount rioters were found hidden on the Temple Mount the day before. The discovery indicates that the “spontaneous” Temple Mount riots were planned in advance.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “Israel and the U.S. should reconsider continued negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas and the PA in light of the public and blatant PA role in promoting physical violence against Israel and Jews in Jerusalem. Obviously, genuine peace partners do not actively and publicly urge violence against the party with whom they are supposedly interested in concluding peace. Every Israeli-Palestinian signed agreement since 1993 makes clear that disputes must be resolved through negotiations, not violence.

“There are some ground rules for negotiations: One, agreements must be honored –something the PA has never done in 16 years with regard to its basic, repeated solemn commitments to arrest terrorists and end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA controlled media, mosques schools and youth camps that feed terror. Two, you cannot launch violence against your peace partner.

“It is of course nothing new – or should be nothing new – that the PA foments violence against Israel. The entire 2000 terror wave was launched by Arafat and the PA, not by Hamas or other groups. The only extraordinary thing is that, without there having been any change in the PA or Fatah, without their having fulfilled their dishonored commitments, Israel has returned to negotiating with them.

“Israel should expose the PA’s role in the violence as well as deal firmly and resolutely with it own Islamist elements that have incited it. Israel must demand a public repudiation and retraction of this public call to violence against Israel. In this context, we strongly commend and support the proposed actions of Israeli government ministers Uzi Landau and Silvan Shalom including the outlawing of the Islamic Movement and the ending of state salaries and other payments to their personnel and institutions.”