NEW YORK – One of the “reforms” that Yasir Arafat is reportedly planning would involve a promotion for the Palestinian Authority security official who blocked the FBI’s attempt to investigate a 1995 terrorist attack in which a young woman from New Jersey was murdered.

On April 9, 1995, Palestinian Arab terrorists bombed a bus near the town of Kfar Darom, murdering seven passengers, including Alisa Flatow, a 20 year-old Brandeis University student from West Orange, New Jersey. Israel Radio reported on April 13, 1995, that FBI agents had arrived in Israel to investigate the killing, but “Rashid Abu-Shibak, the deputy commander of the Palestinian security services in Gaza, announced that the U.S. investigators will not be allowed to conduct an investigation of their own and that they will have to settle for a report from the joint Israeli-Palestinian coordination committee.”

Now Abu-Shibak is to be promoted. According to Israel Radio (June 4, 2002) the director of the PA Security Services in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, will be soon be named a senior aide to Arafat, as part of Arafat’s proposed “reforms” of the PA. Abu-Shibak will then be promoted to Dahlan’s position.

Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), said: “Someone who prevents the FBI from investigating the murder of an American should be fired, not promoted. Arafat’s promotion of Abu-Shibak is further evidence that his Palestinian Authority is a terrorist regime, and the Bush administration should immediately end all relations with the PA.”

Twenty-nine American citizens have been murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists since the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, 17 of them since Arafat launched the current wave of violence in September 2000. In addition, 68 Americans have been wounded since 1993, 43 of them since September 2000; and at least 96 Americans have been murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists, and 119 wounded, since 1968.