Different Messages to Diverse Audiences: Do the Palestinian Leaders Want Peace with Israel?

The Palestinians convey messages of peace to their English-speaking audiences while calling for Israel’s destruction in Arabic. 

Senior Palestinian official Jibril Rajoub, deputy secretary general of the Fatah Central Committee, has exposed himself as two-faced, conveying messages of peace to his English-speaking audiences while calling for Israel’s destruction in Arabic.

Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Olympic committee and leader of the Palestinian Football Federation, may be next in line for the Palestinian leadership after Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The popular official with a terrorist past recently penned an article in Newsweek magazine presenting himself as a seeker of peace. “We in the Palestinian leadership are determined to seize this opportunity to achieve the long overdue two-state vision,” he wrote. “We will accept no solution but a two-state one,” he stressed.

However, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a watchdog that monitors Palestinian incitement, has documented that Rajoub actively incites violence against Israelis and supported last year’s Palestinian terror wave.

The documentation shows that Rajoub’s claim in Newsweek to be a supporter of the “two-state vision” is a very different message from that which he promotes to Palestinians and the Arabic-speaking public in general.

The Truth-Revealing Maps

In numerous instances, Rajoub has handed out plaques of honor decorated with the PA’s map of “Palestine,” which erases Israel’s existence. Instead, all of the territory of the State of Israel is included in “Palestine,” from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Rajoub heads the PLO’s Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs. When the Council held a youth camp named “Know Your Homeland,” it chose the PA map that includes all of Israel as decoration for the camp shirts. The map was painted in the colors of the PA flag, symbolizing future Palestinian political jurisdiction over the entire area.

The Supreme Council posted a drawing of the PA map on its Facebook page.

“This message to Palestinian youth from Rajoub’s organization is telling them that their ‘homeland’ includes all of Israel and that they should expect to live in a world where all of Israel has become Palestine,” PMW explained.

In another instance, when Rajoub visited the “Olympic village” at the Islamic Solidarity Games in Baku in May, he presented a Turkish representative with a plaque of honor in the shape of the PA map of “Palestine.”

President Jingnan Xu of the Chinese sports company Pea received a similar plaque from Rajoub, who wrote on his Facebook page that the Chinese company “is sponsoring the Palestinian national teams and the associations that are members of the Palestine Olympic Committee.” So did International Federation for Equestrian Sports President Ingmar De Vos, during the same month at Palestine Olympic Committee headquarters.

Furthermore, Rajoub received a delegation from American Michigan University and the Arab American University in Jenin at his office at Council headquarters, where he gave them a map of “Palestine.”

Actions Negate Words

Rajoub further stated in his Newsweek op-ed that the 1967 borders are to be the basis of his desired two-state solution.

“This agreement must fulfill Palestinian national aspirations by including the following elements: the contiguous territory of sovereign, independent Palestine comprising the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital; the border based on the 1967 line with equal swaps; and the solution to the long suffering of stateless Palestinian refugees that is just and agreed,” he wrote.

However, PMW has documented statements by PA leaders and broadcasts on PA TV explaining an ideology similar to Arafat’s “stages plan,” which sees a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders as merely the first step in the process of taking over all of the State of Israel.

The Best Home, a PA TV children’s program, often teaches the young viewers that “all of Palestine will return to us.”

In his Newsweek column, Rajoub also pretended to be in favor of “mutual recognition.”

“The Palestinian leadership believes that a peace agreement, based on mutual recognition between Palestine and Israel, will mark the end of the conflict and finality of claims,” he claimed.

However, PMW has revealed that Rajoub adamantly speaks against “normalization” with Israel. He has even stated that “any activity of normalization in sports with the Zionist enemy is a crime against humanity.”

By: United with Israel Staff