The Fatah party recently published statements of a key Yasser Arafat advisor boasting that the former Palestinian leader ordered the murdrerous “second intifida.”
By United with Israel Staff
The Palestinian Authority’s ruling party published an interview this week that thoroughly debunks the myth that Palestinian terror is a grass roots “uprising,” exposing it as an orchestrated campaign of murder ordered directly by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
The interview, which was originally broadcast Qatari propaganda outlet Al-Jazeera in 2009, features Mamdouh Nawfal, who served as Yasser Arafat’s Advisor on Internal Affairs in 2000.
According to Nawfal’s comments, which were translated by watchdog Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), “The orders and instructions to the [Palestinian] Security Forces and the Tanzim (i.e., Fatah terror faction) were to take action after the Friday prayers. The activity was not limited to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The instructions to the Fatah organizations were to take action in [Judea and Samaria], the Gaza Strip, and everywhere.”
In the interview, “Nawfal described in detail Arafat’s decision to take advantage of then Israeli Parliament Member Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000 to start a terror campaign that would last a ‘long’ time. The terror orchestrated by Arafat and the PA lasted 4.5 years, during which time Palestinian terrorists, including many members of Arafat’s PA security forces funded by the West, murdered 1,100 Israelis,” reported PMW this week.
“Arafat’s advisor Nawfal described that already on the day of Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, Arafat ‘dispatch[ed] many people under the name Guardians of Al-Aqsa’ to initiate violence. The very next day he gave the orders that Palestinian terror was to be ‘everywhere,'” added the PMW report.
According to PMW, Nawfal’s comments clearly contradict claims by Western governments that the “second Intifada” was a popular uprising that “Arafat was merely unable to stop.” Instead, Nawfal’s comments demonstrate that the second intifida was “a terror campaign initiated and directed by Arafat.”