Yassir Arafat and the top officials of the Palestinian Authority refused to condemn Thursday’s human bomb attack on a crowded Israeli civilian bus stop north of Tel Aviv.
Arafat, his official media outlets and his top advisors, also made a point NOT to call the latest attack an act of terror, and they put the blame on Israel.
“The Tel Aviv Government is to blame for everything that is happening,” proclaimed Nabil Abu-Rudeineh, Arafat’s personal spokesman, using the derogatory epithet “Tel Aviv government” which is favored by Arab officials when they take a particularly tough diplomatic line or are trying to insult Israel officially.
“One person was killed and five injured in an explosive operation near Bnei Brak,” declared Arafat’s Voice of Palestine during its Thursday morning broadcasts.
“The (Palestinian) National Authority placed the blame for the operation and all that is happening in the region on Israel,” declared Muhammad Sanouri, the anchorman for Arafat’s official radio station
The VOP broadcasts at first downplayed this morning’s suicide bomber assault, preferring to stress “Israeli massacres” and “Israeli war crimes” in Gaza, where the Israeli army has been blowing up tunnels and weapons arsenals used by terrorists in Arafat’s Tanzeem organization as well as by the HAMAS Islamic terror group.
By stressing Israel’s “crimes,” Arafat is trying to keep his popularity from shrinking any lower after the nearly unprecedented clashes this week in Gaza between his own forces and HAMAS after the Islamic group publicly tortured and murdered a PA police commander it said had hounded HAMAS agents.
At the same time that he is publicly lambasting Israel and renewing his tough diplomatic line against it (demanding full refugee return to what is now Israel, for example), Arafat is quietly moving to discipline HAMAS because he cannot afford to have his top officials dragged out of their homes and shot in public.
Arafat is aware that he must balance his public attacks against Israel and his more quiet and fitful pursuit of HAMAS, cognizant that overstepping in either direction could endanger him.
A cartoon in the Arafat-supported Al-Hayat Al-Jadida newspaper yesterday raised the specter of “fitna”–Palestinian civil war.
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In the cartoon, a Palestinian tries to put out the flames of civil war with a bucket of water labeled “unity” (“Wahda” in Arabic).