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Palestinian Arabs

'Palestinians' on war crimes witch hunt


By Ryan Jones
September 18, 2005

Supplementing their efforts to wrest Judea and Samaria from Israel through violence and negotiations, the ?Palestinians? are now also looking to have any Jew who has lived on those biblical lands jailed as a ?war criminal.?

?The settlements are a war crime, and the settlers are criminals of war. This is not a Palestinian definition; this is what international law states,? insisted Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, in a Friday interview with Israeli Arab daily Kul el-Arab.

Sourani claims the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria were established on confiscated private land, and that the ?natural resources of these lands were exploited and Palestinian homes were destroyed.?

Israel has historically taken great pains to plant settlements only in barren and uninhabited areas ? land designated as state-owned or state administered. There is not a single Jewish settlement built on private Arab land.

PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas admitted as much following Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip when he stated nearly 98 percent of the lands on which Gaza's Jewish communities sat were state-owned lands.

Such facts were unlikely to deter Sourani, who vowed to ?track down each and every settler war criminal.?

Earlier this month, the PCHR was behind the issuing of an arrest warrant for retired IDF general Doron Almog in London.

The group claims Almog as former head of the IDF's Southern Command committed ?war crimes? against the ?Palestinians? during Israel's ongoing war on terror.

Almog evaded arrest by refusing to deplane in London before being carried back to safety in Israel by an El Al flight. The arrest warrant has since been canceled as a result of pressure from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Exploiting the British justice system, the PCHR has also filed suits against former and current IDF chiefs of staff Moshe Ya'alon and Dan Halutz.

Sourani said he would soon initiate legal action against the Jerusalem Municipality for demolishing illegally-built Arab homes in the eastern half of the capital.

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