By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
Aug 01, 2004
PLO chief Yasser Arafat at the weekend paid off terrorist kidnappers belonging to his Fatah organization, rather than place them under arrest and confiscate their weapons, as demanded by the signed agreements that bear his signature.
Armed members of the Fatah’s Al Aqsa Brigades “military” wing abducted three Westerners – an American, a Briton and an Irishman – on Saturday morning, and released them several hours later after Arafat approved payment of the ransom they had asked.
The foreigners were reportedly English language teachers volunteering in the biblical Samarian town of Shechem.
They refused to talk to the media following their ordeal.
Under the terms of the Oslo and the Road Map “peace” agreements, Arafat and his PA are obligated to “disarm and dismantle” the various terror groups and arrest and prosecute known individual terrorists.
They have refused for more than a decade to fulfill that commitment in the “systematic” and “sustained” manner demanded by the agreements.
As a result, the PA-controlled territories have been transformed into an anarchic region were various armed factions answer to a number of “warlords.”