By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
Mar 10, 2005
Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority is set to execute 15 Arabs this month for the crime of assisting Israel in foiling terrorist attacks against its Jewish citizens.
This action, coming at a time when the PA is demanding Israel set free jailed terrorists, tells the Arab street anti-Jewish terrorism will be tolerated and even rewarded, while working against the terror groups is a capital crime, Minister-without-Portfolio Natan Sharansky wrote earlier in the week.
For its part, Israel is doing nothing to help those who put their lives on the line saving Jewish men, women and children from “Palestinian” atrocities.
When asked by Arutz 7 Tuesday if Israel would demand the prisoners’ lives be spared, Defense Minister Sha’ul Mofaz simply ignored the reporter’s question.
This sends the message that any potential Arab allies in Israel’s war on terror can expect no reciprocal aid from Jerusalem when it is their lives that are threatened, a prominent Israeli lawyer determined to prevent the executions suggested.
Suspected collaborators
“Palestinian” sources reported last week that the director of the PA’s Military Court had sentenced between five and 15 Palestinian Arabs to death for suspected collaboration with Israel’s security forces in the war on terror.
PA-appointed Jerusalem Mufti Sheikh Akrameh Sabri later gave religious approval for the 15 executions.
All 15 were accused of having passed sensitive information to Israel’s security forces that led to the targeted killings of wanted “Palestinian” terrorists.
Israel is forced to approach private Arab citizens to assist in its war on terror because the Palestinian Authority continues to refuse to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in accordance with the Oslo Accords and Road Map peace plans.
‘Peace cannot be built on blood’
Sharansky wrote an urgent letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the weekend urging the government to prevent the executions.
“It is unacceptable that the PA demands the release of terrorists from our jails, and we respond affirmatively because of the hope for an opening to peace, while at the very same time the PA is about to commit state executions of people accused of helping Israel thwart terror,” he was quoted as writing by The Jerusalem Post .
“It is impossible to build a peace process based on blood…The cold-blooded execution of those individuals accused of cooperating to deflect terror directly contradicts the gestures demanded of Israel, tramples human rights, and with it any spark of hope for a better future in the Middle East," Sharansky wrote.
Abandoning Israel’s front line
But the Sharon government appeared to be unmoved Tuesday when Mofaz brushed off a reporter’s question about whether or not he had demanded the prisoners’ lives be spared in a meeting with Abbas that day.
Israel Law Center director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner told Arutz-7 she sent her own letter to Sharon “demanding that he take immediate steps to ensure that these executions are not carried out.”
Sharon “should threaten not to release more [Palestinian] prisoners, and he must turn to the US and Europe, as well as donor nations, and he must involve the United Nations as well,” Darshan-Leitner said.
“And if all this doesn't work, then we even recommended that [Sharon] resort to military action to stop these executions,” the veteran attorney stated.
“These people are our front in this war, how can we abandon them to the dogs?” Darshan-Leitner asked.