Saeb Erekat Exonerates Hamas
Saeb Erekat is the gift that keeps on giving—for those tracking the Swiss cheese-like consistency of “the Palestinian narrative.” Erekat, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator in PA-Israeli talks, has a habit of making Pinocchio-like assertions. For example:
* In 2002, he insisted to Cable News Network (CNN) that Israeli troops had destroyed the refugee district in the West Bank city of Jenin. In truth, they killed 55 Palestinian Arabs, almost all combatants, losing 23 of their own in house-to-house fighting.
* Earlier this year he declaimed on his people’s descent from ancient Canaanites who allegedly preceded the Israelites in the Promised Land by thousands of years. Never mind the much later arrival of Arabs or that the Palestinian Arab national movement essentially began in 1920.
Now Erekat has done it again. According to Middle East Monitor, the PA representative declared, “Hamas is a Palestinian movement, is not and will never be a terrorist organization .” Apparently the United States, Israel, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries have erred in designating Hamas (the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement) as terrorist. Perhaps the hundreds of Israeli non-combatants murdered by Hamas members since the late 1980s, including children and the elderly, were actually secret agents.
By now, indicted by his own statements, Erekat would seem to deserve little credibility with members of the news media. That he continues to be treated as a viable source appears to speak volumes about the shortage of self-professed moderates, fluent in English, on the Palestinian side.
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