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Newsletter : 9fax0511.txt
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>Israel Faxx
>JN May 11, 1999, Vol. 7, No. 88
PA Calls on Arab Nations to Use Phone Code
By IsraelWire
The PLO Authority has called upon its Arab neighbors to use the new international telephone dialing code as another step to attract investors to the autonomous areas. "I urge the Gulf countries in particular to use our new code 970 and to push foreign investment into the telecommunications industry in Palestine to help our privatization," Imad al-Falouji told a Middle East telecommunications conference in Abu Dhabi.
Palestinians Receive Orient House Ultimatum
By Ross Dunn (VOA-Jerusalem)
In Israel, Palestinians have rejected government orders to close
down their offices in Jerusalem, the Palestine Liberation
Organization's unofficial headquarters. There are concerns the
political standoff could lead to violence.
Israel's public security minister, Avigdor Kahalani, has given
Palestinian leaders until noon (EDT) to close their offices in east
Jerusalem, in the building known as Orient House. Kahalani says if
the Palestinians fail to carry out his order, he will send in
police to enforce the law.
The Palestinians have the right to appeal the order, but their
lawyers say they will not go to the Supreme Court. They maintain
the PLO can not be forced out of the offices, because it has
always acted legally and in accordance with the peace accords
signed with the Israeli government.
Palestinian leaders have warned there will be violence if Israeli
police enter Orient House. The PLO says the closure order is
nothing more than a political stunt by Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu, who they say is desperate to reverse his slide in the
opinion polls, one week before national elections.
The prime minister says Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital
of Israel, and he pledges to block all efforts by Palestinian
leader Yasir Arafat to claim a share of the holy city as part of a
future independent state.
Munich Olympics Massacre was PLO Operation
Israel Faxx Staff Report
Yasir Arafat's PLO was directly responsible for the assault on
Israel's athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, one of the men who
oversaw the attack confirmed 27 years later. Abu Daoud, today a
member of the Palestine National Council, made the admission in his
French-language autobiography, "Palestine: From Jerusalem to
Munich."
Daoud, whose real name is Mohammed Daoud Machmoud Auda, was a
leader of Black September, a terrorist group which the PLO claimed
it had no links with, but which experts have long said was a
deniable, covert PLO unit.
In his book, he says the gunmen had not intended to kill the 11
Israelis who died after being taken hostage at the Olympic Village.
However he offered no apology, blaming German police and Israeli
Prime Minister Golda Meir for their deaths.
Daoud writes that Arafat had been briefed on the planning for
Munich by his PLO number two, Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf), who was
subsequently assassinated by another Palestinian group. He says
Arafat and two other men saw him off on the mission with the words,
"Allah protect you."
On September 5, 1972, eight heavily-armed Black September
terrorists stormed the Israeli team's apartment, killing an athlete
and a coach in the process. They took nine others hostage, and
demanded that Meir release 234 Arab prisoners in Israeli jails and
two German terrorist leaders imprisoned in Frankfurt in return for
their safe release. They also wanted safe passage out of Germany.
A 17-hour standoff ended when German police snipers tried to shoot
the terrorists at a German air base where a jetliner was standing by,
ostensibly to fly them to Cairo. In the ensuing gun battle, all
nine of the blindfolded Israeli hostages, five of the Arab gunmen,
and a German policeman were killed.
Daoud said the two Israelis killed early in the attack had to die
because they had threatened their captors. The German police, he
said, had broken their pledge to let the gunmen go by opening fire.
He also sought to place blame on Meir for refusing to give in to
the demands to free the Arab prisoners.
Daoud cited news reports saying that eight of the nine Israelis
were shot by the Germans. Other reports from the time say five of
the Israelis died from a terrorist hand grenade detonated in their
midst, and the other four were shot dead by the terrorists.
Daoud, now 62, is a PNC member and lawyer in the Palestinian
Authority-ruled town of Ramallah. He writes that he regrets that
the PLO used violence - because the result had been a public
outcry, rather than the sympathy for the Palestinian cause he had
hoped for.
Following the Munich massacre, Meir gave instructions for Israeli
agents to hunt down and kill those behind it. She told the Knesset
on September 12: "We have no choice but to strike at the terrorist
organizations wherever we can reach them. That is our obligation to
ourselves and to peace. We shall fulfil that obligation
undauntedly." At least 12 PLO/Black September members were
reportedly assassinated in the ensuing months.
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