Do you remember the Jame Bennet kidnapping attempt from a few days ago? Well, the PLO Arabs are claiming it was all just one big misunderstanding.
Palestinian Authority officials and journalists denied over the weekend that Palestinians in Rafah had tried to kidnap New York Times correspondent James Bennet.
Bennet said he was talking on a cell phone at about 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday night when a stranger approached him, smiled, offered a handshake and said, “Welcome.” The stranger then grabbed Bennet’s hand, while another man tried to force him into a Mercedes Benz that appeared at the curb. The men did not appear to be armed, he said.
Bennet said he tried to fight off the assailants and screamed for help. PA policemen stationed at the hospital arrived almost immediately and attempted to pull him away from the abductors.
“It turned into a big scrum,” he said. The assailants got into the car and fled. Bennet said his shirt was ripped, but that he was not hurt.
Sami Zayarah, a Palestinian journalist who claims he was standing at the entrance to the Abu Yussef al-Najar Hospital in Rafah where the incident allegedly took place, was quoted by the daily Al-Quds newspaper as saying that Bennet left the Palestinian journalist, who was accompanying him and headed towards an area where gunmen where stationed.
Zayarah said a number of gunmen stopped Bennet to verify his identity “because they were expecting an undercover Israeli army unit to be operating in the same area.”
He said that when some Palestinian policemen saw what was happening, they rushed to the scene to explain to the gunmen that Bennet is an American journalist.
“The gunmen then left him alone without any problems and there was no attempt to kidnap him or harm him, contrary to what he has published,” the journalist added.
Zakariya Talmas, a senior member of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate in the Gaza Strip, described Bennet’s claim as “baseless.” He said that the syndicate looked into the case and discovered that there had been no attempt to kidnap the journalist. The gunmen only wanted to check his identity, Talmas added.
Al-Quds said a number of senior PA officials phoned Bennet to explain to him what had happened. It said Bennet expressed his understanding, but nevertheless went on to publish the story ñ a fact that led the PA officials to wonder why he had done so.
I would tend to believe Bennet’s version since he cannot exactly be accused of being biased against the PLO Arabs. Not to mention the fact that the PLO Arabs have an extremely hard time telling the truth.
Meanwhile, in the wake of Marwan Barghouti’s conviction on five counts of murder, a Gaza leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades has threatened to abduct check the identities of IDF soldiers.
