The Palestinian Authority on Sunday reaffirmed the death penalty for any Palestinian found guilty of selling land to Israelis.
The decision came in response to a ruling by a Palestinian court according to which such acts were only a “minor offense.”
PA Prosecutor-General Ahmed al-Mughni appealed against the ruling to a higher court, arguing that the sale of land to Israelis was a “major offense” punishable by death.
The appeal was accepted.
That verdict considering such offenses a major offense is aimed at reminding Palestinians of the PA law that prohibits selling land to Jews, Mughni said.
The land law, which was originally put in force by Jordan between 1948 and 1967, carries the death sentence.
The PA says the law is necessary to prevent the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
In 1997, the PA announced that it would seek the death penalty for any Palestinian convicted of selling land to Jews or Israelis, in accordance with the Jordanian “Law for Preventing the Sale of Real Estate to the Enemy.”
According to the 1973 legislation, the sale of property to Jews or Israelis constitutes a crime against state security and well-being, punishable by death and the confiscation of the culprit’s possessions.
The PA later drafted its own law to replace the Jordanian statute. The law is called the “Property Law for Foreigners.”
It describes the sale of land to “occupiers” as an act of “national treason.” Although the PA has thus far refrained from executing those convicted of selling land to Jews, there have been many extrajudicial killings of Palestinian suspects over the past decades.
Peace!
Meanwhile, not a word of condemnation from the UN, “human rights” organizations or any other of the usual suspects.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
10:50PM: Shimon Peres being interviewed at the UN.
And here’s his speech today.
8:28PM: Who said Shimon Peres doesn’t have cajones?
Turkish President Abdullah Gul clarified Monday morning that he would not be meeting with President Shimon Peres in New York due to a tight schedule.
He added, however, that “we will not forgive Israel for those killed in the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla, even if Israel apologizes.” His remarks were quoted by Turkey’s official Anatolia news agency.
According to Israeli sources, the meeting was thwarted due Peres’ refusal to apologize for the deadly Navy raid. The sources said th Turks demanded the apology as a condition for holding meeting.
The meeting was initiated by Gul, who even told the Turkish media about it, but talks with Israeli officials revealed that the Turks had tried to push Israel into a corner.
Peres told reporters after addressing the UN General Assembly that he had been pressured by the Turks to apologize but refused.
“I was asked if I would attend a panel organized by President Clinton together with President Gul, and I agreed,” Peres said. “They suggested that President Gul and I meet, and I agreed. And then I received all kinds of inappropriate conditions. We remain Turkey’s friends, but Turkey has changed its mind. We’re not ready for unacceptable preconditions.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, who is currently in New York, said that “Israel is not the one who should apologize. The Turks are the ones who should apologize.”
7:08PM: Hamas has released another video on Gilad Shalit.
The video is below. Note the huge advertising fail on the part of Ynet.
4:50PM: Power Line posts about a recent experiment devised by a University of Illinois economics professor who found hundreds of university faculty members guilty of hypocrisy when it came to Israel and human rights.
Barbara Hollingsworth reports on an illuminating experiment conducted by University of Illinois Professor Fred Gottheil:
Frontpagemag.com that he compiled a list of 675 email addresses from 900 signatures on a 2009 petition authored by Dr. David Lloyd, professor of English at the University of Southern California, urging the U.S. to abandon its ally, Israel. Prof. Gottheil discovered that six of the signers, who hailed from more than 150 college campuses, were members of his own faculty.
“Would these same 900 sign onto a statement expressing concern about human rights violations in the Muslim Middle East, such as honor killing, wife beating, female genital mutilation, and violence against gays and lesbians?” he wondered. “I felt it was worth a try.”
The results? “Almost non existent,” he told Frontpage editor Jamie Glazov. Only 27 of the 675 “self-described social-justice seeking academics” agreed to sign Gottheil’s Statement of Concern – less than 5 percent of the total who had publicly called for the censure of Israel for human rights violations.
Like all good experiments, Professor Gottheil’s leads to a conclusion:
The refusal of women’s studies professors to publicly condemn honor killings, or academic advocates of gay rights to speak out against the treatment of homosexuals in Muslim countries, is just about as hypocritical as it gets. Their loathing (dare we call it hate?) of the UN-created Jewish state is so deep that it “trump[s] their professional interests,” leading them into a “ideologically discriminatory trap of their own making,” Prof. Gottheil added.
Or stated otherwise: “The academic Left may be just a little more sophisticated [than the non-academic Left] in their loathing of Israel, but scratch the surface and it’s all the same…It turns out that with all their professing of principle, they are sanctimonious bigots at heart.”
3:02PM: The next video includes chilling footage of fundraising for Hamas in a US mosque.
1:40PM: Hamas reportedly planned to abduct the bodies of four Israelis they killed earlier this month in order to thwart the resumption of direct peace negotiations between Israel and the PA.
According to the Egyptian newspaper, the group ordered the militants who carried out the West Bank shooting to seize the bodies of the victims in order to force the Israel Defense Forces into undertaking a mass operation for their return and thus foiling the renewal of talks.
Think about that for a second. Hamas are willing to prod Israel into an operation – likely resulting in palestinian casualties – just so peace will be more remote.
The Hamas militant group announced Monday that it had previously told the United States it would accept the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, according to Israel Radio.
Citing the organization’s semi-annual report, Israel Radio said that Hamas had also asked the U.S. administration to open dialogue. The militant group said in its report that it had passed that message along via American academics and politicians visiting the Gaza Strip.
Don’t be fooled. Here is just one relevant article from Hamas’ own charter, which is more authoritative than any representation the group makes to Western audiences:
Peaceful Solutions, Initiatives and International Conferences:
Article Thirteen:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. “Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know.”
Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Muslim problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Muslims as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers?
“But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah.” (The Cow – verse 120).
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with. As in said in the honourable Hadith:
“The people of Syria are Allah’s lash in His land. He wreaks His vengeance through them against whomsoever He wishes among His slaves It is unthinkable that those who are double-faced among them should prosper over the faithful. They will certainly die out of grief and desperation.”
5:45AM: As if you needed more proof the PA are not real peace partners:
“The PLO’s representative in Lebanon, Ambassador Abdullah Abdullah, emphasized yesterday that the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, which have started in Washington, are not a goal, but rather another stage in the Palestinian struggle… He believes that Israel will not be dealt a knock-out defeat, but rather an accumulation of Palestinian achievements and struggles, as happened in South Africa, to isolate Israel, to tighten the noose on it, to threaten its legitimacy, and to present it as a rebellious, racist state. He noted that Israel faces international isolation with doubt cast on its legitimacy, because of its actions and the war crimes which it has carried out. He added, ‘Many Israelis in senior positions are afraid to travel to European countries lest they be put on trial for their crimes.'”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 9, 2010]
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
