PA: Peacebuilding "is treason"!
PA: Peacebuilding "is treason"!
Text upper right: "Economic normalization is treason"
- PA TV attacked the opening of an Israeli supermarket in Atarot in Northern Jerusalem. The supermarket chain is known as a place where Palestinians and Israelis work together. The TV story included this picture which showed skulls in a shopping cart and text stated that shopping there, which is "economic normalization," "is treason"
By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
An important part of the people-to-people peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians that Israel encourages are the joint economic projects that bring financial gain to both. One Israeli prominent in advancing such peacebuilding is businessman Rami Levy who has built a number of supermarkets in which Palestinians and Israelis work side by side. The chain not only successfully employs both Palestinians and Israelis but in the aisles of the supermarkets Israelis and Palestinians are shopping together as well. But the Palestinian Authority doesn't share Rami Levy's or Israel's interest in peacebuilding. In fact, it opposes it and works against it. When a new Rami Levy complex opened recently in the Atarot industrial area in Northern Jerusalem, official PA TV broadcast this cartoon of a woman with a shopping cart filled with various items. In the reflection in the mirror, her cart is full of skulls, the symbol of death. The text asserts that Palestinians shopping there would be committing "treason" and called for "boycotting" the supermarket:
Text upper left: "Do not be the occupation's partner in the Judaization of the city."
Text upper right: "Economic normalization is treason."
Text bottom right: "Calls from the national and Islamic forces to boycott this [Rami Levy] complex as it finances the occupation and strives to Judaize the city [Jerusalem]."
[Official PA TV, Affairs from the Capital, Jan. 13, 2019]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous times that PA and Fatah leaders prohibit what they call "normalization with the enemy." For example, in the name of Islam the PA's Fatwa council prohibited Palestinians to seek election or vote in the Jerusalem municipal elections, and Fatah called on Arabs in Jerusalem not to participate in municipal elections - and succeeded, as only 1.5% of Jerusalem Arabs voted. The PA's intelligence service arrested a man for inviting an Israeli MP to his home, and his family denounced him. Likewise, PA TV programs for kids have encouraged children to boycott Israeli products and Palestinian institutions have condemned participation in joint Palestinian-Israeli arts festival in Jerusalem. Fatah condemned Indonesian religious scholars who participated in a conference in Israel and said they had "sold their souls to the Devil."In 2014, senior PA leader Jibril Rajoub condemned a joint sports event between Palestinian and Israeli children as "a crime against humanity."