Will media coverage of Har Homa embolden Palestinian gunmen to renew gunfire on Jerusalem’s southern neighborhoods?
Lenny Ben-David doesn’t rule out the possibility:
During the first two years of the second intifada, more than 400 shooting attacks were unleashed on the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo and its 40,000 residents from the nearby Arab town of Beit Jala. Although the town was predominantly Christian, Beit Jala was infiltrated by Fatah’s Tanzim gunmen who shot at Gilo, hoping for Israeli retaliation against the local residents. Gilo residents began to evacuate. Belatedly the Israeli government provided cement barriers and bullet-proof glass to protect the Jerusalem neighborhood’s residents.
IGNORING the fact that the neighborhood consisted of major apartment complexes, schools and shopping centers, much of the world press condoned the attacks on the “Israeli settlement,” as if it were some temporary military camp. The British press was quick to claim that Gilo was “illegal under international law.” Reuters’ correspondent Christine Hauser tried to show that it was the Arab town of Beit Jala under Israeli attack by describing the piles of brass bullet shells collected by the Palestinian locals, not realizing that spent casings are found at the source of the shooting, not the target. The media distortion was so great that in 2001 CNN issued a memorandum to its staff stating that “We refer to Gilo as a ‘Jewish neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem’… We don’t refer to it as a settlement.” . . . .
Somewhere in the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, or Fatah’s al-Aksa Brigade, or Hamas, or Islamic Jihad, military commanders are planning their attack on Har Homa, probably from neighboring Bethlehem. Snipers, mortars and Kassam rockets will be the order of battle.
