Access Middle East has a transcript (and audio file) of a conference call with Khaled Abu Toameh, the Israeli Arab journalist who has been most outspoken about the unmitigated disaster that is Yassir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority.
Abu Toameh points out one failure of the western press on this matter:
‘Some foreign journalists have mistakenly portrayed the power struggle as a power struggle between reformists and corrupt officials. I think it that this is inaccurate because these people who are fighting all belong to the same group…those who are campaigning against the older generation and are in fact fighting for position and money. Mohammad Dahlan, the former Security Minister in the Palestinian Authority, was until recently part of the structure, part of the Palestinian Authority leadership, but when he was dismissed from his job he lost the campaign under the pretext of fighting corruption and demanding reform.
‘Similarly, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, they have also joined the campaign, but they are not reformists, they’re not liberal. They are jockeying for power and position and money. They are angry with Arafat because he stopped paying them their salaries. So as I said I disagree with those who tend to describe this power struggle as one between reformists and corrupt officials.’
Certainly worth reading the whole thing.
Ed O’Loughlin of the Sydney Morning Herald brings out a similar point in an interview with the leader of the group that kidnapped four French aid workers – sparking the ‘intrafata.’ The SMH headline: ‘Faction listens to Arafat only when he says what it wants to hear.’ Why did they kidnap them?
“We wanted to send a message to Arafat because he is besieged in Ramallah and our messages don’t reach him,” Abu Haron said. “We wanted to reach him through Al- Jazeera.”
Talk about manipulating the media…and so much for an uprising for democratic reform…
