Free Republic

Palestinian security forces in Ramallah on Monday arrested a suspect in the murder of Samir Rantisi, a local journalist and spokesman for former PA Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. Rantisi, 42, had for years urged Palestinians to endorse non-violent methods in their confrontation with Israel and was strongly opposed to suicide bombings. He was murdered early Monday morning while he was sleeping in his bedroom in the Sateh Marhaba neighborhood. A lone gunman who broke into his apartment in the Shkukani Building shot him twice in the head in front of his wife. The wife managed to identify the suspect,...

May. 15, 2005 19:25 | Updated May. 15, 2005 22:47 Who's the Palestinian president? By KHALED ABU TOAMEH Farouk Kaddoumi addresses the United Nations Photo: AP RAMALLAH The PLO executive committee's recent decision to declare Mahmoud Abbas as President of the State of Palestine has enraged veteran PLO leader Farouk Kaddoumi, who has dismissed the move as illegal and unacceptable. Kaddoumi, who is based in Tunis, said in a message he sent to many PLO and Fatah leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that the executive committee did not have the authority to relay the powers of the...

Backing seen weakening for Abbas By Charles A. Radin and Sa'id Ghazali, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent | April 5, 2005 RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is being hailed internationally for his peacemaking efforts with Israel, is failing on virtually every important domestic front and is rapidly losing support in the territory he governs, Palestinian and Israeli officials, activists, and analysts say. Violence has surged in the West Bank. Firing by Al Aqsa Brigades gunmen at Abbas' own headquarters last week was just the most widely publicized of numerous recent incidents in which militants disrupted public...

Newly appointed Fatah head Farouk Kaddoumi on Friday said that Yasser Arafat "had joined the tens of thousands of martyrs among the Palestinian nation." Speaking on the al-Jazeera television network, Kaddoumi said Arafat had left behind a generation of Palestinians who will "work towards the fulfillment of his dream that a Palestinian boy will fly the Palestinian flag above the walls of Jerusalem." Kaddoumi blamed Israel for not adhering to any of the agreements signed with the Palestinians. "In 1991 we reached certain agreements at the Madrid Conference, but subsequent Israeli governments did not fulfill even one article of the...

Farouk Kaddoumi, the PLO's hard-line "foreign minister," said Thursday that when Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat talks about the need to pursue the struggle against Israel, he is referring to the armed struggle. Kaddoumi said the armed struggle was the only way to force Israel to accept the demands of the Palestinians. Kaddoumi's remarks were made in an interview with the Jordanian newspaper Al-Arab. He admitted that the PLO charter, which denies Israel's right to exist, was never changed. In response to a question what does Arafat mean when he talks about the continuation of the struggle, Kaddoumi, who is...