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Translated from Hebrew to English by me Faruk Kaddumi, the Chairman of the Fatah and the foreign office of the PLO sitting in Tunis, says that there are discussions underway to change the Israeli shekel with the Jordanian dinar as the official Palestinian Authority currency.

Emergency Assistance for the Election of the Ra'ees of the Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority December 7, 2004 www.mofa.go.jp/announce/announce/2004/12/1207.html 1. On December 7 (Tue), Japan decided to extend emergency assistance totaling about $1.06 million to help the election of the President (Ra'ees) of the Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority on January 9, 2005, to be carried out in a fair and smooth manner. 2. As Mr. Yasser Arafat, Ra'ees of the Palestinian Authority, passed away on November 11, the Palestinian Authority plans to have an election on January 9, 2005, to decide his successor. The Central Election Committee has recently asked the...

The Bush administration's effort to win Congress's blessing for $20 million in direct aid to the PA, to help, in particular, pay for elections in January has been met with resistance on Capitol Hill. "We understand that the administration is now reconsidering," a House Republican staffer said. "It was supposed to be for election purposes." State Department spokesman Adam Ereli described the aid as "an idea that's under consideration." "No decision has been made. So it would certainly be premature to conclude that we are or are not going to do something," Ereli added. Ereli said Thursday the aid request...

GAZA - Palestinian security forces know who was behind the killing of three Americans in Gaza nearly a year ago, but cannot act against the factions while fighting with Israel continues, said Musa Arafat, head of Military Intelligence and a cousin of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. Describing the killers as "some Palestinian factions," Musa Arafat told Reuters on Wednesday that the United States also knew who was to blame. Washington's anger at the failure to catch the killers has worsened relations that were already soured over U.S. accusations that the Palestinians had not done in enough to rein in...

This brief comparative study presents video footage released today of Mr. Arafat's primary spokesperson - Dr. Hanan Ashrawi - addressing an overseas audience in English alongside two TV programs broadcast last week in Arabic on PA TV. Dr. Ashrawi's message of "peace with justice for Palestine and Israel" did not translate over to the Arabic broadcast of outright incitement to murder Jews, "the brothers of monkeys and pigs." The PA Message in English In honor of the International Day of Prayer for Peace, the World Council of Churches posted on its website today a video message from Palestinian Authority spokesperson...

Unidentified gunmen in Ramallah Tuesday shot and killed another Palestinian suspected of collaboration with Israel. Rami Yaghmour, 28, was arrested last month by the Palestinian Authority's Special Forces security apparatus following suspicions that he was working for the Shin Bet. PA security sources claimed that he had confessed during interrogation to the charges against him. Yaghmour, a resident of Al-Bireh, is the sixth suspected collaborator killed in Ramallah the past 18 months. Eyewitnesses told The Jerusalem Post that Yaghmour was kidnapped by a group of masked gunmen as he was being escorted to a local court by members of the...

Music videos around the world are intended for children's entertainment. But the Palestinian Authority (PA) uses music videos as a tool to promote hatred and violence among Palestinian children. In recent months, PA TV has increased the frequency of hate broadcasting aimed at children. One example of this escalation is the repeated broadcast this month of a 30-second music video depicting Israeli soldiers as cold-blooded murderers. In this fictitious scene, children are seen playing soccer, while actors portraying Israeli soldiers wearing yarmulkes (skullcaps) watch them from the side. Suddenly one of the soldiers moves over to the children and, after...

Ahmed Kawasmeh, one of the two suicide bombers who carried out Tuesday's attacks in Beersheba, was released recently from a Palestinian Authority prison, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Sources in Hebron said Kawasmeh, 22, was arrested several months ago by the PA security forces in the city on charges of membership in Hamas and planning attacks against Israel. They said Kawasmeh was held for several weeks before he was released. It's not clear why he was released or if he had been questioned about his plan to carry out a suicide attack. A PA security source said he was not...

Translation from Hebrew to English by me: The Islamic Jihad organization has called upon the loyal followers of the Shiite radical leader, Muqata Al Sadr, to continue and hit oil pipelines in Iraq. "Al-Sadr has to continue his resistance and call upon his men to continue to hit the oil sources which provide revenue for the occupies," the words of the organization went. Yesterday Al-Sadr's men struck a oil pipeline using an explosive device in the south of the country.

UNITED NATIONS - Israel accused the Palestinian Authority on Thursday of misleading the United Nations by including a youth gunned down by Palestinian militants on a list of people killed by Israeli forces. Hassan Jamil el-Zaneen, a teenage resident of the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, was killed by Palestinian militants on July 22 after he tried to stop them from using his family's yard to fire Qassam rockets into Israel. Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades took responsibility for the slaying but then issued a statement asserting that "Hassan Jamil el-Zaneen fell a martyr" during a clash...

Zakiyah Abu Sneineh, whose 60-year-old husband, Salah, died in the blast, refused to acknowledge that he was killed by Palestinians. "Arabs couldn't have killed him, only Israelis," the woman said, sobbing in the emergency room of a Ramallah hospital. In an adjacent room, her 6-year-old grandson Mahdi, who was critically wounded in the blast, was fighting for his life. The Abu Sneinehs were in their car, waiting in a line of vehicles, when the blast went off. A Palestinian man hurt in the attack said it was too early to judge the terrorists. "I don't want to blame them," said...

Criticizing both Israel and the Palestinian Authority for failing to live up to their obligations under the road map, the United Nations' undersecretary-general for political affairs, Kieran Prendergast, called on the IDF to halt targeted killings of terrorists and demanded that Palestinians "militants" end the launching of Kassam rocket and mortar attacks against Israel from Gaza. In his monthly briefing on the situation in the Middle East to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Prendergast also urged Israel to halt settlement expansion and remove unauthorized outposts, and the Palestinians to implement security reforms.

The beginning of another refugee crisis? The PA is refusing to allow 2,000 Arab residents of PA-controlled Rafiah to return to their homes, preferring that they remain stuck in Egypt. The background of this harsh decision is that Israel, because of security considerations and terrorist warnings, has closed the Rafiah crossing, offering an alternative route instead. The Palestinian Authority refuses to allow the stranded people to use it. IDF Maj.-Gen. Yosef Mishlav, Coordinator of Government Activities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, opened the Nitzana border crossing, some 40 kilometers to the south, to the Arab residents as a humanitarian gesture....

[IMRA: Shaykh Ikrimah Sabri was appointed by Arafat] Ramallah Voice of Palestine, official radio station of the Palestinian Authority, carries at 1000 GMT on May 14 2004 a live sermon from Al-Aqsa Mosque. Shaykh Ikrimah Sabri, "mufti of Jerusalem and all Palestine" and chairman of the Higher Islamic Council, delivers the sermon, which he begins by condemning "the criminal British and US forces" for their "lowly acts" against human dignity in Iraqi prisons. These are the first signs of the "fall of the capitalist system," he says. The imam calls for closing Islamic ranks against all "criminal occupiers." He hails...

The Palestinian Authority Tuesday urged the international community to interfere with Israel to stop the "brutal massacre" in Rafah. "The Palestinian leadership calls on al the world countries, the US, the Quartet, the Arab brothers, the European Union and the UN Security Council to stop this big brutal massacre decided by the Israeli government," said a statement issued by PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's office. "The Israeli government's goal is to destroy Rafah and its refugee camps and to displace their residents," the statement charged. "So will the world remain silent in the face of this crime of genocide and displacement?"...

U.S. Secretary of State Powell may meet with Palestinian PM Qureia this coming weekend (Israel Radio)

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is urging National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice to suspend her planned meeting with the head of the Palestinian Authority until he publicly refutes an article in the official PA newspaper praising a terrorist who murdered an Israel father and his two young daughters. "Those who incite murder by praising murderers do not deserve the honor of meeting with senior U.S. government officials," said ZOA National President Morton A. Klein. "At this crucial moment in the international war against terrorism, the Bush administration must have a policy of zero tolerance for those who incite terrorism...

The problem with being bold is that, if you don't keep it up, you begin to pale by the standards you have created. US President George W. Bush's problem is not overreach. It is under follow-through. Bush's guest today, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, can tell him a thing or two about what to do when you get in trouble. Say what you will about Sharon's disengagement plan, but it has certainly captured the agenda. The US is not thrilled about being forced to adapt to a new plan, but this is precisely what the US did to Israel with the...

Translation from Hebrew to English by me The head of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Rouhi Fattouh, have given legitimacy to the revenge terror attacks of the Hamas movement, which ever they may be, in response to the elimination of the leader of the movement, Sheik Ahmad Yassin, 3 weeks ago. In a press conference he convened yesterday, Fattouh said that it is the right of the Hamas movement to respond on the elimination of its leader and founder, "The Sheik is a jihad fighter and the symbol of the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic struggle," and in his words "no man...

An elite Israel Defense Forces unit, working together with the Shin Bet, arrested 12 Palestinian fugitives, some members of the Palestinian intelligence and preventive forces, who hid out in a local psychiatric hospital in the Dehaisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem and engaged in gun battles with soldiers. Before dawn on Thursday, acting on intelligence information, security forces surrounded the psychiatric hospital and using loudspeakers called on the fugitives to surrender. In response the Palestinians opened fire at the troops and engaged in a gun battle with soldiers that lasted over an hour before the Palestinians surrendered. Security forces found three...