PA NGOs Refuse to Sign Anti Terror Document

Palestinian Media Watch's article PA NGOs Defy US -- Refuse to Sign Anti Terror Document shows why the Palestinians are far from accepting the idea of living side by side with Israel. Even their center for "human rights" and their Red Cross-equivalent cannot deny backing terrorism.

The Palestinian Authority [PA] NGOs have defied the US, by refusing to sign a declaration that they will not use USAID grant money for terrorist purposes. This is a major challenge to the US administration, which sees the elimination of Palestinian terror and terrorist organizations as an integral component of US policy. The US has conditioned new funding agreements with PA NGOs, upon their signing an Appendix declaring the funding will not be passed on to terrorists. The PA NGOs are refusing to sign.

The Palestinian NGO opposition is universal, following a meeting of representatives of many NGOs who unanimously agreed they would not sign, and called for disciplinary measures to be taken against any Palestinian organization that signs. The Palestinians called the US anti terror Appendix "provocative" and called on the NGOs to refuse USAID, as was done during the Jenin battle, rather than sign.

In spite of the significant sums of money given to the Palestinian through USAID, the organization was maligned at the event, one speaker calling USAID a "destructive" organization, whose purpose it to "damage" or "corrupt" Palestinian organizations.

The following is the declaration that the Palestinian NGOs refuse to sign:

"The beneficiary institution has not supplied, and will not supply in the future, any material or other form of aid to any individual or other body that is known or has any reason to be considered as a person or a body that incites, plans, supports, or is involved in any terrorist activities of any kind." [Trans from Arabic, Al Ayyam Aug. 25, 2003.]

"Another appendix … includes the names of Palestinian individuals and bodies that the United States considers to be terrorists, and therefore prohibits any cooperation with them such as the Hamas, the [Islamic] Jihad, the Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, etc." [Al Ayyam Aug. 25, 2003.]

Organizations refusing to sign include the "Mizan" Center for Human Rights, "The Red Crescent" and the "Federation of Sanitation Activities". The refusal is based on the PA policy that refuses to see murder of Israelis including suicide bombings as terrorism. The current opposition to suicide bombings, as it is often stressed within the PA, is because of the negative political conditions that make suicide bombings politically detrimental, and not because suicide bombings are terror. Suicide bombings are defined as "legitimate resistance".