The Zionist Organization of America News Release, September 22, 2004.
A senior Palestinian Authority (PA) official has for the first time publicly
acknowledged that the PA knows the identity of the terrorists who murdered
three Americans in Gaza last year – but he says the PA will not arrest them.
Musa Arafat, the head of PA Military Intelligence and a cousin of PA chairman
Yasir Arafat, told Reuters (Sept.22, 2004) that:
“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.”
The three murdered Americans were John Branchizio, 37, of Texas, John Linde
Jr., 30, of Missouri, and Mark Parsons, 31, of New Jersey.
They were security personnel guarding a convoy of U.S. diplomatic
vehicles that was attacked by Palestinian Arab terrorists at the Beit Hanoun
junction in the Gaza Strip on October 15, 2003.
In response to the PA officials’ startling admission, the Zionist Organization of
America is urging the Bush administration to respond by immediately
withdrawing its opposition to the Koby Mandell Act, which would create a
special office in the Justice Department to focus on capturing Palestinian Arab
murderers of Americans.
The PA official’s admission comes two months after State Department official
David Satterfield said at a Senate hearing (on July 20, 2004), regarding the
PA’s failure to arrest the killers: “There has been no satisfactory resolution of
this case. We can only conclude that there has been a political decision taken
by the chairman to block further progress in this investigation.”
Until Satterfield’s statement, the Bush administration had maintained that the
PA was trying, but was unable, to capture the terrorists involved in the murders
of 51 American citizens in Israel and the territories since the signing of the Oslo
accords in 1993.
The ZOA is also urging the Bush administration to:
* Demand that the PA hand over Abd Al-Aziz Awda, whom the U.S. indicted in
February 2003 as the founder and ‘spiritual leader’ of an Islamic Jihad terror
cell whose victims included Alisa Flatow of West Orange, NJ, a 20 year-old
Brandeis University junior, who was murdered in a bombing near Kfar Darom on
April 9, 1995; and Shoshana Ben-Yishai, 16, of Queens, NY, who was
murdered in a shooting attack on a bus in Jerusalem on November 9, 2001.
Awda is head of the Al Qassam Mosque in the PA-controlled Gaza Strip.
* Place advertisements in Palestinian Arab newspapers, offering monetary
rewards for the information leading to the capture of Palestinian Arab murderers
of Americans.
The State Department offers such rewards on its web site, but has not
advertised them among the Palestinian Arabs themselves – even though in other
cases of overseas murders of Americans, ads are routinely placed in local
newspapers.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: “This is a crucial moment in
America’s war against terrorism. The administration says the PA has made a
political decision not to capture the killers. The PA admits it knows who the
killers are, but refuses to capture them.
If the U.S. fails to take swift and decisive action against the PA,
terrorists everywhere will conclude that they can murder Americans with
impunity, and pro-terror regimes will conclude that they can shelter killers of
Americans without any fear of serious consequences.”
