Palestinians Thwarting Extraditions, Israel Says : Mideast: Justice minister accuses Arabs of violating peace accord’s spirit by holding token trials of terror suspects.
JERUSALEM — Government officials charged Wednesday that the Palestinian Authority is violating the spirit of its peace agreement with Israel by refusing to extradite men suspected of involvement in attacks against Israel
On a day when right-wing Jewish demonstrators opposed to the peace accord clashed with police outside Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s home and tried to block intersections across the country, Cabinet ministers fumed that the Palestinians are embarrassing the government by thwarting Israel’s extradition requests.
“I view with concern the fact that the Palestinian Authority is exploiting the agreement [in order to] give refuge to all of the murderers and to thereby create an image that it supports the murder of Jews,†Justice Minister David Libai said.
He hinted that Israel may hold up the release of about 5,000 Palestinian prisoners until the authority begins extraditing suspects.
Libai’s comments were prompted by a sudden decision Monday by a Palestinian court in Jericho, which convicted two cousins, Yussef and Shaher Ra’ii, of “incitement†and sentenced each to seven years of hard labor.
Israel cried foul, noting that it had said Sunday that it wanted to extradite the cousins on suspicion of involvement in the July 18 murder of two Israelis who were hiking in the Judean desert.
“What we saw in Jericho was a trial to stop extradition but not a real trial,†Libai told Israel Radio on Wednesday after the Cabinet held a special session to discuss the issue. “We cannot accept a situation where the Palestinians set their own parameters for the war against terrorism and force us to accept them.â€
Jericho is the only West Bank town now fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority. According to the Israelis, the Ra’ii cousins, suspected members of the militant Population Front for the Liberation of Palestine, fled there shortly after the double murder. A third suspect, arrested by the Israeli General Security Services in the West Bank a month ago, allegedly confessed to committing the murders and implicated the Ra’ii cousins.
A similar case occurred in July, when a Palestinian court in Jericho sentenced Abdel-Majid Dudein and Rushdi Khatib, suspected members of the Muslim militant group Hamas, to 12 years in prison on charges of undermining Palestinian security.
That sentence was handed down a day after Israel requested Dudein’s and Khatib’s extradition for allegedly participating in the bombing of a bus that month in Jerusalem.
Israel protested Dudein’s and Khatib’s quick trial, and Libai formally asked Palestinian Minister of Justice Freih abu Medeen to extradite seven Palestinians now believed to be in Gaza or Jericho. Abu Medeen said the requests will be reviewed.
But some Palestinian officials later said they will never comply with the extradition requests.
“We have reached a decision, and it has been taken in our highest echelons, of course, agreed to by Chairman [Yasser] Arafat,†said Mohammad Dahlan, head of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service in Gaza.
“We shall not extradite to Israel our people, even if they are Hamas people who are wanted,†Dahlan told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “We do not want that our history books will say that we extradited Palestinians to Israel.â€
According to the Cairo accord governing Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and Jericho, the Palestinian Authority may extradite any Palestinian whom Israel suspects of having committed a crime on its territory.
However, the agreement also says the Palestinians have the right to try the suspects in Palestinian courts and have them serve out jail terms in Palestinian prisons before extraditing them.
Palestinians argue that the agreement is unfair because it specifies that Israel will extradite only non-Israelis who commit crimes on Palestinian-controlled territory and then flee to Israel. Any Israeli who commits a crime in Palestinian-held territory can be tried and jailed only inside Israel.
Israeli opposition legislators have seized on the Palestinian extradition refusals as proof that the Palestine Liberation Organization is not honoring its agreements with Israel and that any Palestinian-held territory is bound to become a haven for terrorists.
The issue is an explosive one because Israel’s security concerns have already delayed for more than a year the establishment of Palestinian self-rule throughout the West Bank.
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under way this week in Eilat, Israel, have failed to resolve some of the core security questions, and it is uncertain whether the two sides will be able to sign an agreement expanding self-rule before the end of the month, as planned.
Wednesday was the second anniversary of the Washington signing of the framework peace agreement between Israel and the PLO. It was marked only by demonstrations in Israel by a right-wing group called This is Our Land and by scuffles between Jewish settlers and Arabs at a Palestinian girls’ school in Hebron.
Police arrested dozens of right-wing demonstrators in Jerusalem on Wednesday night, and several demonstrators and police officers reportedly were injured in clashes outside Rabin’s house.
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