Correspondents' Correspondence
TANNENBAUM, MICHAEL
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS PLO Terror Jerusalem—The funeral took place just beyond...
...It admonished as well against a repeat of the events of 1936-39, which began as an armed Palestinian struggle directed at the British and Jews but ended as an internecine massacre...
...Another, delirious, had to be restrained by the crowd from embracing the body...
...Someone else watches his car, and guards are posted at his home throughout the night...
...Abdul Jankho's sons, in a gesture of mourning and rage, threw 21 bullets onto the corpse of their father...
...There are, moreover, 100 males between the ages 18-36 in his hamula (extended family), and Shyoukhi knowingly suggests they would not sit on their hands were he assassinated —a possibility he does not rule out: "I know my people," he says...
...Meanwhile, Israeli security forces have considerably stepped up their presence on the West Bank 10 protect the populace and root out the killers...
...Not surprisingly, he has been attacked on PLO radio, and has received scores of death threats...
...The document was a warning to the PLO that if bloodshed continued, countermeasures would be taken...
...a third brother stood lookout from a shop across the street...
...The lawyer is not alone in refusing to be intimidated by the PLO...
...They were probably planted, he said, as part of the PLO's psychological campaign to keep West Bank inhabitants in line...
...Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS PLO Terror Jerusalem—The funeral took place just beyond the walls of the Old City...
...Members of the aggrieved family, known to want revenge, may have been among his executioners...
...A few days later the paper reported that PLO head Yasir Arafat had issued a reprieve upon learning that some of the accused had desisted, prompting a Palestinian journalist I know to speculate that the two stories had no basis in fact...
...He further explained to me in his small book-lined office in Hebron that he is involved in no vendettas...
...They are children with guns...
...He handed me a mimeographed declaration that came in the mail that day from a previously unheard of group calling itself the Palestinian Front...
...They face a difficult task, however, for the PLO is by now deeply entrenched in the area (over the past few months 12 PLO cells have been uncovered, totalling 80 persons), and among fellow Palestinians as elsewhere it seems determined to cam out a new wave of terror...
...In attendance was a man I recognized and made a mental note to speak to at the earliest possible date...
...Still, two burly younger brothers were in the room where we spoke...
...Since Anwar Sadat visited here last November, the Palestinian-populated West Bank has witnessed three assassinations, one abortive attempt, and death threats to dozens of local citizens...
...The man I noticed at Jankho's funeral who is also in danger, although his murder would presumably be met with less equanimity, is Hussein Shy-oukhi...
...As for the three men actually murdered, public reaction would have been much stronger if the victims did not have so many personal enemies...
...The motive is to dissuade moderate Arabs in the area from openly supporting the Egyptian President's peace initiative—just as the PLO slaughter of 32 Israelis on March 11 sought to undermine any movement toward an Arab-Israeli settlement...
...West Bank threats are generally mailed or broadcast over PLO radio, but not always...
...Who comprises the Front is a mystery...
...Michael Tannenbaum...
...he, too, might not be around much longer...
...These are the ones that didn't get you," cried one of them...
...Thus a widely circulated article in the Qatar newspaper, Al-Arab, informed the region's residents that 34 of their number had been judged guilty of collaboration with Israel and sentenced to death in absentia...
...A 38-year-old lawyer, he made a much-publicized call last summer for the PLO to democratize its structure and put an immediate halt to all forms of violence...
...Yet Shyoukhi cannot credibly be accused of collaboration, because he defends captured PLO guerillas in Israeli military courts...
...Abdul Jankho, for example, had killed (in self defense, a court ruled) a man from a refugee camp outside Ramallah...
...The source of the terror is the Lebanese-based Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), whose political fortunes are currently on the wane...
...In December, he led a West Bank delegation to Cairo to express support for Sadat...
Vol. 61 • March 1978 • No. 7
