November 5, 2001
Freezing Terrorist Accouts

In a move applauded by pro-Israel advocates, the US has added anti-Israeli terrorist groups Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to a presidential executive order that instructs foreign banks and financial institutions to freeze terrorists' accounts or face American sanctions.

The decision came as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs David Satterfield said on Friday that the Palestinian intifada had "become an ongoing process of calculated terror and escalation," and blasted the Palestinian leadership for failing to act against terrorists as promised.

Speaking before a pro-Palestinian audience, Satterfield argued that, while Israel needs to realize that a political settlement is the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinian violence only hurts the Palestinian people's aspirations.

"Use of violence is not a tool which can in any fashion whatsoever advance the issues or interests of either side," he said. "The intifada, whatever its origin, has become an ongoing process of calculated terror and escalation, reciprocated by actions which all too often - by Israel - have proved inflammatory and provocative. Steps must be taken to bring this to a halt," he told a conference held by the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine.

He said the Palestinians had delivered "good words, excellent rhetoric" regarding promises to stop violence.

"Nice instructions sent, but very little in terms of the substance of confronting those elements whose interests are not in advancing the cause of the Palestinian people," he said, adding that it is in Arafat's interest to act against organizations that are opposed to a negotiated settlement with Israel," he said.

Satterfield on Friday seemed to go even further by criticizing the intifada and Arafat, and his remarks were met with mocking jeers.

"Israelis, because of Arafat's failure to act against such organizations, no longer perceive Arafat as a peace partner, but as a terrorist," he said

"The image of Yasser Arafat in 1993, in the eyes of the Israeli public and then-leadership, transformed itself from that of a terrorist, a rogue, an enemy, to one of a partner - a difficult partner, a painful partner, but a partner. The intifada has transformed that back to the negative image," Satterfield said.

Satterfield was pressed on Israel's use of American weaponry in the killings of Palestinians, and participants questioned why US policy was not tougher against Israel, when it is destroying Palestinians' homes and attacking civilians with American arms.

"We look at that. We also look at the bodies lying on the street as a result of Hamas, PFLP, and Jihad terror," he said.