PLO logo shows ‘No interest in peace with Israel’

Reacting to a new Fatah logo that appears to depict a united, Israel-free Palestine, the Jewish organization B’nai Brith says it shows the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas are lukewarm about a two-state-solution.

‘We are continuing to warn the [Canadian] government not to be fooled into accepting the notion that Fatah and Abbas want real peace with the Jewish state,’ said Frank Dimant, head of B’nai Brith Canada. ‘[A] true partner for peace on the Palestinian side does not exist.’

His remarks echo the U.S.-based Zionist Organization of America, which said the logo proves Fatah and the PA ‘have no interest in peace with Israel, only its destruction.’

Last month, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official daily newspaper of the Fatah-led PA, issued a logo for the party’s 48th anniversary. It featured a map of the British mandate of Palestine, the state that existed before the 1948 establishment of Israel. It was quickly spotted by the Israel-based Palestinian Media Watch. 

The group noted the logo features keys, a symbol of Palestinian claims to property within Israel, while the checkered pattern overlaying the image of a united Palestine is reminiscent of a keffiyeh, the scarf worn by PLO leader Yasser Arafat and a well-known symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

Fatah was founded by Mr. Arafat as a terrorist group devoted to destroying the Jewish state through guerilla warfare. The controversial logo was issued to commemorate the Dec. 31 anniversary of Fatah’s first armed attack on an Israeli target in 1964.

In recent years, Israeli allies such as the United States have warmed to Fatah particularly as Mr. Abbas has spoken against violence and pushed for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ‘I believe that the West Bank and Gaza are Palestine and the other part is Israel,’ he said in a November interview. Later that month, he obtained ‘nonmember observer state’ status for the Palestinians at the UN General Assembly.

Fatah stands in sharp contrast to Hamas, a hardline Islamist group that actively calls for Israel’s destruction and controls the Gaza Strip. The two groups split violently in 2007, when Hamas expelled Fatah from the coastal territory, torturing and killing many of its members. Mr. Abbas was reduced to exercising power only on the West Bank.

Recently, however, there have been increasing moves toward reconciliation. Monday marked the first time in five years Fatah was allowed to hold anniversary celebrations in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Similar celebrations also took place in Jerusalem, where the Israeli authorities normally forbid Palestinian demonstrations. They were held under the slogan ‘‘the state and the victory.’

Public depictions of an Israel-free Palestine are nothing new in the region. The Palestinian Media Watch maintains a running tally of Palestinian illustrations that feature ‘a world without Israel.’ Maps depicting Israeli territory as ‘Palestine’ can be regularly spotted on Palestinian murals, textbooks and even the official Fatah flag, where the pre-1948 borders are depicted behind the image of crossed rifles.

On Tuesday, a British textbook publisher apologized for a 2003 textbook, Skills in English Writing Level 1, which lumped together Israel and the Palestinian Territories as ‘Occupied Palestine.’ In a statement, the book’s publisher, Nicky Pratt of Garnet Education wrote he ‘cannot with any confidence determine why it happened.’