PA envoy attends funeral of bomb victim

Taken from the Jerusalem Post, September 9, 1997

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat sent a senior official yesterday to the funeral of 14-year-old Smadar Elhanan, granddaughter of the late general and peace activist, Matti Peled. Elhanan was killed in Thursday's suicide bombings in Jerusalem's Rehov Ben-Yehuda.

"We have wanted to participate and send condolences to all the families. But it is impossible to do this," Anis Qaq, the PA's deputy minister of planning and international cooperation, said.

"But when we found those people who are related to general Peled, we contacted the family and said Mr. Arafat would like to pay respects and participate in the funeral. It was very appreciated by them. They were so touched by this gesture."

At Elhanan's funeral at Kibbutz Nahshon, Qaq delivered Arafat's condolences and a pledge to fight terrorism.

"The killers don't differentiate between those who are for the peace process and those who are not," he said. "They want to kill everything. Mr. Arafat is committed to uprooting terrorism. The irony is that this happened to a great family. We really admire this family."

Peled, a longtime advocate of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, was one of the first Israelis to meet with PLO officials at a time when Israel outlawed such contacts. He served as a commander in the Six Day War, and as a Knesset member in the 1980s.

Qaq said Arafat planned other gestures to Israeli terror victims.

"From the point of policy, there will be other gestures if circumstances permit," he said. "We don't want to impose ourselves or create problems."

"We are unhappy. You are unhappy. There is so much pain going on," he added.

Qaq also called for tighter security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians.

"There are talks. But they should be more intensive," he said.

Former prime minister Shimon Peres recalled Peled's hope of a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Standing at Smadar's grave, Peres said, "we all hoped that there would be an opportunity for boys and girls like you, that young men and women, like you would not be taken by the sword or by bombs, or by evil or by pain."

09 September, 1997