1. In the months that preceded the Annapolis meeting the Palestinian media carried larger amounts of anti-Israel incitement than usual, which continued and even increased afterwards. Often woven into it were anti-Semitic symbols and images which were irrelevant to the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

2. Anti-Israeli incitement is an integral part of the campaign Hamas directed against the Annapolis process, the United States and the PA. However, even the PA media itself, controlled by Abu Mazen and Fatah, were methodical in their propaganda policy of vicious anti-Israeli incitement, while expressing serious doubts regarding Annapolis. The hatred expressed by the media goes far beyond legitimate criticism, even severe criticism, of Israel's policies in the PA-administered territories.

3. The raw material for the PA's anti-Israeli propaganda comes from daily life in the PA-administered territories. However, the Palestinian media present a one-sided, extremist view of the situation. Israel is represented as ceaseless endeavoring to make the Palestinian populace miserable and is “killing” the peace process while the terrorist attacks to which the IDF responds are almost never condemned and no connection is ever made between them and Israel's counterterrorist activities in the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria.

4. However, in our assessment, in the background lies the enormous gulf in expectations which has accompanied the Annapolis process from its inception. It is based, perhaps unavoidably, on the maximalist demands presented by the PA since the beginning of the talks with Israel about the core issues, among them borders, refugees and Jerusalem . From the beginning, the PA demands were not accompanied by groundwork to alter Palestinian public opinion regarding the need to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and to make concessions and compromises as part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, but rather the opposite: Israel is consistently represented as responsible for the lack of process and for the anger channeled at it.

5. Paradoxically, anti-Israeli incitement has continually increased as the negotiations progress. That is in direct contravention of the Palestinian commitments to the first phase of the road map, which requires the PA to stop terrorism and violence and to put an end to anti-Israeli incitement, which serves to encourage terrorists and terrorism. Those two basic components of the road map have not been implemented so far by Abu Mazen's PA. While the PA cannot in fact put an end to Hamas's hate campaign (which is also aimed at the PA), it allows, and even encourages anti-Israeli incitement in all the media it controls...