Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders recently accused Israel of using \"poison gas\" against them - but Israeli officials responded, \"The Palestinians are disseminating lies throughout the world.\" Ha\'aretz reports that Palestinian television showed many scenes last week of Palestinian youths at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis suffering from respiratory difficulties, convulsions and hysteria, described by a doctor as symptoms of \"gas attacking their nervous system.\" However, Prof. Eran Dolev, head of the Israel Medical Association\'s ethics board, said that the physiological response to a nerve gas attack looks nothing like the ones portrayed on the television. \"In case of a nerve gas attack, the victim excretes fluids all over his body...\" Dolev said. Other army sources said that the filmed scenes were clearly staged.
Even Bassam Eid, director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, said, \"This story [of the gas] is causing serious incitement in the territories because the Palestinians have complete faith in the veracity of the claims. It has damaging psychological effects on the Palestinian people which intensifies the level of violence; unfortunately, this is something which the PA considers today to be an advantage.\"
Even Bassam Eid, director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, said, \"This story [of the gas] is causing serious incitement in the territories because the Palestinians have complete faith in the veracity of the claims. It has damaging psychological effects on the Palestinian people which intensifies the level of violence; unfortunately, this is something which the PA considers today to be an advantage.\"