Terrorists use Abbas’ phrase
for killing Israelis

New York – Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), one of the two terrorist groups that claimed joint responsibility for today’s suicide bombing in the Israeli resort city of Eilat, which killed three Israelis, virtually quoted Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas’ recent exhortation for Palestinians to stop fighting each other and turn their guns on Israelis instead. At a rally of 250,000 Palestinian Arabs on January 10, Abbas said “We have a legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation … Our rifles, all our rifles are aimed at The Occupation” (Jerusalem Post, January 11; Independent Media & Review Analysis, January 12). Now, following the Eilat bombing by PIJ and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a part of Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, the PIJ website claimed responsibility, saying, “The operation has a clear message to the Palestinian rivals. It is necessary to end the infighting and point the guns toward the occupation that has hurt the Palestinian people.” These ideas were echoed by a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Fawzi Barhoum, who said “The right thing is for Fatah weapons to be directed toward the occupation not toward Hamas” (Associated Press, January 29).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “It is not surprising that Mahmoud Abbas, in his recent calls for Palestinians groups to unite for the purpose of turning their guns on Israel and killing Jews, would inspire the terrorists who murder Israelis to cite the same reasons for their acts. Abbas is no moderate or peace-maker — on the contrary, he co-founded the Fatah terrorist group with Yasser Arafat, served as his deputy or forty years, funded the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes and wrote a book and PhD denying the Holocaust. Fatah remains dedicated to this day in its Constitution to the destruction of Israel (Article 12) and the use of terrorism (Article 19). Abbas has praised terrorists as “our heroes,” attacked Israel as the “Zionist enemy,” claimed of suicide bombers that “Allah loves the martyr” and proclaimed his fidelity to the goals of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat and pledged to “continue in the path of the late president until we fulfill all his dreams.”

“As PA president, Abbas has refused to implement the signed Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan which requires him to fight, arrest, extradite and jail terrorists and confiscate their weaponry and end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that feeds it. Last year, Abbas endorsed the so-called ‘Prisoners’ Plan’, a document produced by jailed Palestinian terrorists, that endorses continued terrorism against Israel, legitimizes the murder of Jews, does not accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, abrogates Palestinian obligations under the signed Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan, and insists on the ‘right of return.’ Abbas has attempted to form a unity government with Hamas, whose Charter calls for the destruction of Israel (Article 15) and the murder of Jews (Article 7). In December 2005, Abbas approved legislation mandating financial benefits to be paid to families of killed Palestinian terrorists.

“It is also noteworthy that the very occasion of Abbas’ call for Palestinians to unite and turn their guns on Israeli Jews, which the terrorists who carried out the latest suicide bombing in Eilat echoed today, was meant to be the anniversary of the first terrorist attack carried out by Fatah in 1965, two years before Judea, Samaria and Gaza came under Israeli control as a result of a war to destroy Israel which Fatah enthusiastically welcomed.

“The ZOA urgently renew our call upon the Bush Administration to immediately cease all support for Mahmoud Abbas and the PA and to cut all ties with it. The Bush Administration should also cease discussing any plans for rewards and concessions to the PA until it acts on its 13-year old commitments to fight terror and end incitement. It is high time for the U.S. and Israel to stop whitewashing Abbas’ pro-terror and anti-peace actions and tell the truth — that Abbas doesn’t want peace and is not a peace partner. Abbas is part of the problem, not the solution.”