Incitement to hatred and violence against Israel continues undimmed within Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA), In the space of two weeks last month, Mahmoud Abbas said to an Arab audience that “if the Arabs want war against Israel] – we are with them”; awarded the family of dead Palestinian terrorist who attempted to attach an Israeli checkpoint with pipe bombs a $2000 presidential grant; and a senior P.A. Health Ministry official publicly accused Israel of addicting Palestinian drug users.

Last week, PA president Mahmoud Abbas said to Western media that he was committee to peace yet, to Egyptian and other Arab journalists, Abbas said that, “I have said more than once that if the Arabs want war – we are with them … We do not wish to turn to armed struggle, because our [lack of] capabilities and the international atmosphere do not allow for it.” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Fatah) on January 24, 2011, translation in ‘Abbas makes contradictory statements: No to violence, yes to war against Israel,’ Palestinian Media Watch bulletin, January 30, 2011).

The same week, Abbas, through the governor of the Jenin district, Kadura Musa, awarded a presidential grant to the family of the Khaldoun Najib Samoudy, who was described in the P.A. official daily report on the grant as a shahid (martyr). Musa noted that the grant was financial aid in the amount of $2000 that Abbas was “awarding to the relatives of the Shahid, who was recently killed as a Martyr at the Hamra checkpoint by the Israeli occupation forces” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Fatah) January 25, 2011, ‘Abbas gives terrorist’s family $2000,’ Palestinian Media Watch bulletin, January 27, 2011).

The previous week, at a seminar in Bethlehem organized by the PA and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Dr. As’ad Al-Ramlawi, Director of the PA Health Ministry’s Department of First Aid and Chairman of the Palestinian National Council to Fight AIDS, said that one out of three youths in Jerusalem uses drugs and accused the “occupation authorities of encouraging [drug] use in Jerusalem, and noted that these authorities encourage the Arabs who have been arrested for drugs to use [drugs], while the Jews who are imprisoned for similar crimes are rehabilitated” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, January 11, 2011, translation ‘PA Libel: Israel encourages drug use among Arabs in Jerusalem,’ Palestinian Media Watch bulletin, January 26, 2011).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “As we did two months ago when we dissected another two week period of incitement and extremism within Abbas’ PA, we urge President Obama to publicly and immediately condemn this barrage of PA pro-terror, anti-peace, actions by Abbas and the PA. We particularly urge him to do so in light of the fact that the U.S. under his presidency has doubled U.S. taxpayer’s aid to Abbas’ PA to nearly $1 billion in the past year even as Abbas has given $2000 to a terrorist’s family.”