New York – The Palestinian Arab terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been invited to join the PA Hamas-Fatah unity government recently agreed upon in Mecca, has said today that it will not join. The PFLP holds three seats in the Palestinian legislature and had been allocated one seat in the new Cabinet, which is expected to be appointed in the coming weeks. Its decision is expected to have no impact on plans to form the new government ( Jerusalem Post, February 20).

The PFLP is a Marxist-Leninist Palestinian terrorist organization, founded in 1967. It has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) (the largest being Fatah). It political positions are even more extreme that those of Fatah, which calls in its Constitution for the destruction of Israel (Article 12) and the use of terrorism against Israelis as a central feature of it efforts to attain that goal (Article 19). The PFLP has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States of America, the European Union, Canada, and Israel.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The offer of a place in the unity government to the PFLP simply underscores the fact that the unity government is an alliance of terrorist groups all committed to eliminating Israel which does not even pretend that it intends to fulfill Palestinian obligations under the signed Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plans to dismantle terrorist groups, arrest, jail and extradite 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 terrorism. This is also further proof that Mahmoud Abbas is not a moderate a peace-maker so many claim him to be, but is in fact an extremist terrorist committed to Fatah’s long-standing goal of destroying Israel. This should not be so surprising in light of his recent statement that ‘We have a legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation … Our rifles, all our rifles are aimed at The Occupation’ or the fact that he wrote a PhD and book denying the Holocaust.”

The Zionist Organization of America, founded in 1897, is the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States. The ZOA works to strengthen U.S.-Israel relations, educates the American public and Congress about the dangers that Israel faces, and combats anti-Israel bias in the media and on college campuses. Its past presidents have included Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Rabbi Dr. Abba Hillel Silver.