The Hamas terrorist organization is working hand-in-hand with the Palestinian Authority’s leading Fatah faction to morph the current terror wave into a “tsunami” of terror against Israeli citizens.
Fatah is using its control over Palestinian Authority media, finances, international diplomacy and politics. Hamas is using the strategies of terror.
A cartoon posted Monday (Oct. 18) on the official Facebook page of the Fatah faction shows a Palestinian Arab child kicking a long-nosed, terrified Chassidic Jew off the grounds of the Temple Mount, the site holiest in Judaism.
In the background of the picture are the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock along with the words written in Arabic, “Leave our skies,” translated by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW palwatch.org) monitoring organization that keeps an eye on Palestinian Arab media.
A line from a poem by the PA poet Mahmoud Darwish, calling for all Jews to leave Israel, is posted with the cartoon: “Leave our country, our land, our sea, our wheat, our salt, our wounds. Everything.”
The cartoon is another addition to the long list of incitement disseminated by the Palestinian Authority’s leading faction, headed by Mahmoud Abbas – the world’s idea of the Palestinian Arab “partner for peace” towards to whom Israel should be directing her efforts.
Abbas himself said just last month:
The Al Aqsa [mosque] is ours … and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet… We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem. (Sept. 16)
That statement alone was not only silly and superfluous but also was deliberately inflammatory and lent credibility to a base lie about Israel intending to change the status quo at the Temple Mount, which it never has. Nor does the present government intend to do so now.
A subsequent statement by Abbas’ adviser Ahmed al-Ruweidi was gauged to keep the fires burning just as attacks seemed to be slowing down. “[Palestinian] residents of Jerusalem will not move from their city” he said, as if Israelis intended to throw them out, adding “Their actions and policy will not scare us.”
He added:
We will remain in Jerusalem and protect it and its holy sites (as if Israel intended to destroy the holy city or its holy sites when in fact Israel has been the only guardian of the city in a thousand years to restore the city’s beauty and allow open access by all peoples to those sites), first among them the blessed Al Aqsa.” (To this day the site remains under the province of the Islamic Waqf Authority and the Jordanian government, with the full agreement and cooperation of the State of Israel — the precious “status quo.”)
Meanwhile Hamas has also urged Arabs in Judea and Samaria to carry out suicide bombings across the border in Israel, issuing a “call to arms” to terrorists in Hebron and Shechem as the first order of the day.
Senior Hamas terror official Mahmoud al-Zahar said Sunday the current wave of terror needs to be escalated from a popular terror war into an actual, armed terror war, according to the Hebrew-language Yediot Achronot newspaper.
Al-Zahar made an open call for the use of guns and explosives, ramping up both the intensity and the scope of the attacks planned ahead.
Terrorists in the Hebron area of Judea and those in the Shechem (Nablus) area of Samaria were the first to receive the new orders. Both are situated in areas that could potentially be used as launching sites for terror attacks on all four of Israel’s major cities: Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv, and Haifa.
According to the report, an official with the Palestinian Authority security force claimed a Hamas cell in Hebron with at least six members was recently captured, together with explosives and funds. The cell members reportedly said under interrogation that they wanted to die, a revelation that led investigators to believe the terrorists had been instructed to carry out suicide bombing attacks against Israel.