The Palestinian Authority wrote the United Nations Tuesday of “ongoing escalated Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people” but did not even hint of any condemnation of the murder of kidnapped teenagers Naftali Frankel, Gilad Sha’ar and Eyal Yifrach.
The United States has made a big deal out of Mahmoud Abbas’ one-time condemnation of the abductions, but the only Palestinian Authority reaction since the discovery that the teenagers were murdered has been a condemnation of Israeli counter-terrorist maneuvers..
“Those who kidnapped the three Israeli teenagers want to destroy us,” Abbas said two weeks ago in Saudi Arabia.. “First and foremost [these teenagers] are human beings like us. It is our responsibility to search for them and to return them to their families. We will hold their kidnappers accountable, whoever they are.”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu also has praised Abbas for helping in the search for the bodies, but the quantity and content of official Fatah and Palestinian Authority statements clearly show that the condemnations and assistance in the search were simply window dressing.
Following the discovery of the teenagers; bodies Monday night, Fatah posted pictures of “Israelis crying over killed soldiers,” Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported.
Despite the two-week-old condemnation from Abbas after the news of the abductions broke, Fatah celebrated by posting on its official Facebook page a “caricature showing the three kidnapped boys as mice caught on the hooks of a fishing rod,” PMW added.
The Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, Ambassador Riyad Mansour, sent on Tuesday identical letters to the UN Secretary-General the, president of the UN Security Council and the president of the U.N. General Assembly “on the ongoing escalated Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in West Bank and Gaza.”
The Palestinian Authority’s official WAFA news agency reported, “Mansour underscored that many Palestinians were either killed or injured during Israeli bombardment on Gaza in the past two weeks, stressing that the escalation of Israeli aggression threatens to further destabilize the already-fragile situation on the ground, pulling the region into more violence, which, he said, requires the attention of the international community, particularly the UN security council’s attention, whose mission is to preserve international peace and security.”
His only condemnation was not over the kidnap-murders but instead over the alleged “collective punishment since the beginning of the Israeli military aggression in search of three allegedly abducted settlers.”
Yes, he actually said they were “allegedly” kidnapped,” just as Abbas stated two weeks ago, despite his “condemnation.”
Since the discovery of the three teenagers’ bodies Monday night, WAFA’s website made no mention of missile attacks on Israel and only reported on “settlers’ attacks,” that Israeli is planning to “seize Palestinian land… for settlement construction: and that a “settler” driver deliberately ran over an Arab near Hebron.