In recent days, Likud MK Oren Hazan made headlines when he boarded a bus full of Arab families going to meet their terrorist sons in security prison, and this week, when he attacked Joint Arab List MKs after they had been removed for heckling US Vice President Mike Pence’s Knesset speech. Now, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas has taken revenge on Hazan by insisting he be banned from any forum in which PA officials also participate.
In the middle of next week, a meeting between senior Palestinian Authority officials and Israeli MKs is scheduled to take place under the auspices of a British organization called Forward Thinking, a UK-based group dedicated, among other things, to promoting “a more inclusive peace process in the Middle East.”
According to Israel’s Channel 2 TV, the Abbas office asked explicitly to include rightwing, especially Likud MKs in the meting, and so the Forward Thinking people invited MK Hazan to participate, seeing as he has been the most covered Israeli MK in the PA media.
But in light of Hazan’s recent media provocations (including a post calling for the assassination of Mahmoud Abbas, according to Channel 2 News), and the fact that he repeatedly declares from the Knesset podium that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people,” the Abbas office declared a veto on inviting Hazan to the Ramallah event, threatening to cancel it should the feisty MK is brought in.
The Brits caved, and Hazan will remain in Jerusalem. The list of MKs who will participate includes the head of the delegation, Hilik Bar (Labor), Akram Hasoon (Kulanu), Saleh Saad (Labor), and, from Shas, MK Yitzhak Cohen.
MK Hazan, for his part, posted on his Facebook page filled with double entendres in Hebrew, some of them misspelled, suggesting that if the PA chairman announces a boycott against you, it only means one thing: “they are a-f-r-a-i-d.” He borrowed that last pronunciation from PM Netanyahu, who used it at a political rally against his enemies on the left.