At a parade held in Ramallah this month to celebrate the Fatah movement’s 52nd anniversary, numerous Fatah members marched wearing mock suicide belts, and others marched with raised knives according to a report from Palestinian Media Watch.
Similar scenes were observed at last year’s anniversary celebrations, where children were shown to be wearing mock suicide belts.
At another event held in Ramallah to mark Palestinian Martyrs’ Day, PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah honoured Palestinian terrorists. Hamdallah saluted “the Martyrs of Palestine” with their “sacrifice and struggle”.
Hamdallah said: “We remember all our righteous Martyrs who paved the path to freedom, independence, and the state with their sacrifice and struggle”.
A third event was held under the patronage of Hamdallah in Gaza to mark Martyrs’ Day, where a representative of Mahmoud Abbas spoke as well as the PA Minister of Labour. Like Hamdallah, Abbas’s representative glorified all “Martyrs” who used “their pure bodies” to “create bridges” for the Palestinians and he vowed to continue their work.
Such sentiments were echoed by the PA Minister who implored his audience to bow their “heads before the souls of these Martyrs who with their pure blood recorded magnificent pages in the history of the defense of our holy land”.
These three events are examples of the continuing incitement to violence by the Palestinian leadership when addressing their own population in Arabic. This incitement contradicts the rejection of violence communicated by PA and Fatah leaders to the international community.
