A senior aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, called for violence against Israelis on Monday, stating “wherever you find an Israeli, slit his throat”.
Speaking in an interview with Palestinian news site Donia al-Watan, Sultan Abu al-Einein, a Fatah Central Committee official stated: “If you ask me my blunt position, I would say – Wherever you find an Israeli, slit his throat”.
His statement came in response to a question about the normalisation of relations between the PA and Israel. When pressed further he went on to underline that: “likewise, I am against talks, negotiations, meetings, and normalisation in all its forms”.
He also called for Palestinians — and especially the Palestinian leadership — to denounce such talk as they do when speaking against the actions of the Islamic State.
Abu al-Einein, a supporter of the death penalty for Palestinians who sell land to Jews has long been at the centre of controversy.
In 2013, five US congressmen wrote to Abbas to ask him to fire Abu al-Einein over his praise of terrorism, but the PA president refused, arguing he was an elected official.
After Palestinian Islamic Jihad member Muhannad Al-Okabi murdered two rabbis and wounded a mother and her child in Jerusalem in October 2015, Abu al-Einein wrote on Facebook: “We loved you, Muhannad. We loved you, while you sowed life for all Palestinians”.
In November 2014, after two Palestinian men murdered four rabbis and a Druze Israeli police officer at the Har Nof Synagogue terror attack in Jerusalem, Abu al-Einein posted pictures of the rabbis’ bloodied bodies to Facebook and praised “the heroic operation at the religious Zionist institute”.
Fatah officials frequently praise Palestinian terrorists, a tendency that Israel has criticized as glorifying and inciting violence against civilians. In March, Fatah’s official Facebook page posted an image praising a Palestinian who killed U.S. Army veteran and graduate student Taylor Force in Israel.
Fatah and the PA also joined Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in honouring an Arab-Israeli gunman who killed three people in Tel Aviv on New Year’s Day, writing on its Facebook page: “congratulations and may Allah receive you in Heaven”.
According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there has been 152 stabbings, 94 shootings, 45 vehicle ramming attacks and one bus bombing since September 2015.
