A senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official repeatedly called for Palestinians to take up arms against Israelis in an article published last week in prominent Palestinian outlets, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports.
Issa Karake, the PLO's Commission of Prisoners' Affairs director, accused Israel of trying to kill Palestinian prisoners who ended a 40-day hunger strike the day after his article was written.
"They (i.e., the prisoners) are being murdered [by Israel] in silence, through an official and planned method," Karake wrote Wednesday on Prisoners' Affairs commission's website. "They are melting, bleeding, and dissipating. If one prisoner will fall, the entire world will fall. The world will die if a Palestinian prisoner will die... Break the pens, look for a gun and bullets. Do not look at your watches, the time is up..."
Two additional calls to arms were added when the Palestinian news site Al-Quds published the article a day later: "enough, let every one of us look for a gun and bullets."
This blatant example of violent incitement contradicts Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' assertion during a White House meeting with President Trump earlier this month that Palestinians raise youth in a "culture of peace."
Trump reportedly scolded Abbas for lying to him when the two leaders met again last week in Bethlehem.
"You tricked me in DC! You talked there about your commitment to peace, but the Israelis showed me your involvement in incitement [against Israel]," Trump shouted at Abbas, according to an American source cited in a report from Israel's Channel 2.
Just before the president's trip, the Palestinian Authority (PA) named two public squares after terrorists Karim and Maher Younes, two Israeli Arab cousins convicted in the 1980 kidnapping and murder or Israeli soldier Abraham Bromberg.
On Sunday, Abbas personally appointed Karim Younes to Fatah's governing institution – its Central Committee.
The PA's justice ministry "emphasized that the decision of the Fatah Movement leadership – led by President Mahmoud Abbas – to appoint the veteran prisoner Karim Younes to the Fatah Central Committee is the clearest and severest response to the campaign being led by Israel to accuse the prisoners, Martyrs (Shahids), and the Palestinian struggle of terror," the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported Sunday.
President Trump raised concerns earlier this month over the PA's program of paying terrorists and their families. Abbas is unlikely to end the program, with a top aide calling the idea "insane."
Amid growing pressure to halt this practice, it is important to note that Abbas is directly behind the policy concerning terrorist transfers and is personally responsible for fueling Palestinian hatred against Israelis.