The PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs called Netanyahu’s visit “a provocative colonialist and racist visit” and “warned against the dangers and consequences.”
By United With Israel Staff
The Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to incite violence, reports Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).
Following Wednesday’s visit by Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to Hebron, the PA is now saying that Netanyahu’s presence there was an act of “obvious war” and that he “defiled” the city, says PMW, an Israel-based NGO that documents cases of incitement in Palestinian media.
Ahead of the visit, PMW voiced concern that the Palestinian leadership might exploit the occasion to launch a wave of violence. The PA has compared Netanyahu’s visit, marking the 90th anniversary of a massacre of nearly 70 Jews by their Arab neighbors in Hebron, to the visit in 2000 by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon to Judaism’s holiest shrine, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Then-PA leader Yasser Arafat “exploited to ignite the PA’s five-year terror campaign – the Intifada – in which more than 1,100 Israelis were murdered in terror attacks,” PMW notes.
The Palestinian Arab Front, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), linked to the Palestinian Authority, called Netanyahu’s visit to the Cave of the Patriarchs “a clear declaration of war,” says PMW, even though nearly all of the founding mothers and fathers of Judaism are buried there.
The Front called for “a popular response,” says the watchdog, promising that its “fighting people will not sit idly by.”
Even the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs called Netanyahu’s visit “a provocative colonialist and racist visit” and “warned against the dangers and consequences,” as cited the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, says PMW.
‘A Serious Escalation’
A spokesman for PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, claimed that a visit by an Israeli prime minister to one of Judaism’s holiest cities is “a serious escalation and a provocation of the feelings of Muslims,” as reported by official Palestinian news agency Wafa, adds the watchdog group.
He warned of “dangerous repercussions” and described the visit as a “dangerous escalation which aims at dragging the area into a religious war that no one can bear its consequences,” PMW reports.