PA Chair Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party took responsibility for an attack against children in a home north of Jerusalem, falsely claiming to have killed three people.
Fatah, the political party headed by Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, claimed responsibility Monday morning for an incident a day earlier in which two Arabs infiltrated the community of Neve Tsuf in the Binyamin region of Samaria, north of Jerusalem, apparently in a failed attempt to carry out a terror attack.
The terrorists entered a home in the afternoon, taking two boys and locking them in a room. They were in search of items that could be used as weapons, possibly kitchen knives, when a third sibling appeared and chased them away. A woman was lightly wounded in the ensuing struggle.
The attackers escaped and security forces launched extensive searches to apprehend them. They have not been arrested yet.
Miri Maoz Ovadia, spokeswoman for the Binyamin Regional Council, said:
“The break-in occurred at my parents’ home, the Maoz family. Police are looking into the incident, but it is important to me that the public understands what took place there, based on eyewitness testimony. This event almost turned into a terror attack and miraculously was prevented.
It was initially unclear whether the attack had a criminal or a nationalistic motive until the Fatah’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, claimed responsibility for a failed terror attack. The statement said that the organization’s terror cell confronted “Zionist settlers” and killed three of them. This claim is false.
“This struggle continues until victory or martyrdom in the way of Allah,” the Brigades stated.
Fatah was widely considered to be a moderate organization and a legitimate peace partner. In April, it formed a Palestinian national unity government with Hamas, which finalized the end of the US-brokered peace negotiations.
Author: Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency