(Dec. 2, 2018 / Palestinian Media Watch)
“The rifle will never fall,” declared Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki on P.A. TV, using the anniversary of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s death to reiterate that Palestinians have a U.N.-protected “right to use the armed struggle.”
For years, Palestinian Authority leaders and officials have defended and promoted Palestinian violence by quoting U.N. resolution 3236, which “recognizes the right of the Palestinian people to regain its rights by all means.” The P.A. claims “all means” includes attacking and killing Israeli civilians, which is why P.A. leaders claim that Palestinian terrorists are legitimate “freedom fighters” and terrorist prisoners are “prisoners of war.”
However, the P.A. has chosen to ignore the continuation of the U.N. resolution which states that the use of “all means” should be “in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations … ” The U.N. Charter prohibits targeting civilians, even in war. Chapter 1, Article 1, opens by saying that “international disputes” should be resolved “by peaceful means.”
But regard for Israeli civilian lives is never a concern for P.A. and Fatah leaders when justifying and rewarding use of violence and terror against Israel to the Palestinian population.
On P.A. TV, Zaki quoted Arafat’s famous U.N. speech in 1974, when Arafat said he was “bearing an olive branch and a revolutionary’s gun,” and asked the United Nations “not to let the olive branch fall.” Zaki explained that specifically Arafat had focused on the image of the olive branch not falling, because “the rifle will never fall, even today.” As Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous times, Fatah, the ruling party in the P.A., never renounced the use of violence. Zaki’s stressing “the rifle will never fall” indicates that Fatah does not plan to do so in the future either.
Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: “[U.N.] Resolution 3236 was passed, which allows the Palestinian people to use all types of struggle, including the armed struggle … [Arafat] said to them: “I’ve come to you bearing an olive branch in one hand and a revolutionary’s gun in the other hand. Do not let the green branch fall from my hand.” He did not say: “[Let] the rifle [fall],” because the rifle will never fall, even today. We don’t want to use the struggle, because we know that Israel is waiting for the opportunity to erase us from the land.” [Official P.A. TV, Palestine This Morning, Nov. 11, 2018
Read full report at PMW.
