The governor of the Palestinian Authority’s Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate in Samaria has been organizing formal “support meetings” with dozens of terrorists “with blood on their hands” released from Israeli prisons, the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, said in a statement on Monday.
These official visits by a senior figure in the Palestinian Authority prove once more that the P.A. “is not a partner for peace or a civilian body, but rather a hostile entity that glorifies terrorism and those who carry it out,” the council said.
The council enumerated a list of terrorists that Gov. Laila Ghannam had recently met with, documented on her Facebook page.
For example, last week she met with Fakhri Barghouti, 71, who spent 33 years in prison for murdering Israeli bus driver Mordechai Yekuel in 1978. He was released in part of the Gilad Shalit prisoners swap deal with Hamas in 2011. Barghouti is a council member of the Fatah terrorist group.
Ghannam also met, according to Yesha Council, with Mazen al-Qadi, who drove a Palestinian terrorist from Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for a shooting attack in a food market in Tel Aviv in 2002. Five people were murdered and 35 were wounded.
Yesha Council CEO Omer Rahamim said in a statement: “Anyone who embraces militants who tried to murder Jewish children is a terrorist himself. The official visit of the governor of Ramallah to planners of attacks is not incidental, but part of a deliberate policy of glorifying terrorism, funded and backed by the Palestinian Authority.”
He continued, “The time has come for the State of Israel and the world to stop deluding themselves: The Palestinian Authority is a terrorist entity that poses a real danger to the entire State of Israel and particularly to the residents of Judea and Samaria. The Government of Israel must declare the Palestinian Authority a terrorist organization, act to dismantle it completely, and cancel the Oslo Accords, which have brought us only bloodshed and bereavement. We cannot accept an entity that gives backing to murderers.”
