Op-ed glorifies terrorist attacks and terrorists as “heroic”; Israel is “a hypothetical state whose fate is to disappear”
Excerpt of op-ed by Yahya Rabah, a columnist for the official PA daily and member of the Fatah Leadership Committee in Gaza
Headline: "The will to strike roots against the plot to uproot"
"We – as a Palestinian people, Palestinian cause, and legal Palestinian leadership – have no role in the crisis of the arbitrary and shameful downfall from which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fleeing… We have no role other than to adhere to our basic principles and our legal rights, which have been granted to us by international law since [UN] Resolution 181 in 1947 (never implemented because Arab leaders and governments rejected it; see note below –Ed.) and [UN] Resolution 194 (see note below –Ed.) on the refugees’ right to return to their land, cities, villages, and lives in the Galilee (i.e., in northern Israel), the Triangle (i.e., a concentration of Israeli-Arab towns and villages in northern Israel), the Negev (i.e., in southern Israel), the mixed cities, and the rest of the land of Palestine that was occupied by Zionist Israel (i.e., all of Israel), which made a pact with Jewish Christianity (i.e. Christians that support Israel) against the background of the ominous Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration), and with the rest of the evil throughout the world…
The war that we are waging in Palestine against Netanyahu and his ally [US President Donald] Trump is a war of intense confrontation and comprehensive obsession, and it is the war of rootedness in the soil of our homeland against the obvious crime and open sin, which is the crime of uprooting. Uprooting through killing on the ground and destroying the homes of the heroes (i.e., demolition of the houses of terrorists) from among our people who carry out heroic operations (i.e., terror attacks) against the herds of settlers; against the cowardly members of the Jewish terrorist organizations; against the rabbis who incite, invade, and continue to commit irregular and satanic acts; and against the Israeli occupation army that relies on the myth of a moral army. An additional aspect of the aspects of this war is the attempt to legislate a law in the Israeli Parliament… that will allow the expulsion of heroes’ families from the land of their homeland (sic., it would allow the transfer of terrorists’ families to a different part of the West Bank, not out of it; see note below), such as the families of Ashraf Na’alwa (i.e., terrorist, murdered 2) and Saleh Barghouti (i.e., terrorist, murdered 1) and hundreds of additional families, as a punishment for them having raised among themselves these heroes, who are a result of the Palestinian time, the Palestinian right, the Palestinian justice, and the Palestinian peace.
Israel is in an imaginary race against time, and the US is continuing its foolish support and its cursed cloaking of this crazy race. However, a people stands before them whose roots are deep in the soil of its homeland, and whose head is raised to the clouds of the heavens. This people is the obsession that pursues the Israeli aggression, and as long as this obsession pursues Israel, and as long as Palestine creates its heroes, all of Israel and the American support that it receives in the form of money, weapons, and a political pact will not succeed in turning this same hypothetical state and state of gangs, terror organizations, and settler land thieves into a real state, and it will continue to be a hypothetical state whose fate is to disappear until the Palestinian people receives it in the framework of receiving all of the rights and basic principles.”
UN Resolution 181 (the UN partition plan for Palestine) was passed by the UN General Assembly in 1947. It called for the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as a separate entity under the rule of a special international body. The Arab state was meant to be comprised of the western Galilee, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and the remaining territory of the Mandate west of the Jordan River would be the state of Israel - Jordan (known at the time as Transjordan) had already been established in what had been the part of the Mandate that was east of the Jordan River. The resolution was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, but Arab leaders and governments rejected it, and launched a war to destroy Israel.
UN Resolution 194 (Chapter 11, Dec. 11, 1948) states that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return." Palestinian leaders argue this means that all Arabs who left Israel during the war (hundreds of thousands) and their descendants (a few million) have a "right of return" to Israel. Israel argues that the resolution only calls for a limited return and only under certain conditions, especially focusing on the words "wishing to return... and live at peace with their neighbors."
The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild stating that "His Majesty's government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." In 1922, the League of Nations adopted this and made the British Mandate "responsible for putting into effect the declaration," which led to the UN vote in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state in 1947. In response, Britain ended its mandate on May 15, 1948, and the Palestinian Jews, who accepted the Partition Plan, declared the independent State of Israel. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan and together with 7 Arab states attacked Israel, in what is now known as Israel's War of Independence.
The Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislation voted in favor of a bill to expel the families of West Bank terrorists from their property on Dec. 16, 2018. The bill would allow the Israeli army's General Officer Commanding (GOC) Central Command to expel a terrorist's family to a different area of the West Bank within a week from the date the terrorist committed an attack.
Barkan Industrial Zone Attack – 23-year-old Palestinian terrorist Ashraf Walid Suleiman Na’alwa shot and murdered 2 of his Israeli coworkers - Kim Levengrond-Yehezkel, a 28-year-old mother of an 18-month-old infant, and Ziv Hajbi, a 35-year-old father of three - in a factory in the Barkan Industrial Zone near Ariel on Oct. 7, 2018. Na'alwa fled the scene, but was located on Dec. 13, 2018 in Nablus and shot and killed in a shootout. Israel partially demolished Na'alwa's house as a deterrent measure on Dec. 17, 2018.The Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas' military wing) claimed responsibility for the attack. Until this attack, the Barkan Industrial Zone had been an example of coexistence with Israelis and Palestinians working together.
Ofra shooting attack – Palestinian terrorists shot and wounded 7 Israelis - a pregnant woman, her husband, another man, and 4 teenagers - in a drive-by shooting attack next to Ofra, north of Jerusalem, on Dec. 9, 2018. The pregnant woman was severely wounded and doctors had to deliver her baby prematurely before operating on her. The baby, Amiad Yisrael Ish-Ran, died three days later. The terrorists fled the scene but were located three days later. One terrorist, Saleh Omar Saleh Barghouti, was shot and killed by the Israeli army during the attempt to apprehend him, while other terrorists were taken into custody. The Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas' military wing) claimed responsibility for the attack.