Senior PA leader: A “terrorists-for-hostages” deal would be a precedent for future “efforts” to release terrorists

Senior Palestinian leader Jibril Rajoub:

• "A Palestinian remaining a prisoner will keep this wound open and will serve as justification for future efforts to release this prisoner."
• "After all, it is our right to carry out all forms of resistance, including armed resistance...Extensive popular resistance needs to be our strategic choice."
• "Today there is an opportunity for the world – instead of crying about the Israeli “hostages” as the Israelis call them – to look at the Palestinian prisoners."

Senior Palestinian leader Jibril Rajoub warned Israel that the Palestinians see the exchange of hostages for terrorist prisoners as a precedent. Even if one Palestinian prisoner is left in Israeli custody, it would serve as justification for further attacks on Israel, indicated Rajoub. Accordingly, he suggested that Israel accept the formula of “everyone for everyone” in a terrorists-for-hostage exchange:

“I say to all relevant parties: a Palestinian remaining a prisoner will keep this wound open and will serve as justification for future efforts to release this prisoner.”

As is his common practice, Rajoub also once again compared Israel to the Nazis, saying that conditions in Israel’s prisons were unlike anywhere except for the Nazi camps of the 1940s.

Instead of condemning Hamas’ heinous actions that began the 2023 Gaza war, Rajoub wants to leverage the October 7 massacre against Israel to bring about the release of all 9,000 terrorists, including hundreds of murderers, from Israeli prisons and even to impose the creation of a Palestinian state. As far as Rajoub is concerned, the atrocities of October 7 should be rewarded:

“We hope that the efforts will bring about a UN resolution on stopping this aggression, an Israeli withdrawal, and carrying out a prisoner exchange of everyone for everyone (i.e., hostages for terrorists). I say to all relevant parties: a Palestinian remaining a prisoner will keep this wound open and will serve as justification for future efforts to release this prisoner. This will be an opportunity, and the international community must adopt this position – closing the issue of imprisonment; closing the issue of abductions (i.e., arrest of terrorists), closing the issue of the massacre being committed in Israeli prisons through living conditions that are unprecedented anywhere but the Nazi camps of the 1940s and its barbaric and fascist treatment, etc. This must end through the return of their captives and the release of our captives, as a prelude to forcing the establishment of the Palestinian state.”

[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, April 26, 2024]

While Rajoub here implicitly justified taking more hostages by saying that Palestinians would repeat their “efforts” should all the terrorist prisoners not be freed, Rajoub has been much even more explicit in the recent past, when he openly declared that it is a Palestinian right to carry out all forms of resistance, including armed resistance.

“Regarding the struggle, as a people under occupation we have a right to carry out all forms of struggle and resistance (i.e., also refers to use of violence and terror). However, considering this international consensus that provides us support, when all that is currently left is achieving Palestinian national unity, after all, it is our right to carry out all forms of resistance, including armed resistance, as this is international law and UN law (sic., Palestinian terror is not legal according to international law). Extensive popular resistance needs to be our strategic choice.”

 [Al-Majalla, Saudi state-affiliated London-based news website,
March 23, 2024]

Rajoub’s perverse attempt to equate terrorists and hostages should come as no surprise considering his previous statements saying that Palestinian murderers who were sentenced to prison after trial were in fact hostages.

“Everyone is speaking about Israeli hostages. We have thousands of Palestinian hostages (sic., imprisoned terrorists) ...Today there is an opportunity for the world – instead of crying about the Israeli “hostages” as the Israelis call them – to look at the Palestinian prisoners. There are prisoners who have been imprisoned since 1985, no fewer than 15,000 hostages, around 5,000 before and 10,000 after Oct. 7 [2023] (i.e., Hamas’ massacre and terror war), 2,500-3,000 from the Gaza Strip, and 7,000 from the West Bank.”

[Al-Majalla, Saudi state-affiliated London-based news website,
March 23, 2024]

As Head of the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, Chairman of the Palestinian Football Association, Chairman of the Palestine Olympic Committee, and Chairman of the Palestinian Scout Association (PSA) as well as Fatah Central Committee Secretary, Jibril Rajoub is a senior and active member of the Palestinian leadership. This is the same leadership that the US and much of the international community wish to consider “revitalized.” Rajoub’s explicit and implicit calls to violent action need to be made public for the world to see and understand what type of personalities remain at the helm of Palestinian leadership.

The terms “all means,” “all means of resistance,” “all forms,” are ‎used by PA leaders to include using all types of violence, including deadly terror ‎against Israeli civilians such as stabbings and shootings, as well as throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.