Fatah top official praises and exults Palestinian terrorists, saying “we are loyal to those who have made sacrifices, sacrifices we absolutely cannot forget”
Official PA TV program Topic of the Day, on Palestinian Prisoner's Day, hosting Fatah Deputy Chairman and Fatah Central Committee member Mahmoud Al-Aloul
Fatah Deputy Chairman and Fatah Central Committee member Mahmoud Al-Aloul: "The prison in the Palestinian experience [is that] you are a prisoner of an enemy that is extreme in his high levels of racism, oppression, violence, [and] inhumanity. Can you imagine that there are prisoners who have been in prison between four walls for 40 years already? How can a person imagine this problem?...
This is a cause of great worth, you cannot imagine-"
Official PA TV host: "This loyalty to the families of the prisoners and the Martyrs."
Mahmoud Al-Aloul: "Yes, a cause that is connected to loyalty to those who have made sacrifices, those whose sacrifices we absolutely cannot forget, and you remember the last matter – when the Americans and the Israeli occupation attempted to bargain with us on the issue."
Host: "The payments to the prisoners' [families]."
Mahmoud Al-Aloul:"The payments to the prisoners' [families], and the decision was absolutely clear when [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas said that even if nothing remains in our hands but a few coins, under no circumstances can we give them to anyone but the families of the Martyrs and the families of the prisoners. Recently, we have made the prisoners' issue a basic cause, on the level of the principles."
Host: "The national [principles]."
Mahmoud Al-Aloul: "You remember exactly how, for instance, President Mahmoud Abbas, also with every advance in negotiations, everything that was put on the table – he connected it to the prisoners, and for the prisoners he sometimes rejected a number of political benefits so that we would release the prisoners, or so that there would be a group of prisoners in this matter during all of the preliminary phase (refers to demands that groups of prisoners be released throughout negotiations –Ed.). However, I turn to the prisoners – you are chained, but you have put us in chains in the sense that you and the Martyrs [essentially] constitute chains on us – your sacrifices, your suffering, you and also the Martyrs' blood, this constitutes handcuffs in the sense that in return for this sacrifice we are obligated to fight for what you were imprisoned for, for your sacrifices...
[Khalil Al-Wazir 'Abu Jihad’] (i.e., terrorist, responsible for murder of 125) always strove so that the compass [would point] towards Palestine. Always. And that the basic enemy is this occupation. One time, during one period, matters led to there being a struggle that was not directed against the Israeli enemy. In Lebanon, at the time of the civil war and the like. Abu Jihad's basic concern was how to redirect the compass towards the Zionist enemy in this matter. He invested a mighty effort for this, and I will tell you what he did. He- This is the way of acting, what you see from him as theory. He established an airport in southern Lebanon and sent the Al-Jarmak battalion to begin building fortifications and digging trenches, and the necessary preparations for this. With this he wanted to provoke the Zionist occupation to bomb us and attack us so that we could return the compass towards it. The truth is the Arabs that fought us were a little ashamed of themselves when they were together in one line against us, them and the occupation."