Arab “traitors” selling land to Jews must be pursued until they “go to hell” - official PA daily columnist
As part of the PA’s recent outcry over Arabs in the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem selling property to Jews, the official PA daily published an op-ed that laid out severe measures to “take revenge” on Arab land sellers.
Describing the “illegal transfer of property” as “betrayal of the homeland” and “treason,” Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, a regular columnist for the paper, suggested making a blacklist of the “collaborators” to be distributed “even in kindergartens” in order to “incite against” the land sellers. He also advocated that families renounce any members selling land to “Zionists” and cited the PA’s religious ruling that land sellers must be excommunicated and no longer considered members of the Islamic faith.
Headline: “The illegal transfer of property –betrayal of the homeland”
“Betraying the homeland is a curse that will pursue the one who commits it to the end of his days, in this world and the next. It cannot be swallowed, justified, or covered up – whoever becomes entangled in [treason] is a criminal, heretic, and is cursed until judgment day…
The matter of selling Arab Palestinian properties and lands to Zionist groups and gangs and to their extremist right-wing government requires a wide plan of action that includes an effective popular response, and a strong arm that can nip every collaborator in the bud regardless of his status, position, name, and family name. The national measures that will ensure taking care of the collaborators include:
1. The family must renounce its child, but this is not enough – he must be removed and isolated in his home until he leaves it [to go] to hell and to his evil fate.
2. It must be explicitly announced not to pray for him, whether he is Muslim or Christian, and also not to agree to bury him in the Islamic or Christian cemeteries. This is due to the fatwa (i.e., religious ruling) of [Head of the Supreme Muslim Council] Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, and he [must be] declared excommunicated. This will be documented by the relevant authorities in order to continue pursuing him after death.
3. The popular campaigns against the collaborators, traitors, and spies must be expanded and strengthened so that they will include all the national stages, frameworks, and forums – and not just in the capital city Jerusalem alone.
4. It is necessary to work to bring the collaborators to the territories of the Palestinian state to arrest them, put them on trial, and take revenge on them in a manner that is consistent with the spirit of the law and in accordance with the national interests.
5. Comprehensive popular mechanisms must be assembled that will be subordinate to the national factions, and their role will be to pursue any collaborator who permits himself to commit the great crime of treason. Even if they flee from the homeland, they will be pursued to all ends of the earth.
6. A chapter should be inserted into the national [PA school] curricula on pursuing the treacherous spies, and many of them should be noted as examples of criminals and lowly people, and [it should be noted] how their people dealt with them at different points in history.
7. A blacklist should be created with lists of the collaborators, and it should be regularly distributed as widely as possible among the people in the homeland and in the diaspora each year – so that blacklists with pictures of the collaborators, their birthplaces, and their previous and current places of residence will be hung in the district buildings, the municipalities, the councils, the villages, the schools, the [education] institutes, and the universities, and even in the kindergartens, the streets, and the squares, and the public should be instructed to excommunicate and isolate them, and not to interact with them in any way.
8. The lists participating in the [PA] elections must spread slogans against the traitors and collaborators, incite against them in the mosques, churches, morning roll calls in the schools, and every place that allows this.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 11, 2021]
Palestinian Media Watch reported on the PA’s Apartheid land laws and its religious motives for issuing rulings against selling land to “the enemy,” one being the belief that Allah told “all of humanity” that “Palestine is “a pure right of its Muslim owners.”
While Israeli law does not prevent Arabs from purchasing land, according to PA law, the sale of any land to Jews is prohibited and punishable with life imprisonment with hard labor.
Head of the Supreme Muslim Council Ikrima Sabri who is mentioned in the article above also serves as head preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.