Fatah hasn’t abandoned terror, says its Deputy Chairman

Fatah Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul: “The fact that we are currently using the means of popular resistance does not in any way mean that we have abandoned any means of resistance… On the first page of [Fatah’s political] plan… [it says] that Fatah is still a national liberation movement. It is not a state... One of this announcement’s points says that Fatah believes that resistance with all its means (i.e., including terror) is a legitimate right of occupied peoples... Every stage has a particular means of resistance. Therefore, when we are relying on popular resistance now, this does not mean that we are abandoning any means [of resistance].”

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.

The terms "peaceful uprising/resistance,” and “popular uprising/resistance" are used by PA leaders at times to refer to peaceful protest and at times to refer to deadly terror attacks and terror waves. For example, ‎Mahmoud Abbas defined as “peaceful popular” the murderous terror during the 2015-2016 ‎terror wave (“The Knife Intifada”), in which 40 people were killed (36 Israelis, 1 Palestinian, 2 Americans and 1 Eritrean) and hundreds wounded in stabbings, shootings, and car ramming attacks. Abbas said: "We want peaceful popular uprising, and that’s what this is." https://palwatch.org/page/9276

Mahmoud Al-Aloul also serves as Fatah Central Committee member.