PA Libel: "Israel benefits from anarchy and escalation" because it can carry out "uncontrolled aggression" against Palestinians during war-time
Excerpt of a column by Bassem Barhoum, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “Under cover of the demand for calm: What is Israel preparing for us?”
“It is the interest of Israel, which in the eyes of the world has become a state of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, to go back to manufacturing the perception of the Palestinian ‘terrorist’ who harms civilians. It is marketing that it wants calm, but it is sending the settler herds to the Palestinian villages and to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to provoke the Palestiniansand push them into an escalation and carrying out uncontrolled retaliatory acts that it will use as an excuse to carry out extensive aggression against the Palestinian people…
The Palestinian people has no interest in escalation in light of the world’s preoccupation with the crisis in Ukraine and the Arab reality in which some of the states have fallen apart and some have carried out normalization [with Israel] (refers to Abraham Accords; see note below -Ed.). In addition, the Palestinian people has chosen popular resistance (i.e., term used by Palestinians, which also refers to the use of violence and terror) as the tool to confront the Israeli occupation, and it needs to strengthen this type of resistance and make sure that it will be in an ongoing dynamic, in a manner that will inflict a heavy cost on the occupation and a minimal cost on the Palestinian people.
We must be careful not to return to the cycle of loss of security control and anarchy, because the only one who benefits from this kind of situation is Israel and regional bodies whose only interest is trading in Palestinian blood and using the Palestinian cause as a card serving their interests and not the Palestinian interest…
I read the statements of the special Palestinian leader, Chairman of the Arab Joint List [political party and Israeli Parliament Member] Ayman Odeh, in which he demanded that the Palestinian factions be careful in their responses to what happened in Be’er Sheva (refers to terrorist Muhammad Abu Al-Qi’an murdering 4 people -Ed.) and Hadera (refers to terrorists Ibrahim and Ayman Agbaria murdering 2 people -Ed.). He said that the masses of the Palestinian people inside the Green Line (i.e., Palestinian term for Israel; the Green Line is the ceasefire line between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries, 1949-1967) are waging an ongoing struggle to achieve equality, and that historically the spreading of exaggerated and empty slogans has harmed the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people and served the Israeli enemy.
What we need is a joint and agreed upon plan and to leave the cycle of retaliatory acts – a plan that will balance between the continuation of the civilian’s daily life, and that simultaneously the popular resistance will be an ongoing daily act with an impact on the Israeli occupation.”
Israeli peace agreements with the UAE and Bahrain
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
Muhammad Abu Al-Qi’an – Israeli Bedouin terrorist and ISIS supporter who murdered 4 Israeli civilians – Doris Yachbas, Laura Yitzhak, Rabbi Moshe Kravitsky, and Menachem Yehezkel – and wounded 2 others in a car ramming and stabbing attack at an outdoor shopping mall in Be’er Sheva on March 22, 2022, before two Israeli civilians shot and killed him to stop his rampage. Al-Qi’an was a high school teacher and mosque preacher in Hura in the Negev who previously served 4 years in prison for attempting to join ISIS in Syria and inciting to terror in his sermons; he was released in 2019.
Ibrahim and Ayman Agbaria - Israeli Arab terrorist cousins who murdered 2 19-year-old Israeli border police officers - Yezen Falah and Shirel Abukarat - and wounded 12 other Israelis in a shooting attack with assault rifles and handguns at a bus stop in Hadera on March 27, 2022. Israeli undercover officers at a nearby restaurant shot and killed the terrorists to stop the attack. Ibrahim Agbaria was previously arrested in Turkey in 2016 when he tried to join ISIS in Syria. Before the attack the two terrorists filmed themselves praying in front of an ISIS flag, and afterwards ISIS took responsibility for the attack.
Green Line - 1949-1967 ceasefire line between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) following Israel's War of Independence (1948-1949). Land within the Green Line is all part of the State of Israel since 1949. Land outside the Green Line includes East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights.