PA accuses Israel of “sowing death” as its “true goal”

Excerpt of a column by Muwaffaq Matar, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily

Headline: “The longest aggression in the history of humanity!”

“The oppressive Zionist occupier, the agent of colonialist states, began its crime (its aggression) [parentheses in source] – the longest in history – when the first settlement was established for the foreign invaders on the land of our homeland Palestine. This began, as they claimed, with agriculture, but in effect they hid their true goals of sowing death, suffering, and disasters among every Palestinian family…

The land of our homeland Palestine was stolen by invaders who committed and are still committing a crime against humanity against the members of the Palestinian people since 1897, the year of the [First] Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland…

Before this date, ‘The Alliance Israélite Universelle’ (Universal Israeli Alliance, a Paris-based Jewish organization -Ed.) was established in 1860 and leased 2,600 dunams (2.6 sq. kilometers -Ed.) for a period of 99 years in the period of the Ottoman rule in Palestine, in order to establish an agricultural school (settlement) [parentheses in source] funded by Baron Rothschild.”