Israeli Arabs are “an extension… of the Palestinian state,” says Fatah official
Official PA TV program Talk of the Hour
Fatah Revolutionary Council member and spokesman Iyad Nasr: “We don't want to harm our people in the Interior (i.e., Palestinian term for Israel). Our people in the Interior were not disconnected from our long path of struggle. Among us and among our Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prisons are fighters of the Palestinian national movement who were sentenced to life. This is unequivocal proof, the mass uprising in the Palestinian lands that were occupied in 1948 (i.e., Israel) is unequivocal proof of the unity of the Palestinian blood, unequivocal proof of the unity of fate, and unequivocal proof that what negatively affects our people will affect the Palestinian Interior as part of this original people (refers to violent Israeli Arab riots; see note below -Ed.). Why did the occupied Interior rise up? The occupied Interior rose up to support Jerusalem, it rose up to reject the Israeli behavior and the despicable Israeli actions against our people, and this is proof that our people is an absolute partner in pain and hope and an absolute partner in aspirations. Therefore, Israel- When [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu goes towards an ethnically ‘cleansed’ state, he needs to understand that the Palestinians in the Interior are a seed of the Palestinian state and they constitute an extension of this state…
From this place I say to all the national leaders in our people, I say to them: Your people deserves all appreciation and honor for these long years of sacrifice and perseverance. I say that the first solution that we must be loyal to – for all those who passed on, and eternal leader [former PLO Chairman and PA President] Yasser Arafat, [Hamas founder] Martyr Ahmed Yassin, [Islamic Jihad founder] Martyr [Fathi] Shaqaqi, [Palestinian Liberation Front founder] Abu Al-Abbas, and [PFLP Secretary-General] Abu Ali Mustafa, and all the leaders of our homeland – the most important thing in loyalty to them is that the [Hamas-Fatah] rift not continue.”
[Official PA TV, Talk of the Hour, May 29, 2021]