PFLP justifies kidnapping of 3 teens and calls for more kidnappings: "This is the only ‎and most efficient way" to free prisoners

‎     “Popular Front [for the Liberation of ‎Palestine] Political Bureau member and ‎Head of the Popular Front Branch in Gaza ‎Jamil Mazhar said that the Hebron ‎operation (i.e., the kidnapping of three ‎Israeli teens on June 12, 2014) – if it ‎‎[indeed] turns out to be a kidnapping – ‎was part of the natural response to the ‎occupation’s crimes against our people ‎and the prisoners in the occupation ‎prisons. In a statement to the local press, ‎Mazhar said: ‘In light of its ethnic ‎cleansing in Jerusalem, its Judaization, ‎settlement and abuse of prisoners, the ‎occupation cannot expect our people to sit ‎quietly and idly. It is the right of the ‎resistance to continue the struggle in all ‎forms, in order to force it [Israel] to accede ‎to the resistance’s conditions and the ‎demands of the heroic prisoners who ‎have been maintaining an empty stomach ‎campaign (i.e., hunger strike) for the last ‎‎52 days, to bring about the cancellation of ‎the administrative detentions and protect ‎their dignity and rights.’‎
Mazhar added that the prisoners have a ‎right to enjoy freedom and to being with ‎their families and our people, because ‎they are freedom fighters. It is our duty ‎towards them [to ensure that] the ‎resistance factions intensify their activities ‎and kidnap soldiers, because this is the ‎only and most efficient way to free them, ‎as the resistance has taught us many ‎times in the past…‎
Mazhar demanded that the PLO protect ‎the resistance and give it a free hand, [that ‎it] not restrain or persecute it, and to ‎immediately cease the security ‎cooperation with this criminal occupation.”‎

Note: On June 12, 2014, Israeli teens Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists while they were hitchhiking in the West Bank. The boys' bodies were found by Israeli security forces near Hebron on June 30, 2014. They appeared to have been shot to death soon after the abduction.

The PFLP has planned and carried out numerous terror attacks against Israeli civilians since its founding in 1967 and throughout the Palestinian terror campaign between 2000- 2005 (the Intifada).