Fatah official condemns kidnapping, but equates kidnapped teens to terrorists held in Israeli prisons
Headline: “Hazem Abu Shanab : ‘Israeli aggression amounts to a re-occupation of the West Bank and a preliminary drawing of borders’”
“Senior Fatah official Hazem Abu Shanab said… in a statement to the press, that the kidnapping operations the occupation carries out against the fighters of all [Palestinian] factions and from all cities and villages are kidnapping operations that should be met with condemnation and opposition by the international community and by all elements operating according to international law. In addition, he noted that between 300 and 350 citizens have been kidnapped from the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza by occupation soldiers over the past days, so that the equation is now 3 settlers against 300 Palestinians, while the real equation is 3 settlers, who were illegally on Palestinian land, versus approximately 6,000 Palestinian prisoners [imprisoned] in the State of Israel…
Abu Shanab emphasized that ‘we oppose any operation that denies a person, whether Palestinian or otherwise, his freedom; at the same time, it is unacceptable that an entire nation pay for three people, whose presence in the Palestinian territories was fundamentally illegal. In addition to the fact that, until now, there has been no evidence that they were captured or kidnapped by any Palestinian element – [a fact] which obligates the Hebrew state to search [for them] within its borders only, and to ask for aid from the neighboring countries… ’
Abu Shanab interpreted the operations being carried out by Israel as a re-occupation of the West Bank territories in response to the international acceptance of the Palestinian state according to the 1967 borders.
Note: On June 12, 2014, Israeli teens Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, were kidnapped while hitchhiking in the West Bank. Israel responded to the kidnapping by conducting house-to-house searches in Hebron and arresting hundreds of Hamas members and former prisoners that had been released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal. 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.
“Senior Fatah official Hazem Abu Shanab said… in a statement to the press, that the kidnapping operations the occupation carries out against the fighters of all [Palestinian] factions and from all cities and villages are kidnapping operations that should be met with condemnation and opposition by the international community and by all elements operating according to international law. In addition, he noted that between 300 and 350 citizens have been kidnapped from the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza by occupation soldiers over the past days, so that the equation is now 3 settlers against 300 Palestinians, while the real equation is 3 settlers, who were illegally on Palestinian land, versus approximately 6,000 Palestinian prisoners [imprisoned] in the State of Israel…
Abu Shanab emphasized that ‘we oppose any operation that denies a person, whether Palestinian or otherwise, his freedom; at the same time, it is unacceptable that an entire nation pay for three people, whose presence in the Palestinian territories was fundamentally illegal. In addition to the fact that, until now, there has been no evidence that they were captured or kidnapped by any Palestinian element – [a fact] which obligates the Hebrew state to search [for them] within its borders only, and to ask for aid from the neighboring countries… ’
Abu Shanab interpreted the operations being carried out by Israel as a re-occupation of the West Bank territories in response to the international acceptance of the Palestinian state according to the 1967 borders.
Note: On June 12, 2014, Israeli teens Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, were kidnapped while hitchhiking in the West Bank. Israel responded to the kidnapping by conducting house-to-house searches in Hebron and arresting hundreds of Hamas members and former prisoners that had been released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal. 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.