Top Palestinian security officers and a number of Fatah leaders, including President Mahmoud Abbas, have been at odds recently over the latter’s wish to step up the recent wave of Palestinian terror attacks, a senior Palestinian security official told Breitbart Jerusalem.
The official described Abbas’ position: “In light of the diplomatic stalemate, and the prevalent feeling among Israelis that they can live in security while the Palestinians live under occupation, the current wave of popular resistance must be intensified.”
“The president is not encouraging bombings or the use of firearms in any way,” the source emphasized, “but he thinks that large-scale demonstrations, stone- and Molotov cocktail-throwing could be a bargaining chip for the Palestinian leadership, and may spur the international community to get more involved. Currently, the president believes the peace of the Israelis is hardly disturbed.”
The official estimates that Abbas’ action plan could help clear two significant hurdles. On the one hand, the leadership is unable to stir up widespread protests because it is seen as divided and lacking a long-term plan.
“On the other hand,” the official said, “the officers fear that raising the level of violence runs the risk of going out of control and spreading anarchy, which may drive the Israeli army back into the West Bank in full force. It may also incentivize Hamas to try and stage a coup.”
The officers, he added, work in close cooperation with their Israeli counterparts and regularly liaise with the American defense establishment.
Official Fatah media outlets have been leading incitement campaigns that Israeli officials say are helping to fuel the so-called Palestinian wave of terror.
Abbas himself has made statements claiming an Israeli threat to the al-Aqsa Mosque, considered the third holiest site in Islam. The mosque is located on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site.
The latest wave of terror has been in large part driven by the false narrative claiming Jews are attempting to take over the al-Aqsa Mosque and that Israel poses an imminent threat to the site.
The narrative is particularly nonsensical given that it is propagated by the same Palestinian Authority that has been caught on several occasions trying to destroy Jewish Temple-era antiquities on the mount.While claiming an Israeli plot against the al-Aqsa Mosque, hundreds of Palestinians in October set fire to the Joseph’s Tomb complex, causing severe damage to the revered burial place, considered Judaism’s third holiest site.
On the Temple Mount itself, the outlawed radical Islamic Movement has mobilized Arab youth in an attempt to smuggle fire bombs, pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, and stones on to the site in order to attack Jews there.
While Palestinian media outlets have been broadcasting misinformation about Israeli police storming the al-Aqsa Mosque unprovoked, Islamic Movement-tied youth have themselves been using the mosque as a staging base to attack Jews.
The clear goal is to draw Israeli security forces into the sensitive mosque compound and thus fuel the cycle of rumors of Israeli incursions into the mosque.
Deja-vu. It is not an English word, but French. However, the word immediately springs to mind when hearing about yet another Western politician or Islam critic, whom some British politicians want to ban from entering their country. Welcome, Donald Trump, in the company of Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and myself.
Both Pamela, Robert and myself have been banned from entering the United Kingdom. In my case, it happened on February 12, 2009. Two highly respected members of the British House of Lords, Lady Caroline Cox and Lord Malcolm Pearson, had invited me to show my 2008 documentary Fitna to members of the House in a conference room of the parliament building in Westminster. Fitna is a movie, juxtaposing Koranic versed calling for violence with footage of terrorist attacks and other violent deeds these verses inspired.
Fitna, as well as my view that Islam, rather than a religion, is primarily a totalitarian political ideology aiming for world domination, has resulted in several death threats against my person. I am on the death list of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Pakistani Taliban. Since 2004, I have been living under round-the-clock police protection, but I have a mission: Speak the truth about Islam.
However, a Pakistani-born Islamic member of the House of Lords, one Nazir Ahmed, demanded that the then British Labour government ban me from entering the UK. He threatened that he would personally mobilize 10,000 Muslims to prevent me from entering the Upper House. The government complied and had me banned. Though a member of the Dutch parliament, invited by British colleagues, I was locked up in a detention room upon arrival at Heathrow Airport. Three hours later, I was put on the next flight to Amsterdam.
The British authorities said that my “presence in the UK would pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society.” My statements as expressed in Fitna and elsewhere were said to “threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK.” Lord Ahmed boasted of his victory in the Pakistani media. He termed the decision “a victory for the Muslim community.”
However, I challenged the ban before the British Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. On October 12, 2009, this tribunal overturned the ban. In March 2010, I returned to London and showed my movie to my colleagues in Westminster. There were no incidents and no disturbances of Britain’s “fundamental interests,” “community harmony,” or “public security.” The bans served but one goal: It was an attempt to shut me up for speaking the truth about Islam.
Yesterday, Pamela Geller wrote on this website that in June 2013, she and Robert Spencer, too, were banned from the UK because their presence was “not conductive to the public good” and a “threat to security of our society.” It sounded eerily familiar, as did the arguments of those who want Donald Trump to be banned from Britain for advocating a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration into the US. Fortunately, they did not succeed.
When the great Ronald Reagan visited the British Parliament in 1982, he told the British parliamentarians that “if history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.” This is an advice that politicians everywhere should take at heart.
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