by Bassam Tawil
Leaders of several Palestinian factions are again calling for stepping up terrorist attacks against Jews. The difference is that this time, the calls were made during a sit-down strike held by Palestinians outside the offices of the United Nations in the Gaza Strip.
The leaders of the Palestinian factions chose to issue their calls for killing Jews in front of the UN offices in the Gaza Strip. It is as if they are asking the UN to approve their continual terrorist attacks against Israel.
What is clear -- and disturbing -- is that the UN officials in the Gaza Strip choose to remain silent when the Palestinian leaders came to their offices to incite their people to step up their terrorist attacks.
The sit-down strike was organized by the "Jerusalem Department" of Hamas, the terrorist group that has been ruling the Gaza Strip since the summer of 2007. The purpose of the sit-down strike was, according to Hamas, to protest visits by Jews to the Temple Mount, or Haram Al-Sharif -- a site in Jerusalem sacred to both Muslims and Jews.
Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip near Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank near Jordan, as well as other Palestinian factions have long been waging a vicious campaign of incitement against the decision by Israeli authorities to allow Jews to tour the Temple Mount compound.
The Palestinians are opposed to the presence of Jews on the Temple Mount -- whether as visitors or worshippers. Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount is completely forbidden by the Israeli police, and Jewish visitors are forbidden from singing, whispering, praying or making any kind of religious displays.
Still, the Palestinians continue to incite against the Jewish tours, ignoring the fact that the Israeli authorities do not allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount.
The PA and Hamas officials and media outlets regularly describe the peaceful visits by Jews as "violent invasions by extremist Jewish settlers into the Al-Aqsa Mosque."
Needless to say, the Jewish visitors never set foot inside the mosque that is located in part of the Temple Mount compound. That, however, has not stopped Palestinian leaders from lying to their people and the rest of the world by claiming that "Jews are desecrating our mosque."
During the protest in front of the UN offices, Mushir al-Masri, a senior Hamas official, called on Palestinians to carry out stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Jews for their officially agreed-upon visits to the Temple Mount, this time during Jewish holidays.
l-Masri urged the PA to allow Palestinians living under its rule in the West Bank to "take action by launching attacks with knives, bullets and vehicles against Jews. "Let the Zionist enemy realize that as long as the Al-Aqsa Mosque is not living in safety under the rule of Muslims, the Zionists will not live in security on the land of Palestine," al-Masri said.
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