Palestinian Official: Palestinians Will Win Because They Love Death More Than Life

TEL AVIV – The Secretary-General of the Palestinian Presidency delivered a speech this week on behalf of President Mahmoud Abbas extolling the Palestinian people for “loving death more than life” and promising that the Israeli “tyrants” and “aggressors will end up in the trash bin of history.”

Al-Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim was addressing a group of Palestinian National Security Forces at a ceremony on Sunday celebrating their silver medal victory in the international 8th Annual Warrior Competition which took place in Jordan earlier this month.

Abd Al-Rahim said their win highlighted the fact that the Palestinian people were one step closer to establishing statehood, and emphasized that Palestinians would never compromise on their vision of that state.

“We will not grow soft or deviate towards personal interests for the sake of dubious goals such as establishing a state or an emirate in Gaza, or establishing a state with temporary borders in the West Bank,” Abd Al-Rahim said, noting that with every generation, the desire of young Palestinians to achieve the goals that martyrs have died for only strengthens.

“Our blood is still being spilled at the roadblocks and the checkpoints by the gangs of settlers and the extremist soldiers of the occupation, some of whom have acknowledged that they do not act according to moral standards,” he said in the speech translated by MEMRI.

More than once in his speech Abd Al-Rahim reiterated the notion that Israel was destined to crumble.

“Occupiers are always destined to fail. This fact should be in our minds forever,” he said, adding that “the future is ours, the tyrants will disappear, and the aggressors will end up in the trash bin of history.”

He also referenced warnings made last year by newly appointed Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman that another war with Gaza is on the horizon, but said that such threats ring hollow for the Palestinians, since they are “a people who loves death more than life when it fights for Palestine.”