JERUSALEM – It seems that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party just doesn’t know when to quit. A day after the faction praised Sunday’s “heroic” terror attack that killed two Israelis, Fatah celebrated the deaths by posting a cartoon of the Dome of the Rock with a victorious hand clutching an assault rifle atop the mosque.
The cartoon, which appeared on Fatah’s Facebook page and was first publicized by Israeli watchdog Palestinian Media Watch, also features two helmets with Stars of David on them askew in a pool of blood. The helmets apparently represent the two murdered Israelis despite the fact that neither of the victims were soldiers.
One of the victims was recently married police officer Sgt. Major Yosef Kirma, who was slain while chasing the terrorist, and the other was 60-year-old grandmother Lavana Malihi, shot while at the wheel of a passing car.
Six more were injured in the shooting spree carried out by an Arab with full Israeli citizenship.
A day earlier, Fatah posted a roundup of the attack in two separate posts on its Facebook page, calling the terrorist a “shahid” (martyr) and praising his heroism. Fatah’s Jerusalem branch also called for a general strike and day of mourning to honor the terrorist’s “soul” and the souls of other murderers.
The one who carried out the operation today in Jerusalem is a pilgrim [to Mecca] Martyr Musbah Abu Sbeih (40), one of the most prominent people in Jerusalem and the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and a released prisoner.
He was supposed to turn himself in today and begin a sentence of four months on charges of Ribat (i.e., religious conflict/war over land claimed to be Islamic) at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and hitting the occupation’s soldiers.
He was arrested in 2013 in the Bab Huta region of the Old City of Jerusalem on charges of hitting an officer and was released, but to his surprise the case was reopened in 2015 and he was sentenced to a four month active sentence, and according to the ruling of the Israeli Magistrate Court that was given roughly one month ago, the ruling was supposed to be carried out in the middle of this month [October 2016].
The occupation authorities persecuted him over the last two weeks and he was arrested and detained five times in a row, and after his last arrest he was released on condition of being distanced from East Jerusalem for one month, and before that he was given a ruling preventing him from traveling [abroad] until the end of this year, and he was forbidden from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque for six months, after being released [from arrest] at the end of last year [2015].
Below is the second post:
The Jerusalem branch of Fatah announced mourning and a general strike today [Oct. 9, 2016] in Jerusalem in memory of the souls of the Martyrs of Palestine and this morning’s Martyr Musbah Abu Sbeih.
Due to the barbaric escalation being perpetrated by the occupation government and the herds of settlers, which includes killing, violence, destruction, and an attempt to instill fear in our Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps, and particularly in Jerusalem, we announce our complete objection to crimes of these types being carried out before the international community and its human rights organizations… The occupation government and its executive branches must bear the consequences of what they are perpetrating against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the disregard of Muslim sensibilities, and the granting of permission to the settlers to invade it, defile it, and desecrate its sanctity on a daily basis under the umbrella and protection of the occupation police.