A former Fatah terrorist told Breitbart Jerusalem that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah’s so-called military wing, may return to “violence” if the United States follows up on its pledge to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Abu Mujahed, today an officer within the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence corps, said that Fatah operatives have recently been advocating violence to pressure Israel and the U.S. Mujahed spoke during a recorded interview under the condition that only his nom de guerre be used.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is a terrorist organization responsible for scores of suicide bombings and shootings targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Mujahed said that the Fatah conference rejected armed struggle as its main strategy towards liberation, but “as the ones who are in regular contact with the population, we are expected to act if Jerusalem’s sanctity is defiled and our claim to turn Jerusalem into the capital of the Palestinian state is stymied.”
“Fatah has always led the struggle against the occupation. Jerusalem has always been the centerpiece of that struggle, and our movement cannot relinquish the armed struggle,” said Mujahed, one of the beneficiaries of an amnesty Israel granted to Fatah militants in 2007. “We keep talking about red lines, but as long as our leadership tells the world that it will never endorse the armed struggle, it takes pressure off Israel. We think it’s time for Fatah, the pioneer of the Palestinian cause, to declare that it is ready to champion the armed struggle again.”
Mujahed’s reference to “occupation” refers to the entire state of Israel. This despite there never being a Palestinian state for Israel to “occupy.” Also, Israel has offered the Palestinians a state in much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a shared capital in Jerusalem numerous times. These offers were made at Camp David in 2000, Taba in 2001, the Annapolis Conference in 2007, and more offers were made in 2008. In each of these cases, the PA refused generous Israeli offers of statehood and bolted negotiations without counteroffers.
The PA has failed to respond to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprecedented attempts to jump-start negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state, including freezing Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem and releasing Palestinian prisoners.
Meanwhile, asked whether violence, especially suicide bombings, would only work to alienate sympathizers around the world, Abu Mujahed said: “We’ve seen over the last few years how refraining from suicide bombings led us nowhere. We have failed to curtail settlement expansion, and are probably unable to prevent the relocation of the US embassy. It was the first intifada that led to the Oslo Accords, and the rocket fire from Gaza that led to Israel’s withdrawal. It was Hezbollah’s fighting that drove Israel away from Lebanon, that’s why we need to speak in one language – the language that says that international law allows an occupied people to fight against it by all means available.”
“Even after the second intifada,” he said, “those who are likely to be prosecuted on charges of war crimes are the Israeli officials and generals who are wanted in Great Britain, Belgium and other countries in the world, for what they’ve done to the Palestinians, not Palestinians who fought for their land and their liberty.”