TEL AVIV – Palestinians in the West Bank town of Jenin on Saturday re-erected a monument in honor of a Palestinian terrorist who masterminded the massacre of Israeli schoolchildren in the 1970s, a day after it was bulldozed by the Israeli military.
Last month, Breitbart Jerusalem reported that the Jenin municipality inaugurated “Martyr Khaled Nazzal Square” along with a monument named after the terror leader who planned the 1974 attack known as the Ma’alot Massacre in which 26 people, including 22 children, were killed.
On Friday, Israeli troops entered Jenin and destroyed the monument. During ensuing clashes, a local Palestinian shot and wounded an Israeli soldier. Six Palestinian rioters were injured, one seriously.
On Saturday, the local branch of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) re-erected the monument, posting pictures to its Facebook page.
The accompanying text reads, “Khaled Nazzal will remain alive and immortal in the conscience of his people, his comrades and all those struggling for the freedom and independence of Palestine.”
“Compromising” on Nazzal’s monument, the group said, “will open for targeting all the symbols of our national movement and history.”
The naming of the square and monument in honor of Nazzal sparked a harsh response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after news emerged of the monument and the square. Netanyahu stated that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was lying when he promised President Donald Trump a few weeks earlier that there would be no incitement and the Palestinians were raising their children in a “culture of peace.”
Israel warned the PA that the monument must be removed or the IDF would enter Jenin and take it down. After a brief removal, the PA and its ruling Fatah faction restored it.
“It does not matter how many times the occupation removes the monument in memory of the Martyr – it is our obligation to rebuild it,” Abbas’ Fatah movement said on Sunday.
Fatah added that in an act of “solidarity” with Jenin, another monument in honor of Nazzal was assembled in Ramallah on Saturday bearing the inscription, “This is a monument in memory of Martyr (Shahid) Khaled Nazzal, which was established as a challenge to the occupation authorities.”
The text on the monument to the terrorist Nazzal reads:
Martyr Khaled Nazzal Square
We must guard the flowers of the Martyrs [quote from a song by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish]
1948-1986, for a free Palestine
Khaled Nazzal, who served as the the Secretary of the Central Committee of the DFLP and commander of its military branch, planned the Ma’alot attack, which involved a two-day hostage situation with 115 schoolchildren and their teachers, ending in the murder of 26.
That same year, Nazzal planned an attack which resulted in the murder of four hostages in an apartment in Beit She’an. A decade later, in 1984, Nazzal masterminded a shooting and grenade attack in central Jerusalem in which one person was murdered and 47 others were wounded.
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