JERUSALEM – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party recently marked the 30th anniversary of the death of Abu Jihad, the architect of the first Intifada credited by the PA for the murder of at least 125 Israelis, by calling for more attacks in his honor, naming children’s camps after him and hailing him as a “role model.”
On its official Facebook page, Fatah posted a graphic of Abu Jihad, whose real name was Khalil Al-Wazir, with the accompanying text, “A message from brother Abu Jihad: ‘Let us continue attacking.'”
Abu Jihad was a founder of Fatah and deputy to late PLO leader Yasser Arafat. He headed the PLO terror organization’s armed wing and planned multiple terror attacks from the 1960s to the 1980s.
The Martyr Abu Jihad Camp, organized by Fatah’s Shabiba youth movement, is currently being held at a facility of the PA National Security Forces in Horsh Al-Saada, Israeli watchdog Palestinian Media Watch reported, citing official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.
“The camp will last for an entire month, three days a week, and 600 students from the [Fatah] High School Shabiba will participate in it,”Al-Hayat Al-Jadida said.
The Palestinian Education Ministry meanwhile emphasized the importance of preserving the legacy of Abu Jihad in PA schools.
Director-General of Student Activities and spokesman for the ministry Sadeq Al-Khadour was quoted last week by Al-Hayat Al-Jadida as saying that “schools were dedicated to talking about the prisoners in the occupation’s prisons and the life of Martyr Khalil Al-Wazir.”
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida outlined Abu Jihad’s terrorist career, listing the attacks against Israelis that he orchestrated:
Abu Jihad was the architect of the first Intifada of 1987 and he outlined its plan in his famous letter from March 27, 1988, whose title is: “Let us continue attacking; there is no voice that overpowers the voice of the Intifada, there is no voice that overpowers the voice of the PLO.” Israel assassinated Abu Jihad in Tunisia on April 16, 1988.
Among the military operations that Abu Jihad planned:
The Savoy Hotel operation in Tel Aviv and the killing of 10 Israelis in 1975 [sic., 11 murdered]; the truck bombing operation in Jerusalem in 1975 (15 murdered); the killing of senior sapper Albert Levy and his assistant in Nablus (sic., Jerusalem) in 1976; the Dalal Mughrabi operation in 1978 in which more than 37 Israelis were killed; the bombing of the Eilat port in 1979 (sic., 1978); and the bombarding of the northern settlements (i.e., towns in northern Israel) with Katyusha rockets in 1981.
According to another article in the PA newspaper, the PA Ministry of Information also marked the anniversary of his “martyrdom,” saying Abu Jihad would remain “a source of inspiration” for Palestinian “resistance,” Palestinian parlance for violence and terror against Israelis.
The death of this “one of a kind military mind,” the paper said, was “a difficult loss for Palestine, but his heritage will remain present in the pages of our history, and will remain a source of inspiration for our resistance.”
Deputy Chairman of Fatah and Central Committee member Mahmoud Al-Aloul said at a rally in Ramallah that Abu Jihad “was and will remain our example and a role model.”
A photo of Abu Jihad from Fatah’s Facebook page accompanied by the text, “You are an idea and revolution within us/ Those who outlined their path in blood cannot disappear/ We are loyal to your path, O heroes/ The cowards have not closed their eyes.”
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