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Netanyahu: Jerusalem terror attack the result of Abbas and his Hamas partners' incitement

Arab-Israel Relations Materials 5 November 2014 22:41 (UTC +04:00)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday denounced Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “and his partners in Hamas” for “incitement” which was “directly responsible” for the terrorist attacks that have rocked Jerusalem in the past few weeks.
Netanyahu: Jerusalem terror attack the result of Abbas and his Hamas partners' incitement

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday denounced Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas "and his partners in Hamas" for "incitement" which was "directly responsible" for the terrorist attacks that have rocked Jerusalem in the past few weeks, Jpost reported.

Speaking at the annual state remembrance ceremony honoring the slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, the premier condemned the vehicular terrorist attack which killed a Border Police officer and injured over a dozen others.

"In recent days we have witnessed the growing incitement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who sent a condolence letter to the family of [Yehuda] Glick's [shooter] and who has tried to prevent Jews from going up to the Temple Mount," Netanyahu said.

This kind of incitement impacts results on the ground, Netanyahu said.

"The vehicular terror attack today in Jerusalem, is the direct result of incitement by Abu Mazen [Abbas] and his partner Hamas. We are in a prolonged battle for Jerusalem and I have no doubt that we will win it. We are employing all the necessary powers to restore quiet and security to the city," Netanyahu said.

But, he warned, restoring calm could take time.

"In this battle we are standing not just against Palestinian incitement, but also against the rising tide of Islamic extremism and the radicalism that is sweeping all across the Middle East and beyond," he said.

"True peace will come when the squares in Ramallah and Gaza will be filled with demonstrators calling for a halt to terrorism. Peace will come when Iran will stop calling 'death to Israel' and when Abu Mazen no longer says that Jews are defiled and stops embracing their killers," Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu praised Rabin as a leader who "understood the centrality of Israel's security" and lamented "the terrible, historic trauma" of his assassination 19 years ago.

In his remarks, the premier said that "there has been no change in Palestinian society toward acceptance of the Jewish people's right to its own state."

President Reuven Rivlin spoke prior to Netanyahu, saying that Rabin was steadfast in his determination to keep Jerusalem united.

Speaking at the state ceremony honoring the slain premier at his grave site on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem, Rivlin condemned the vehicular terrorist attack which took place just hours earlier in the capital.

Rivlin promised that Israelis would continue to "walk and to build" on the streets of Jerusalem. He also pledged that law and order would be restore to the capital, where Israel was the sovereign power.

He recalled that shortly before his death Rabin had spoken at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. to mark the 3,000 year history of the city of Jerusalem.

"My Jerusalem has been the focus of the Jewish nation's longings and defined its dreams. It's the dream they aspired to. We are divided between those on the Right and on the Left. We disagree on the best way to achieve our objective. But in Israel, we do not disagree on one subject: the unity of Jerusalem and its continued existence as the capital of the state of Israel."

Rivlin also expressed his condolences to the victim of Wednesday's terror attack.

"There is no forgiveness for those who turn their vehicles into weapons to attack innocent people at bus stops," Rivlin said.

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