Today, PA President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Itamar terror attack – to Israel.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday condemned the murder of five members of a single family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar over the weekend, telling Israel Radio that it was a despicable, immoral, and inhuman act.
“A human being is not capable of something like that,” Abbas said in an interview with Israel Radio on Monday. “Scenes like these – the murder of infants and children and a woman slaughtered – cause any person endowed with humanity to hurt and to cry.”
Abbas added that the Palestinian Authority would have prevented the attack, in which five members of the Fogel family were stabbed to death by two Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, if it would have had prior information about it.
While Abbas was saying this, his own people were blaming us.
Netanyahu responded to the interview by saying it was not enough for Abbas to express such condemnation on Israeli radio – he must also take it to the Palestinian airwaves.
“I hear Abu Mazen [Abbas] condemn the murder in Itamar on Israel Radio this morning,” Netanyahu told members of his Likud faction at the Knesset. “His words hold great importance in my eyes, but it is more important that he say these things on Palestinian radio, not just Israel.”
Netayahu added that at the same time Abbas spoke with Israel Radio, a Palestinian minister indicated that the murder seemed to have been “carried out by settlers and the State of Israel to evade commitment to the peace process.”
..as were web sites affiliated with his PA.
A number of news Web sites that are affiliated with the Palestinian Authority claimed on Monday that the Itamar killings were committed by a foreign worker who was employed in the settlement.
PA-controlled media outlets also highlighted the story and continued to cast doubt about Israeli claims that Palestinians were behind the killings.
The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an, which is close to the PA leadership, ran a lead news story that claimed that a Thai worker had been arrested by the IDF on suspicion of killing the five members of the Fogel family on Friday night.
The agency did not say how it obtained the information. However, it said that shortly after the killings, Israeli security forces arrested all the Thai workers who were inside the settlement.
Ma’an pointed out that no Palestinian group had claimed responsibility for the attack and that Palestinians were banned from entering settlements.
Another Palestinian news agency, Qudsnet, claimed that an Asian man who used to work for the Fogel family was behind the killings.
Quoting a Palestinian family living in the nearby village of Awarta, the agency said that the family members were slaughtered because the father refused to pay the Asian worker his salary, which is estimated at 10,000 Shekels.
The man speaketh with forked tongue.
Meanwhile, WND is reporting that two members of Abbas’s own security forces have been arrested for the murder.
Two members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ official security forces were arrested in conjunction with this past weekend’s bloody massacre in which five family members were brutally stabbed to death inside their home in the Jewish village of Itamar, WND has learned.
The names of the apprehended suspects will be released to the Israeli media within hours but were revealed to WND by security officials working on the murder.
Two cousins are now in Israeli custody and are suspected in the slayings. Ahmed Awad is an officer in Abbas’ Preventative Security Services in the northern West Bank city of Nablis. Iyad Awad is an officer in Abbas’ General Intelligence services in Ramallah.
Both the Preventative and General Intelligence services of Fatah are armed, trained and funded by the U.S.
It was not immediately clear whether the duo were arrested for planning the attack or for personally carrying out the murders.
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Yesterday, WND was the first to report that cells from the PA’s so-called military wing were involved with planning and carrying out the killings.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the “military wing” of Abbas’ Fatah party, at first released a pamphlet taking responsibility for the attack and then quickly retracted the statement.
Many Brigades members, including much of the group’s senior leadership, double as members of Fatah’s U.S.-backed security forces.
Top sources in the Brigades leadership in the northern West Bank city of Nablus confirmed to WND that members of the Fatah group planned and helped to carry out the attack.
The sources claimed the attack was not sanctioned by the Fatah leadership but was planned by Brigades members who were acting on their own.
Also, the sources said the actual perpetrators of the attack were sleeper cells from Hamas, while the Brigades leaders planned the attack, provided logistical support and aided in the Hamas agents’ escape.
If accurate, this would demonstrate unusual cooperation between Hamas and Fatah rivals.
While I am treating this WND report with the usual dose of warranted skepticism (as I do for DEBKA stories), I won’t be surprised if it turns out to be true.