The Palestinian Authority said on Saturday that there was no evidence of
Palestinian involvement in the terror attack at Itamar, near Nablus.
PA
Foreign Minister Riad al- Malki said his ministry condemned “any act that
targets civilians, regardless of their identity.”
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He said the ministry
condemns the killing of Israelis by “people whose identity remains
unknown.”
Malki pointed out that Itamar was built on lands belonging to
Nablus.
“The killing of an infant and the slaughtering of people in this
way was never carried out by any Palestinians for national motives or revenge,”
he added. “This puts a question mark over the swift accusation made by the
Israeli side – to the effect that Palestinians had carried out the
attack.”
The PA foreign minister said the attack does not benefit the
Palestinian national struggle or the “resistance.” Such attacks, he stressed,
are also harmful to the Palestinians’ political and diplomatic efforts in the
international arena.
In response to the Itamar attack, PA Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad said he “categorically” rejected violence and had long condemned
it.
“We reject this violence and condemn it as we have repeatedly
rejected it against our people,” Fayyad told reporters in Beit Jala, near
Bethlehem, yesterday.
He added that violence did not justify violence
“and we reject it regardless of the reasons and goals and the identity of the
perpetrators or victims.”
PA officials in Ramallah expressed skepticism
over a statement released by Fatah’s militia, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, in
which it claimed responsibility for the killings.
The statement said the
“heroic” operation was a “natural response to massacres committed by the
occupation against our people in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.” It added that
the perpetrator managed to return safely to his base.
The officials said
there was a possibility the attack had been carried out by members of Hamas or
the Islamic Jihad in the West Bank. Hamas hailed the attack as a “heroic
operation” and “natural response to Israeli crimes and massacres.”
In
Rafah, some Palestinians took to the streets to celebrate the killings, and
handed sweets to passersby and drivers, eyewitnesses reported.
Hours
after the attack, PA security services released a senior Hamas operative who had
been held in a Palestinian prison for four months. The man, Wajdi Abdel Rahim
Taha, was released because he had gone on a hunger strike and there was fear for
his life, a PA security source said – adding that Taha had not been involved in
violence.
“He’s a political activist,” the source said. “He has been
detained for questioning several times in the past. Before that he was in an
Israeli jail.”
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