PA to honor suicide bombers, terrorists

IDF will deliver bodies to representatives of PA, which will hold a national rally in honor of "martyrs."

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Suicide Bomber Terrorist 311 (R) (photo credit: REUTERS)
Suicide Bomber Terrorist 311 (R)
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The Palestinian Authority leadership is planning to honor the remains of Palestinian suicide bombers and other terrorists with full military funerals in Ramallah.
The IDF will deliver the bodies to representatives of the PA on Thursday, Prisoners Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqi said.
He said that the PA would hold a “national rally” in the Mukata presidential compound in Ramallah in honor of the “martyrs.” Attending the rally will be PA President Mahmoud Abbas, PLO leaders, and families of the Palestinians who perpetrated suicide bombings and other attacks over the past three decades.
Qaraqi said that after the ceremony, the bodies would be sent to their hometowns, where each one would be buried in a military funeral. He said that 17 bodies whose hometowns were unknown would be buried in a Ramallah cemetery, also with full military honors.
Another 12 bodies will be transferred for burial in the Gaza Strip, the minister said.
Qaraqi called on Palestinians to consider Thursday a day of celebration for the return of the “martyrs” to their families.
Israel’s repatriation of the bodies is part of a goodwill gesture to Abbas.
The list of names includes several suicide bombers who carried out the attacks on the No. 2 bus in Jerusalem’s Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood in August 2003 and at Cafe Hillel in the city’s German Colony neighborhood the next month.
Israel will also hand over the remains of Hassan Sarahneh, who blew himself up at a hitchhiking post in Ashkelon in 1996, killing a female soldier, and the remains of Nasim Ja’bari and Ahmed Qawassmeh, the two suicide bombers who killed 16 people on two buses in Beersheba in 2004.
The list also includes Abdullah Badran, a suicide bomber who killed four Israelis at Tel Aviv’s Stage nightclub in 2005; Hiba Daraghmeh, the woman who blew herself up at a mall in Afula in 2003, killing three people; Hassan Abu Said, the Islamic Jihad terrorist who blew himself up at an open-air market in Hadera in 2005, killing five people; and Labib Azzam, who in 1995 murdered five Israelis and wounded 23 others in Ramat Gan.
In addition, Israel will hand over the remains of the terrorists who carried out the Savoy Hotel attack in Tel Aviv in 1975, killing eight hostages.