Netanyahu: Iran increasing efforts to deepen terrorist activities in West Bank

Prime Minister Netanyahu condemns UN for not responding to PA official who said he is "excited" by Iranian directives to send weapons to West Bank.

By HERB KEINON
Netanyahu: Iran increasing efforts to deepen terrorist activities in West Bank
Iran is increasing its efforts to deepen its  terrorist activities in the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet at its weekly meeting on Sunday.
“None other than the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador in Tehran said that he was enthused by Iranian ruler [Ali] Khamenei’s instructions to send weapons to the West Bank,” Netanyahu said.
The prime minister quoted the Palestinian envoy as saying, “The Zionist entity is an aggressor and cancerous tumor which should be annihilated sooner or later.”
Netanyahu emphasized that these were not the words of a Hamas representative but, rather, of the PA’s official in Iran.
“Now what does the UN do in response?” Netanyahu asked. “Instead of dealing with this incitement, it gives it a place of honor, the same incitement that leads in the end to the terror acts that we have experienced lately.”
Netanyahu was referring to an interview that the Palestinian envoy in Tehran, Salah al-Zawawi, gave to the Tehran Times last week in which – according to the paper – he “underlined his countrymen’s enthusiasm for the materialization of the instructions” given by Khamenei to send arms to the West Bank to intensify its fight against Israel.
According to the report, Zawawi said that “arming the West Bank is of high priority.”
Meanwhile, a Twitter account affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards has recently bragged on Twitter that its soldiers in Lebanon “are at the border of occupied Palestine.” The tweet included photos of soldiers with their faces obscured.
According to a report by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, which brought the tweet to wider attention, on December 17 a blog affiliated with the Iranian Army published the same photos with the soldiers’ faces unobstructed.
The blog also posted a number of other pictures, saying they were taken in southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa valley and Baalbek region. The blog post was titled: “We are arriving... near the Mother of Corruption, the accursed Israel; soon we will pass over their bodies, Allah willing.”
According to MEMRI, Iranian officials have for months been indicating that it has a presence in southern Lebanon.