As two weeks of stabbings and violent demonstrations in and around Jerusalem continue, along with sporadic mass breaches of the Gaza border, official Palestinian statements and media commentary are sending a dual message. Generally speaking, neither Palestinian Authority (PA) nor Hamas messages call for more violence in their own territory — although Hamas does call for more murder of Jews in Jerusalem. But neither Palestinian government repudiates the violence; both praise its Palestinian perpetrators; and both blame Israel rather than their own people for it.

BACKGROUND: TEMPLE MOUNT TENSIONS

Leading up to this crisis, PA accusations against Israel had turned increasingly shrill. This campaign built upon the widespread but false Palestinian perception that Israel was trying to stake new claims to al-Haram al-Sharif (the Temple Mount) and its al-Aqsa Mosque, sacred to Muslims — and that Jews have no history or rights in that area. Sadly, repeated disavowals by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and others of an extremist Jewish fringe’s provocations did not offset incitement by the fundamentalist Israeli Arab “Northern Branch” movement or other radical Islamist groups — or by the PA itself.

During the Jewish holiday season in mid-September, in the wake of demonstrations and Israeli police action at the al-Aqsa Mosque, PA president Mahmoud Abbas personally and publicly denounced the “filthy feet” of Jews trampling there, while praising “every drop of blood shed…for the sake of Allah.” This outburst elicited a highly unusual private admonition against such incitement, according to Israeli press accounts, from UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.

Nevertheless, Abbas did not recant, and went on to repeat such inflammatory and misleading accusations against Israeli policy toward the Temple Mount in his UN General Assembly address a week later. Shortly thereafter, on several occasions when Israelis were shot or stabbed to death by terrorists in the West Bank and Jerusalem, Abbas did not repudiate those actions — as he sometimes had in the past. His silence was especially noteworthy because a Fatah faction had publicly taken responsibility for two of these most recent killings. Instead, the PA officially called for the UN and the international community to “protect” Palestinians against Israeli “escalation.”

Read the article in full at the Washington Institute.