Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s incitement is to blame for Wednesday night’s attempted murder of Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Thursday morning.
“The attempt to murder Glick is a serious step up in the ongoing Palestinian incitement against Jews and against Israel,” Ya’alon said.
“When Abbas distributes lies and hate about the rights of Jews to their land and their freedom of worship, the results are terrorism – as happened yesterday against Yehuda Glick.”
“This is further proof of what we repeatedly proven time and time again: that the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict is not only territorial, but is linked to the recognition of the Palestinian right to live here, within limits.”
“I call for everyone in Jerusalem to show restraint,” he added. “Security forces continue to pursue the terrorists and their dispatchers – and lay their hands on them.”
“I know Yehuda Glick well and wish him a speedy recovery,” he concluded.
Glick – who founded and heads the LIBA Initiative for Jewish Freedom on the Temple Mount – was shot in the chest on Wednesday night outside the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, after the shooter pulled up in a motorcycle or scooter and confirmed his identity before shooting.
He had been speaking, minutes before being shot, at an event for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount that had hosted leading religious figures and MKs. Likud MK Moshe Feiglin with with Glick as he was shot.
Earlier Thursday, Israeli Special Forces (Yamam) eliminated 32 year-old Islamic Jihad terrorist Mu’taz Hijazi of Abu Tor in East Jerusalem, the prime suspect in the shooting, after he resisted arrest. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack shortly thereafter, saying it was “vengeance for what is going on in Jerusalem,” referring to police efforts to tackle ongoing Arab rioting.
Incitement to intifada
Two weeks ago, Abbas called for Palestinian Arabs to stop Jews from ascending the Temple Mount – Judaism’s holiest site – “by all means.”
“It is not enough to say the settlers came, but they must be barred from entering the compound by any means. This is our Aqsa… and they have no right to enter it and desecrate it,” Abbas said, calling the Jews “a herd of cattle.”
Abbas’s remarks were roundly condemned by Israeli officials as clear incitement to violence, sparking new rounds of lawlessness in an already-tense situation in Jerusalem.
They were only the latest such remarks by the PA leader, who has repeatedly called for violence in Jerusalem.
But on Wednesday night – shortly before Glick was shot – Abbas insisted to Israel media that he “was not calling for an intifada.”
“We do not want an intifada,” Abbas claimed. “We are not calling for an intifada.”
“If we were calling for an intifada, we would have done so during the fifty days of Operation Protective Edge [in Gaza],” Abbas added. “Prime Minister [Binyamin] Netanyahu has forgotten that during those 50 days, not one bullet was fired from the West Bank [Judea and Samaria – ed.]”