By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
Dec 31, 2004
Campaigning in the northern Samaria town of Jenin Thursday, PLO chief and PA presidential frontrunner Mahmoud Abbas looked to score points with the local terror chiefs and their adoring public.
Speaking to the several thousand people who had gathered to welcome him, Abbas declared the terrorist killers of Jewish men, women and children were “neither criminals nor murderers. Rather they are fighting for the honorable lives of their Palestinians brothers.”
During is visit Abbas was escorted by the Al Aqsa Brigades “military” wing of his own Fatah party.
Local Al Aqsa leader Zakariya Zubeidi, who tops Israel’s list of most wanted terrorists, personally carried the PLO chief on his shoulders through Jenin’s “refugee” camp.
Speaking later to Israel’s Channel 10 News, Zubeidi said there had been no “talking about the end of the intifada, not about a ceasefire and not about an end to terror attacks” when he and Abbas met.
The West has hailed Abbas as a “moderate” interested in halting the four-year terrorist war against Israel’s Jewish population.
But his actions and words since Yasser Arafat’s death have belied the international community’s view of Abbas, as he increasingly seeks to assume the deceased arch-terrorist’s mantle.