The Palestinian reaction to the grisly killings of five Israeli family members in the Jewish settlement of Itamar, in the West Bank, has prompted many Israelis to ask of the Palestinians: Are they really serious about peace?
On the one hand, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gave a rare interview to Israel Radio on March 14, condemning the March 11 killings of the Fogel family members, including a 4-year-old boy and a 3-month-old girl, as “despicable, inhuman and immoral.”
“A human being is not capable of something like that,” Abbas said in Arabic during the interview. His words were translated into Hebrew by the interviewer.
On the other hand, a day after the attack, members of Abbas’ Fatah faction participated in an official dedication ceremony in the West Bank town of Al-Bireh for a town square dedicated to the memory of Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist involved in killing 37 Israelis in a 1978 bus hijacking on Israel’s coastal road. No P.A. government officials attended the ceremony, Reuters reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu derided the Palestinian Authority’s reaction to the Itamar killings as full of “weak and mumbled” statements.
He praised Abbas for condemning the murders, but stressed that Abbas must also do so in the Palestinian media in Gaza, where Hamas members reportedly handed out candy in celebration of the attack.
“He must make it clear to his people as well,” Netanyahu insisted. The Palestinian leadership must “stop the incitement that is conducted on a daily basis in their schools, mosques and the media under their control. The time has come to stop this double-talk in which the Palestinian Authority outwardly talks peace and allows — and sometimes leads — incitement at home.”
The brutal murders of Rabbi Udi Fogel, 36, his wife, Ruth, 35, and three of their six children — Yoav, 11, along with Elad, 4, and Hadas, 3 months — occurred several hours after the start of Shabbat. Two sons, ages 8 and 2, were spared, apparently because they were sleeping in a side room that escaped attention, and a 12-year-old daughter was out for the night at a youth program.
The murders shocked and angered a nation that had seen terrorist attacks dwindle in recent years. The circulation of photos of some of the stabbed children (apparently distributed to news media by relatives of the victims) offered gruesome pictures of the blood-soaked scene.
Volunteers on ZAKA’s search-and-rescue team described the scene as “abso-lutely horrific.”
“We saw toys lying next to pools of blood, Shabbat clothes covered in blood and everywhere the smell of death mixing with the aroma of the Shabbat meal,” one volunteer said.
The Fogel family had relocated to Itamar following its removal from the Gush Katif settlement in Gaza, which was part of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. They had lived for a while in the Jewish West Bank city of Ariel before moving to Itamar, which is near the Palestinian city of Nablus.
A group called the al Aksa Martyrs Brigades of Imad Mughniyeh claimed responsibility for the attack. Israeli forces combed the area after the attack, and the Palestinian Authority agreed to participate in a joint murder investigation.
The attack sparked angry demonstrations throughout Israel and the West Bank in support of the settlers, with demonstrators holding signs reading “We are all settlers” and “Peace isn’t signed with blood.” One of the largest rallies took place in Tel Aviv near the army’s national headquarters.
After a funeral in Jerusalem for the Fogels drew an estimated 20,000 people, some settlers went to Palestinian villages to carry out revenge attacks, throwing stones and destroying property.
In response to the attacks, the Israeli government on March 13 announced the approval of some 500 new housing units in the West Bank, in four settlements.
Danny Dayan, chairman of the Yesha Council settler umbrella group, called the approval of new housing in response to the attack “a small step in the right direction.” He added that it was “deeply troubling that it requires the murder of children in the arms of their parents to achieve such an objective.”
During a special Knesset session on the terror attack, Israeli Arab M.K. Ahmed Tibi said of the killer or killers, “He did not do anything in the name of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian nation is ashamed of such people, who distort its image and its righteous struggle to free itself of the occupation. A struggle must be moral, conscionable and fair. There are rules to the struggle against the occupation.”
JTA, Ynetnews.com and the Associated Press contributed to this report.