Netanyahu points finger at Abbas for Jerusalem terror attack

A Jerusalem terror attack that left one person dead and several more injured was the direct result of incitement from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charged Wednesday.

A Border Police officer — Jedan Assad, 38, from the Druze village of Beit Jann — was killed and 14 more people were injured after an Arab man plowed his van into pedestrians on the seam line between East and West Jerusalem just after noon Wednesday, the latest in a string of terrorist vehicular assaults in the capital.

The attack was the “direct consequence of Abu Mazen’s [Abbas’s] incitement and that of his Hamas partners,” Netanyahu declared, speaking at a memorial ceremony marking 19 years since prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. “We are engaged in an ongoing battle in Jerusalem. I have no doubt that we will prevail,” he added.

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The Hamas terror group, which is in a unity government with Abbas’s Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Jedan Assad (Channel 2 screenshot)

Netanyahu added that peace with the Palestinians could not be achieved so long as the Palestinians backed terrorism rather than seeking to defeat it.

Netanyahu has blamed Abbas several times recently for fomenting unrest in Jerusalem. On Monday, the prime minister charged that Abbas was “adding fuel to the fire.”

Abbas came under harsh Israeli criticism for writing a condolence letter last week to the family of the shooter of Jewish right-wing activist Yehudah Glick, a Palestinian named Mu’taz Hijazi, praising his actions and calling him “a martyr.” This was a case of “increasing incitement” against Israel by Abbas, Netanyahu said Wednesday. Hijazi was killed by security forces when they tried to arrest him last Thursday.

Last month, Netanyahu leveled blame at Abbas for a similar terror attack in which a driver rammed his car into a crowd at a light rail station on October 22, killing two people.

“This is how [Abbas’s] partners in government act, the same Abbas who just a few days ago incited attacks on Jews in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said then.

Speaking at the Rabin memorial, Netanyahu said peace with the Palestinians could be possible only when Palestinian squares were filled not with pro-terror rallies but with people demanding an end to terrorism.

“Real peace, peace for the generations, the peace we all want, will not be achieved through shortcuts or hopeful wishes,” the prime minister said.

He also called Islamic extremism “the greatest danger to our country, to the region and to the world.”

President Reuven Rivlin said at the same ceremony that Israel would continue to build homes throughout the capital.

Other ministers also blamed Abbas for the attack.

“Mahmoud Abbas is the driver of the death-car in Jerusalem, and the terrorists are just his messengers,” Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said. “Israel needs to say clearly that the Hamas-Fatah government is a ‘terror authority’ and it must be dealt with accordingly.”

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said in a statement that Abbas was responsible for the bloodshed in Jerusalem, blaming the Palestinian leader for inciting violence in the city.

“[Abbas] hasn’t changed and won’t change, and he’ll continue to blacken the face of the state of Israel and incite against it to the Palestinian population and on various stages across the world,” he said.

Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz called Abbas “Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde.”

“The terrible attack in Jerusalem is a result of the same two-facedness. We need to respond to the attack just as we did against [the late PLO chairman Yasser] Arafat — to expose the dark side of Abbas to the whole world.”