Fatah, ignoring epidemic, stages armed rally to celebrate prisoner release

Fatah terrorists fire guns in the air at mass rally in violation of the Palestinian Authority’s measures to fight the spread of the coronavirus as infections accelerate in the PA.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Palestinian gunmen from the Fatah terror group fired their guns in the air at a mass celebration they organized at a refugee camp adjacent to Jerusalem in clear violation of health rules, an Israeli reporter revealed on Thursday.

Despite clear rules from the Palestinian health ministry against large gatherings, masked terrorists brought hundreds of people into the streets of the Qalandiya refugee camp just outside the Jerusalem municipal boundary and beside the runway of Jerusalem’s Atarot Airport, abandoned during the second intifada due to gunfire from the camp.

“A corona-days reception for released prisoner at the Qalandiya refugee camp on the outskirts of Jerusalem – gunfire in the air is a must,” Ynet reporter Elior Levy tweeted.

Levy discovered a video of the event on a Palestinian news website, noting that the mass gathering seemed “reasonable” when compared to even larger mass gatherings Fatah terrorists held two weeks ago in Jenin, located further north in Samaria.

Even though Fatah had been criticized for the previous events, “the Fatah movement returned to repeat the gathering, including the presence of gunmen and gunfire in the Qalandiya camp,” the Palestinian news website Shahed reported.

The video showed hundreds of Palestinians congregating in the street as masked terrorists fired their automatic weapons in the air to celebrate the release of a man identified as Mohammed Naim Hamad from an Israeli prison. It was not known what crime Hamad was jailed for.

Shahed reported that “the gathering of citizens and the shooting comes just hours after a government spokesman announced that the coronavirus had reached a dangerous level,” in the Palestinian territories.

Last week the PA reported its first coronavirus death, and on Monday Israeli officials warned that a “medical annexation” of the Palestinian-controlled territory might be necessary because the PA is an “epidemiological black hole” where the true extent of the pandemic is unknown.

Although acknowledging that the PA was making efforts to fight the spread of the epidemic, former Director of the Ministry of Health Dr. Gabi Barabash said the movement of Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem, where people are coming and going freely, would affect everyone.

“What’s happening there will affect what happens in the rest of Israel,” Barabash said.

The Qalandiya refugee camp is only a few hundred meters from the Atarot industrial zone just inside the Jerusalem municipality where 15 Palestinian workers at an Israeli meat packing plant were found to be infected with coronavirus, Israeli media reported Monday.