Convicted murderers of Israel, wife of sniper who shot Israeli baby running for election.
By Paul Shindman, World Israel News
Several convicted terrorists are running on the list of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party in the upcoming Palestinian elections, Kan News reported Thursday.
The lists of candidates for the Palestinian parliamentary elections scheduled for May were submitted by the Wednesday deadline and included several convicted terrorists who had been serving jail sentences for the murder of Israeli civilians.
The Fatah movement, led by Abu Mazen, placed Suad Zalloum, known as “Umm Saja,” in the second spot on their party list for the elections, guaranteeing her a place in the Palestinian legislature. She is the widow of Mahmoud Amar, the Palestinian terrorist sniper who shot and killed 10-month-old baby Shalhevet Pass in the Jewish community in Hebron at the beginning of the second intifada.
The judges who sent her husband to life in prison, said Shalhevet “was sentenced to death by a vile killer whom intentionally… pulled the trigger.”
“We cannot understand and we cannot accept the unbearable ease with which the killer decided to harm a helpless person,” the judges wrote in their verdict.
In 10th place on the Fatah list is Osama Khaled Kamel Silawi, a former PLO-Fatah commander in Jenin who trained the murderers who shot and killed Israeli Moti Biton in a 1992 terror attack. Silawi had been released as a goodwill gesture to the Palestinians in 2013.
In 15th place on the list is Zahran Zaidat, a released prisoner from the Hebron area who was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released in a 1995 prisoner exchange and then arrested and jailed again for 15 years in the second intifada.
In the 10th spot on the the “Freedom” party list supported by jailed Fatah official Marwan Barghouti is Fakhri Barghouti, who was sentenced to life for stabbing Israeli bus driver Mordechai Yekuel to death in 1975, but was released in the Gilad Shalit deal.
Marwan Barghouti is one of the most popular Fatah leaders and polls show he would win a leadership race, but he himself is not running as he is serving five life sentences for the murder of Israelis. His wife Padwa is second on the list after Nasser al-Kidwa, Yasser Arafat’s nephew, who heads it.
There are 36 lists registered for the Palestinian parliamentary elections on May 22, of which the Palestinian Central Election Commission has so far approved a third of them, with the others to be reviewed in the coming days. The final lists of candidates are scheduled to be published May 1.
If they do take place, it will be the first Palestinian election in 15 years.
Following the previous elections that were won by the Hamas terror group in 2006, Abbas and his Fatah party refused to concede power following which Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah in a bloody military coup. With the two sides at each other’s throats for years, neither side wanted elections until now.