PA blames ‘occupation’ for death of cancer-ridden terrorist prisoner, calls for violence

Riots in Judea and Samaria and possibly in prisons expected amid charges of “deliberate medical negligence.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Palestinian Authority (PA) blamed Israel for the death Tuesday of one of its military wing’s most senior terrorists, who died in hospital after protracted treatment for lung cancer.

“The occupation bears full responsibility for the killing of the prisoner Nasser Abu Hamid…as a result of the deliberate medical negligence of the occupation authorities,” the Palestinian government’s Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs charged.

The Commission also accused Israel of having a “deliberate policy” of killing Palestinian prisoners.

Abu Hamid was “treated closely and regularly by the medical staff and external parties,” the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) said in the announcement of the 51-year-old terrorist’s death. This included hospital stays in recent months for his condition, culminating in his death at the Shamir Medical Center in Tel Aviv.

Israel’s parole board had denied a request to release him on humanitarian grounds when, in October, he took a turn for the worse and human rights and Palestinian organizations were demanding his freedom.

The PA called for a general strike in the Ramallah region and rallies over the alleged  “assassination” throughout Judea and Samaria.

Abu Hamid was one of the founders of the military wing of Fatah, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by several countries besides Israel, including the U.S., EU and Canada.

The Brigades echoed the accusation of medical negligence, as did Hamas, which partnered with the Fatah-backed group on numerous attacks.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Kassem called for “a real escalation in Israeli prisons” in reaction to the “great crime,” and the IPS is taking the threat of riots seriously.

Abu Hamid was caught in 2002 after committing a string of murders himself and organizing other deadly attacks against Israelis, for which he was sentenced to seven life sentences plus 50 years.

Two of his most prominent victims in 2000 were Binyamin and Talia Kahane, the son and daughter-in-law of ultra-nationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane, who were killed in a drive-by shooting. He also was involved in the infamous lynching in Ramallah that year, when two IDF reservists took a wrong turn into the city and were forcibly taken from a PA jail cell, beaten to death and their bodies mutilated by a crowd of rioters.

Families victimized by Abu Hamid have sent a letter to outgoing Defense Minister Benny Gantz imploring him not to release the body.

“Terrorists who attempted to murder Jews, certainly those who managed to carry out attacks that ended in the death of Jews as this terrorist did, receive huge funerals,” they wrote. “It is clear that an event like this has the potential to encourage more attacks.”

The letter noted that Abu Hamid’s four brothers are all serving life sentences in Israeli prisons for their own terror attacks against Jews, and thus this is “a family where the worst of our haters grew up.”