Clinton and Arafat
Clinton and ArafatFlash 90

While the government claims that the murderers being freed as a “gesture” to the Palestinian Authority (PA) committed their acts before the Oslo accords were signed by then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PA head Yasser Arafat, Arutz Sheva has revealed that this is in fact not true.

Arutz Sheva's Hagai Huberman found that while most of the terrorists being set free apparently did indeed commit their crimes before the accords were signed, at least four of them carried out their crimes after the accords were signed on the White House lawn, on September 13, 1993.

Faiz Madhat Barbak and two other terrorists murdered Moshe Becker in Rishon Letzion on January 21, 1994. Becker had come to work at his orchard.

Salem Ali Abu Musa and other terrorists murdered Holocaust-survivor Isaac Rotenberg as he was fixing a floor in Petach Tikva on March 31, 1994.

Ahmad Abu-Sita and Muhammad Abu-Sita – two construction workers from Gaza who came to Israel to work in an apartment in Ramla – murdered David Dedi and Haim Weizman in their sleep in December of 1993.

These murders could be said to have taken place before the signing of the “Oslo B” accord, but they certainly did not take place befire the signing of the Oslo accords, as the government has claimed.

The government has communicated the idea that releasing terrorists who commited their crimes after the signing of the accords is worse than releasing ones who did so before the signing. The reasoning behind this is that before the accords were signed, Israel and the “Palestinians” were at war with each other, whereas murders committed afterward breached the accord signed by the two entities.

On Sunday evening, the ministerial committee headed by Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon approved the release of 26 terrorists as part of a gesture to the Palestinian Authority, in order to get it to resume peace talks with Israel.

14 of the terrorists to be released will be exiled to Gaza, and the remaining 12 will be transferred to PA-assigned areas of Judea and Samaria. Eight of the terrorists on the list were to be released over the next three years, two of them in the coming six months.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office said that the terrorists will be released about 48 hours after the publication of the list. It was emphasized that if one of the terrorists resumes hostile activity against the State of Israel after his release, he will be returned to prison to continue serving his sentence.

The full list was made public on the Israel Prisons Service website on Sunday night, which revealed that 17 terrorists who were convicted of murdering Israelis, including three who axed to death senior citizens, are among the 26 terrorists that Israel will set free this week. 

Earlier on Sunday, families of victims of terrorism marched through Jerusalem in a protest against the government’s plan to approve the release of 26 terrorists.