UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Sunday condemned the Palestinian Authority's naming of a women's center in Burqa, constructed in cooperation with the UN, after female terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.
Mughrabi was a Fatah terrorists who killed 37 people, including 12 children, in a massacre on Israel's Coastal Highway in 1978.
The Jerusalem-based Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which monitors anti-Israel and anti-Jewish media and education in the Palestinian Authority, reports that the sign on the new building includes logos of the PA's Ministry of Local Government, United Nations Women, and the Norwegian Representative Office to the PA.
Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for Secretary-General Guterres, released a statement which read: “The United Nations disassociated itself from the Center once it learned the offensive name chosen for it and will take measures to ensure that such incidents do not take place in the future.”
The statement continued: “The glorification of terrorism, or the perpetrators of heinous terrorist acts, is unacceptable under any circumstances. The UN has repeatedly called for an end to incitement to violence and hatred as they present one of the obstacles to peace."
Dujarric said that the UN had already ended its support for the center prior to the revelation that it was named after a terrorist and a mass murderer. "The United Nations support to this community ended last year and it has asked for the logo of UN Women to be removed immediately.
"Furthermore, the inauguration of the Center took place after the UN’s disassociation with it.”
Norway, which provided the funding for the project, condemned the naming of the center after Mughrabi on Friday and demanded that the PA return the funding which had been used to build the center.