Samir Kuntar
Samir KuntarReuters

Members of Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement on Tuesday evening participated in a memorial in Ramallah for Samir Kuntar, the Hezbollah terrorist who was eliminated in Syria earlier this week, reports Walla! news.

Western governments pushing for a peace treaty between Israel and PA often claim that Fatah is a “peace partner” for Israel, as opposed to its rival Hamas, which is blacklisted as a terrorist organization by many Western countries.

According to the report, the ceremony which was organized by a number of Palestinian and Islamic organizations, was attended by Fatah Central Committee Azzam al-Ahmed, a close associate of Abbas, who delivered a eulogy on behalf of the movement.

Al-Ahmed noted in his eulogy that Kuntar "began his career among the ranks of the Palestinian revolution, as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine" and promised that his elimination will not "weaken the will and plans of the resistance".

Walla! further reported that portraits of Hezbollah chief Nasrallah and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad hung at the hall in which the memorial took place.

Kuntar is notorious for the 1979 murder of three Israelis in the northern city of Nahariya, including 31-year-old Danny Haran, and Haran's four-year-old daughter whose head he smashed on a rock with his rifle butt after killing her father in front of her. The girl's two-year-old sister was accidentally smothered to death by their terrified mother as she stifled her cries to prevent them from being discovered.

He was eliminated in an airstrike on a residential building in a suburb of Damascus on Sunday morning. Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the assassination and vowed revenge.

The participation of Fatah officials in a memorial for Kuntar should come as no surprise, considering the ongoing incitement to terrorism against Israelis by Israel’s so-called “peace partner”.

Abbas himself takes part in this incitement, having recently called on Palestinian Arabs to “liberate” the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem from Jews and their “filthy feet”.

Official PA media is filled with incitement against Israelis. Abbas last month appeared on official PA television and stated that the murder of dozens of Israelis and the wounding of hundreds others is part of a "peaceful uprising."