House Resolution Would Accuse Palestinian Authority of Incitement

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday debated and passed a resolution that would condemn the Palestinian Authority for “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement.”

The non-binding resolution, drafted by Congressman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) and Ted Deutch (D-Florida), lists a host of statements from PA leadership made since 2013 that its authors consider inflammatory. Noting that the Oslo II agreement, signed in 1995, forbids such rhetoric, it condemns PA President Mahmoud Abbas for praising the killers of Israelis as “heroes,” for labeling Jews a “contaminating” presence on the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif) and for encouraging bloodletting in Jerusalem.

The resolution urges Abbas and Palestinian Authority officials “to discontinue all official incitement and exert influence to discourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement in Palestinian civil society” and directs the State Department “to regularly monitor and publish information on all official incitement by the Palestinian Authority against Jews and the State of Israel.”

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The hearing, titled “Words Have Consequences: Palestinian Authority Incitement to Violence,” featured testimony from Elliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and David Makovsky, formerly of the State Department and now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

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