Video: PLO Official Wants Horrific Punishments for Palestinians Who Sell Land to Jews

An adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a recent interview called for the killing of Arabs who sell “even an inch of our Palestinian land” to Israelis.

In an interview on Iran’s Al-Alam television on the topic of Palestinians selling land to Jews, Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein said, “Some land brokers must be killed. I call upon our Palestinian people: Anyone who sells even an inch of our Palestinian land must be killed in the streets and hanged on an electric pole.”

Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein says Arab land brokers "must be killed in the streets and hanged on an electric pole." (Image source: MEMRI)

The interview was translated and posted online by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Al-Einein accused Israelis of forging real estate documents in cases in which they had purchased homes via Arab intermediaries.

A Palestinian family which sold a home last month in the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem posted an ad in a local newspaper displaying the image of the sales contract which noted that the buyer was an Arab intermediary, and claimed they didn’t know they final occupant would be Jews, the Ma’an News Agency reported.

“The way to defeat the Israeli occupation is the way of the martyr Mutaz Hijazi,” the Fatah official said, referring to man who last month shot a well-known Israeli rabbi at point-blank range. “If the people do not fight the Israeli occupation in the way they see fit, in order to liberate their land, they do not deserve to live.”

The Times of Israel described how Palestinian law treats those who sell land to Israelis:

Under Palestinian law, land sales to Israelis are illegal and a crime punishable by death. The PLO’s Revolutionary Penal Code (1979) applies the death penalty both to “traitors” and to those accused of “transferring positions to the enemy.” Since the late 1990s, Palestinian courts have been dealing out death sentences to convicted land dealers, though Abbas has not authorized the implementation of executions since his election in 2004.

Abbas last month ordered those who sell homes to Jewish Israelis to be sentenced to hard labor for life, according to a posting on the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The White House and State Department in October accused Israel of working to “poison the atmosphere” by allowing the building of east Jerusalem homes or their purchase by Jewish Israelis.

Fatah, which Abbas also heads, is the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The interview was aired on October 31 and was translated and posted online by MEMRI on Friday.

Watch an excerpt of the interview from Iran’s Al-Alam courtesy of MEMRI: