Tibi: To prevent shahids, don't shoot them
Arab MK charges that 'most of the Arabs and Palestinians who are killed, are killed at the initiative of the occupation,' justifying calls for revenge for would-be Jerusalem terrorist's death by saying 'some people express their anger and sorrow through defiance.'
MK Ahmad Tibi (Joint List) charged Tuesday that "most of the Arabs and Palestinians who are killed, are killed at the initiative of the occupation."
Speaking following the funeral of Ahmad Muhammad Mahamid, who was shot dead after trying to stab a policeman in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday, Tibi told Ynet that "In order to not have shahids (martyrs), somebody needs to not shoot them. We don't want bloodshed."
Participants at Mahamid's funeral called to avenge his death. "Some people express their anger and sorrow through defiance," Tibi contended, adding they are motivated by "a sense of discrimination and persecution, of being cornered. It's neither the first, nor the last time" this will happen.
Tibi explained why hundreds attended Mahamid's funeral, many more than permitted by the police. "The way the police handled the body and its release will always infuriate people. This is an attempt to humiliate the deceased, his family and his community," he claimed.
Tibi also attacked Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman's tweet from Tuesday morning that said Umm al-Fahm should be "part of Palestine."
“I represent a message of coexistence, it's not built on violence but on a shared future,” said Tibi. This message, he added, is "not on Jewish superiority and not on racist calls from the defense minister to move Umm al-Fahm, a city that hundreds of thousands of acres of its territory have already been expropriated since 1948” to the Palestinian Authority, Tibi added.
Likud MK and coalition chairman David Amsalem also slammed Lieberman, and said that “I do not make populist comments. I tell the Arabs: you are supposed to be Israeli citizens like any other citizen. There’s only one condition—that you have to be loyal to the country that you live in, like in any other country in the world.”
“I think the majority of Israeli Arabs want to stay in the State of Israel and coexist with the Jews, but their leaders draw them towards radicalism,” Amsalem went on to say.
He also slammed the police for “not being active enough in the Arab sector.”
Police placed a restriction of 150 on the number of people permitted to attend the funeral of would-be terrorist Ahmad Muhammad Mahamid in Umm al-Fahm, but 1,500 showed up to the procession at around 2am, which was also marked by the launching of fireworks and calls against Israel.
“Why didn’t 10 police cars come to check whether there's a hundred people or 2,000? Why does everything need to be done in retrospect? If there was law enforcement, they (Arabs) would toe the line accordingly. When there's an enclave with no law—where they seemingly have their own rule—then that’s how it looks.”
“And what does the police do? An occasional raid? There’s a real problem there,” he added. “The state and the police have invested large sums of money to bring security to the Arab sector, it’s a work in progress.”
He concluded that “there's a real problem there, there is no law, no order in the Arab sector.”
