Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations to Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has issued a stark warning to Israel, suggesting the potential for future violence.
“If the Palestinian cause will not be justly, comprehensively, and permanently resolved, at least on the basis of international legitimacy, at least on the basis of the UN resolutions, then October 7 can repeat itself 100 times, and perhaps even more seriously,” Habbash stated in a video posted to his Facebook page on May 18, as translated by Palestinian Media Watch.
Habbash, like many other officials in the PA, has a long record of incendiary comments aimed at Israel.
In 2017, he condemned Israel’s security measures following a terror attack on the Temple Mount, calling them a clear violation of international conventions and resolutions concerning the status of Jerusalem and its sacred sites.
That same year, Habbash delivered a sermon, attended by Abbas, in which he warned that moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Yerushalayim would be a “declaration of war.”
In 2018, he likened Israel’s restrictions on access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque to methods used by the Nazis.
In 2022, after Abbas accused Israel of committing “50 holocausts” against Palestinian Arabs, Habbash defended him, stating that “all the leaders of the [Israeli] occupation joined together in attacking Abbas, because he is defending his people and he wants to remind the world of the massacres against them.”
{Matzav.com Israel}