Israel slams naming of Ramallah street after arch-terrorist

By HERB KEINON
The Prime Minister’s Office on Wednesday night slammed the naming of a street in Ramallah next to the presidential compound after Yehiyeh Ayash, a notorious terrorist responsible for murdering scores of Israelis.
Responding to a Channel 10 report on the naming of the street, the Prime Minister’s Office put out a statement referring to it as “an outrageous glorification of terrorism by the Palestinian Authority,” and calling on the world to “forcefully condemn this official Palestinian incitement for terrorism and against peace.”
Ayash, a terrorist mastermind and chief Hamas bomb maker in the West Bank, was nicknamed “the engineer” and was responsible for a string of suicide bombings, most of them on buses, that rocked the country in the mid 1990s.
After a massive manhunt, Ayash was killed in 1996 by an Israeli explosive hidden in a cellular phone.
Ayash’s academic achievements are noted on a plaque in his honor on the street. The plaque says Israel killed Ayash following “allegations” of terrorism.
The naming of this street comes just weeks after a square in Ramallahwas named after Dalal Mughrabi, the terrorist who led the 1978 CoastalRoad massacre. Israel has accused the PA of inciting to violence byglorifying terrorists in this manner.
In a related development,a new government mechanism to monitor and quantify Palestinianincitement is expected to be brought to the security cabinet in thevery near future, government officials said.
The mechanism – an“incitement index” – has been developed by Brig.-Gen. (res.) YossiKuperwasser, currently the director-general of the Strategic AffairsMinistry and formerly the head of Military Intelligence’s research andassessment division. The idea, according to government officials, is toperiodically release an incitement “report card.”