Dahlan slams US’ removal of ultranationalist Israeli group from terror list 

Former Fatah member Muhammad Dahlan has condemned the United States’ decision to remove ultranationalist Israeli group Kahane Chai from its list of foreign terrorist organisations (FTO), saying it “encourages extremism and terrorism in the region”.

“The ideas of the Kach movement and the Kahane Chai group are still being promoted and their supporters are active, and are growing in Israel. The ideas of this terrorist movement are the ones that burned the [Palestinian] child Abu Khdeir alive, and burned the Dawabsheh house, and it is they who are attacking safe Palestinian villages, which had killed the child Amjad Al-Fayed this morning in Jenin,” Dahlan wrote on Twitter.

He explained that Kahane Chai’s ideas inspire Israeli extremists who storm Al-Aqsa Mosque daily, and call to demolish the Dome of the Rock.

Dahlan called on Washington to reconsider this “miserable decision, and to work seriously in order to achieve a just peace in the region, instead of its decisions supporting Israeli extremism and terrorism.”

Orthodox Jewish group Kahane Chai (Kach) was founded by ultranationalist Israeli Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1971. Its members have in the past killed Palestinians as well as Israeli officials.

On Friday, the US State Department said that it was delisting five groups, including Kahane Chai, as part of a routine procedure to remove inactive organisations from the FTO database in accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

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