The Palestinian Authority (PA) on Tuesday called on the US administration to remove the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from its lists of terrorist organizations.
“The PA called on the US administration, in an official letter, to remove the PLO from the lists of terrorism,” Hussein al-Sheikh, member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, wrote in a tweet.
He added, “We expressed our astonishment and our absolute rejection of the persistence of this unjust classification of a people under occupation at a time when the Kach terrorist organization is removed from those lists.”
Last Friday, the US State Department said it was delisting five groups, including the Jewish extremist Kach movement, as part of a routine procedure to remove inactive organizations from the FTO database in accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
“As required by the INA, the Department reviews FTO designations every five years to determine if the circumstances that were the basis of the designation have changed in such a manner as to warrant a revocation,” the State Department said.
However, the US Congress kept the PLO on the terrorist lists, prompting the PA to describe this step as a “double standard and a victory of injustice.”