Siyam: Kidnappings harm image of Palestinian people

The PA interior minister, Sa’eed Siyam, on Sunday told a press conference that he ordered an immediate investigation into the kidnap incident of two Fox news journalists in the Gaza Strip, asserting that such a phenomenon was alien to the Palestinian society.

He said in the conference, after release of the journalists who attended it, that his ministry was concerned with non-repetition of such an incident.

Siyam explained that his ministry’s security apparatuses were focusing on the safe release of the kidnapped without any hindrances, adding that those apparatuses should now concentrate efforts on the kidnappers.

He pointed to the role of the popular resistance committees in convincing the kidnappers not to harm the kidnapped journalists and to give up their demands.

“We affirm that those journalists are guests of the Palestinian people as long as they do not interfere in our internal affairs,” the minister elaborated.

“We hope that such incidents will not recur because they harm the image of the Palestinian people,” he underlined.

For his part, Ala Husni, the PA police commander, told the same conference that the Palestinian people should protect those journalists to ensure freedom of the press and to allow them publish what was really going on in the Palestinian lands.

He blamed the phenomenon on the security mess in the Palestinian lands, promising that greater efforts would be exerted to put an end to such chaos.