The terrorism-linked Islamic Movement in Israel group has responded to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s re-election as premier on Saturday, claiming that the move will “lead his people to real disaster.” 

The Islamic Movement’s deputy leader, Kamal Khatib, quoted leader Sheikh Raed Salah as predicting doom for the Jewish people as a result of the victory in Hamas’s Palestine magazine. 

“Our Islamic nation is stronger than Netanyahu and the Likud, and stronger than the Zionist regime,” he added.

Salah called on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to abandon the peace talks and make real choices for the Palestinian Arab people, and warned against allowing a Netanyahu government to institute equal prayer rights for Jews on the Al-Aqsa Mosque (the Temple Mount – holiest site in Judaism – ed.). 

He warned that any attempts to establish full sovereignty over the Mount – which is currently in the hands of the Jordanian Waqf – would spark a response from Gaza and elsewhere. 

Salah was convicted by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court in November 2013 with inciting to violence, but acquitted on inciting to racism. Last March, he was given eight months of jail and an additional eight months on condition.

The indictment against Salah relates to his calls to use violence to block Jews from visiting the Temple Mount, calls to racism and violence that have led MKs to launch a bill to outlaw Salah’s movement.

Salah has labeled Israeli leaders “terrorists” and “enemies of Allah” in a speech to Muslims in Be’er Sheva, and was also jailed for five months in 2010 for spitting at an Israeli police officer. 

During a speech at a 2007 demonstration he accused Jews of using children’s blood to bake matzah, invoking the infamous medieval blood libels used to trigger murderous pogroms in both Europe and the Middle East. 

Salah also spent a brief period in jail for transferring money to Hamas, and famously “reminisced” fondly over the drawing of swastikas as a child in a 2009 interview with a London-based Arabic-language TV station.