Is Mahmoud Abbas Against An ‘Armed Struggle’?

The AP has disseminated the glad news that Mahmoud Abbas, now entering the 18th year of his four-year term as President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), is against an “armed struggle.” Here is the report on this ludicrous claim.

Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) and its ruling Fatah Party, has frequently been described as “two-faced.” In 2014, amid a terror wave that had already claimed the lives of many Israelis, then-strategic affairs minister Yuval Steinitz referred to the Western-backed Palestinian leader as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” likening him to Yasser Arafat.

His suit-and-tie instead of a keffiya-and-khakis outfit, his senior-citizen mien, his “no-one-here-but-us-accountants” routine, has fooled journalists and Western leaders alike. But Abbas is just as dangerous and brutal as was Yasir Arafat. Think of what happened to Nizar Banat.

Indeed, while Abbas has condemned terrorism in English, he constantly encourages “martyrdom” in his messaging to the Palestinian public.

Why is it, one wonders, that the major news outlets do not bother to keep on their staffs Arabic-language translators, so that they can check what Abbas and others say to their own people? Wouldn’t such a wide discrepancy in the messaging be of interest to the audience?

Yet most in the media are all too keen to give the octogenarian autocrat a free pass.

Case in point: when Abbas issued a half-hearted statement denouncing “the killing of Palestinian and Israeli civilians” following this spring’s terror surge in Israel, news outlets uniformly reported that Ramallah had condemned the violence. However, they failed to note that Abbas actively incites the murder of Jews and that several terrorists even had links to his Fatah and the PA.

While he issued exactly one statement, after terror attacks on Israelis in Hadera, Bnei Brak, Beersheva and Tel Aviv, criticizing “the killing of Palestinian and Israeli civilians,” this very statement left the impression that innocent “Palestinian civilians” had been killed. There were none. The only Palestinians killed were some of the very terrorists behind the attacks in Hadera, Bnei Bfrak, Beersheva, and Tel Aviv, and those who tried to prevent the IDF from arresting them. But few would realize just how mendacious Abbas’ statement was.

This week, the Associated Press (AP) took this false depiction of the Palestinian Authority chief to a whole new level.

In the accompanying text under a photo slideshow titled, “Israel’s separation barrier, 20 years on,” compiled by Israeli photojournalist Oded Balilty, the wire service made the bizarre claim that Abbas is “opposed to armed struggle.”

The June 27 AP picture gallery, which ABC News and other news organizations subsequently reprinted, depicts the Israeli “separation barrier” 20 years after construction.

For the record: Jerusalem decided to build the security barrier in June 2002 to stem Palestinian terror attacks emanating from the West Bank.

In March of that year alone, [2002] over 130 Israelis were killed by suicide bombers, while another 680 sustained wounds. The security fence, which in some sections takes the form of a wall, has reduced the number of suicide attacks originating from the West Bank by more than 90 percent.

This “separation wall” which we are meant to deplore is, in fact, a “security wall,” put up not to fence Palestinians in, but to keep terrorists out of Israel. That is its sole function. And it has worked, reducing suicide attacks that originate in the West Bank by 90%. Should Israel be apologetic for trying, and succeeding, in protecting its citizens from fanatical Palestinian terrorists?

Meanwhile, Abbas used his office to incessantly inflame tensions, with the Palestinian leader calling convicted terrorists “symbols of steadfastness, symbols of our homeland” and “our nation’s heroes” in the first years of his rule.

The AP nevertheless maintained that “while the number of attacks has fallen sharply, other factors may be at play.” It then went on to cite Abbas’ ostensible commitment to nonviolence, writing: “The [Second] [I]ntifada began winding down in 2005, after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died and was replaced by President Mahmoud Abbas, who is opposed to armed struggle.”

Here are some facts the AP would seemingly prefer to ignore:

• Just weeks ago, Abbas vowed to maintain the so-called “Pay-for-Slay” policy that doles out “salaries” to Palestinian terrorists and their families.Speaking on the eve of Nakba Day, the Arab term for “catastrophe” that they characterize as the birth of the Jewish state, Abbas reportedly told the families of “martyrs” that he would continue the fund. He furthermore reaffirmed his commitment to the “right of return,” which would see millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants settle in Israel, ending its existence as a Jewish, democratic state.
• On March 29, 2022, five people were killed as a Palestinian terrorist from the West Bank opened fire on the streets of Bnei Brak, a city near Tel Aviv. Attacker Diya Hamarsheh was believed to be affiliated with the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the “military wing” of Abbas’ Fatah faction. Footage from May 18, discovered by Palestinian Media Watch, includes a clip of the Fatah Jenin Branch Secretary hailing Hamarsheh as a “pure and heroic martyr.”

The terrorist Diya Hamarsheh, who murdered five people in Bnei Brak, was a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, which is part of Fatah. And Mahmoud Abbas is the head of Fatah. Its operatives follow his orders. Were he truly against “armed struggle” Fatah’s military wing would have known it. One might also ask, if Abbas is against ‘armed struggle,” what need for Fatah to have a “military wing” at all?

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