The Americans have a theory. Over the last few weeks, alongside the unprecedented level of support and aid that they have granted Israel in the current military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, they have also been sharing their plan with the prime minister and a number of senior cabinet ministers: after Hamas has been defeated, either immediately or gradually, the "good guys" from the Palestinian Authority (PA) – possibly with the aid of other moderate Arab states – will take over the reins of government in the Gaza Strip too. This will occur in tandem with a concerted effort to implement the "Two State Solution" and a far-reaching compromise that Israel will have to make in Judea and Samaria. The Americans believe that after all they have done for it, Israel "owes it to them." Following the "stick" that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were beaten with, and rightly so, it will then be time for the "carrot" – a Palestinian state for the other Palestinians, the "good ones" or the "less bad ones", in Judea and Samaria. They are prepared to invest a considerably large amount of money to achieve that goal, literally billions of dollars.
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This American naiveté has many aspects and implications, that have been mulled over for years as part of the endless argument both within Israel and abroad too, between those who deny the right of a Palestinian state to exist and those who support it. But way before we address that historical argument, the American theory suffers from a key, basic preliminary fault. The underlying assumption of the Americans that Judea and Samaria are home to the "good guys" or that Hamas does not represent the majority of the Palestinians – as President Joe Biden says himself – simply does not tally with the reality.
Truth be told, it did not correlate with the reality even prior to the current war, and certainly after the war broke out now, it really is something that belongs to a parallel universe. More than 1,000 terrorist attacks, including extremely severe ones, that both Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist organizations planned, have been thwarted by the IDF and the Shin Bet throughout Judea and Samaria in recent years, in those very areas where the "good guys" are – Jenin, Hebron, Nablus, Tulkarm, Samaria and additional districts. Dozens of them could easily have ended in genuine massacres, even if they might not have matched the horrendous scope of the October 7 massacre in the Gaza belt communities. Many dozens of terrorist attacks, some of them severe attacks, have been foiled by the IDF since the outbreak of the war. A thousand Hamas terrorists have been arrested in Judea and Samaria in the last three weeks alone. More than 125 terrorists have been killed there.
Video: PA officials praise terrorists / Credit: PMW
Hamas' current attempt to ignite Judea and Samaria is not something that is occurring out of a vacuum. Since the beginning of the war, and the massacre that these new Nazis from Hamas carried out on the residents of the Gaza belt communities, the manifestations of support and identification among the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria with the October 7 massacre and the fighting led by Hamas in Gaza against Israel, have been steadily growing. The support and identification originate both from the level of the Fatah leadership, Hamas' biggest rival, and also from the grassroots – in demonstrations, support marches and endless manifestations of sympathy on social media.
This trend has been widely reported on by a variety of civilian entities monitoring the situation in the PA, from the more established Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI to the newer voices in this field, Hakol Hayehudi ("The Jewish Voice") and the Regavim Movement, alongside state-run monitoring organizations and research bodies. It correlates with the results of dozens of public opinion polls conducted even prior to the October 7 massacre. All of them testify to broad support, and even a majority for Hamas, among the Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria. Mahmoud Abbas knows full well why he has been doing everything in his power for years now to undermine any attempt to hold democratic elections in the PA. The PA Chairman is fully cognizant of the mood among the population, especially now, during wartime, even in his own stronghold of Ramallah.
Only a week ago, last Friday, thousands marched there, their voices hoarse from repeatedly shouting out the words, echoing the demonstration leader: "Whoever has a gun / and hides it for wedding celebrations / should either shoot a Jew / or give it to Hamas." On any regular day of the week, Mahmoud Abbas' PA forces would disperse any such demonstration by firing into the air, but not today. In Salfit in Samaria (thirty km south of Ariel), not far from the hospital named after Yasser Arafat, last Saturday there was a funeral procession in which those attending cried out in support of none other than the masked Hamas military spokesman, Abu Obeida, whose real name, Hudhayfah Kahlot, was exposed just recently by the IDF. In the village of As-Sawiya in the Nablus district, Hamas flags were proudly flown at another funeral of a local, while the crowd repeatedly chanted: "We are all Mohammed Deif's men." In both Nablus and Hebron, marches have taken place on the last few Fridays in which both PLO and Hamas flags have been raised beside each other.
'Swastikas in Hawara'
On occasions the images on social media are even harder to watch. In Hawara's main Telegram channel, images of swastikas daubed on the walls across the village in support of Hamas were repeatedly shown. Another clip posted there shows a Gazan crowd trampling on the body of an IDF soldier, possibly one of those abducted, and then ensures that he is dead by shooting him in the head. In Hawara, Bir Zeit and Silwad, local businesses (a bakery, lingerie factory and a pizzeria) published images of their products with photos of the abducted Israelis, including both an elderly woman and a young girl.
The support for Hamas continues in those very areas where the Americans seek to establish a Palestinian state, even when rockets launched from the Gaza Strip fall on them by mistake. This is what happened near the village of Yabd in the Jenin district, and in the Aida refugee camp north of Bethlehem. In both these locations, children, youth, men and women celebrated with fragments and shrapnel from the rockets, dancing in joy and chanting cries of incitement against Israel and calls of support for Hamas.
And that is not all, by a long chalk: do you remember Samidoun, which purported to be a Palestinian prisoner solidarity organization, which State Party leader, Benny Gantz, as the then Minister of Defense, declared to be a terrorist organization and then outlawed? Do you recall the bitter criticism leveled at him in the US and Europe for doing so? The Ha'aretz newspaper even wrote then that Samidoun is "An organization that any democratic society would be proud of." Well perhaps, not exactly. Samidoun, similar to additional organizations in the land of the "good guys" on whom the Americans are relying for the not-too-distant future, implored its supporters this week to support the 'Al-Aqsa Flood' and Hamas resistance efforts (this information is by courtesy of the journalist Yishai Friedman).
Elchanan Gruner, one of the founders and editors of Hakol Hayehudi, who alongside the Regavim Movement has collated much of the information on what is happening on the ground in the PA, has routinely been labeled by the media as being a "right-wing extremist", but the materials published by Gruner and his associates for many months now has been highly accurate. They have actually provided the authorities with tangible leads, and on occasions even actual incriminating material regarding severe incitement, both in the PA areas and among Israeli Arabs.
Gruner is far from being surprised at what is occurring in the PA. "We have an extremely short memory," he says, "it was Palestinian policemen who took part in the infamous lynch of IDF soldiers in Ramallah in October 2000 and removed their internal organs, with precisely the same barbarity we have just witnessed by Hamas in Gaza. The horrendous slaughter of the Fogel family in Itamar in 2011 was carried out by Arabs from the neighboring Palestinian village of Awarta, who were not from Hamas, and the same can be said of other, terrorist attacks, carried out with a similar degree of brutality." "Put aside our political stance for a moment," Hakol Hayehudi asks, "Set aside your own views, and simply listen to what the Palestinians in the PA are saying right now. Take what they have to say seriously. We have already paid a heavy price in blood for failing to take Hamas seriously, both its words and its spokesmen."
Avraham Binyamin, head of Regavim's Policy and Parliamentary Division, who took part in the effort of Hakol Hayehudi to collect the information and document it, also recommends that we should not have any illusions nor should we assume that the PA has different objectives to those of Hamas. Binyamin reminds us of the Palestinian education system, which for years has been injecting incitement into its schoolbooks, sowing the seeds that have given root to murderers, teaching its students to hate Jews and regard them as subhuman." Fatah terrorists, he tells us, also took part in the October 7 massacre and the subsequent looting. Alongside Gruner, he uncovers photos of Fatah emblems on the clothes of a number of those who took part in the massacre in the Gaza belt communities ("Fatah-Gaza", a faction that opposes Mahmoud Abbas; NS).
'We taught them a lesson in Gaza'
Additional and even more diverse materials are currently being collated by Palestinian Media Watch researchers, headed by Dr. Itamar Marcus. These materials clearly illustrate that is not just the vibe on the street across Judea and Samaria that supports Hamas and identifies with the October 7 massacre. Manifestations of support and sympathy have also been recorded across the entire Fatah leadership, which as is well known, is headed by the PA Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas. Even in the immediate vicinity of the PA Chairman – who to this very moment has still failed to voice any clear condemnation of the massacre in the Gaza belt communities, and has constantly been 'ducking and diving' in relation to making announcements, denials, erasing messages and then issuing 'balanced' vanilla statements condemning violence on all sides – even here we can see affinity and sympathy with the October 7 massacre. The PA prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, is no different to Mahmoud Abbas, as we still await to hear any words of condemnation from him too. "What happened yesterday is in the past," he said in a newspaper interview, "Israel is responsible for the situation. We need to focus on the Palestinian fatalities."
Another close associate of Mahmoud Abbas, Mahmoud al-Habbash, the PA Chairman's adviser on religious and Islamic affairs and former PA minister of religion, who currently serves as the head of the PA's Shari'ah Courts, explains that the Palestinians in the West Bank "Stand by their brothers in Gaza," "...as they are a source of pride, heroism and honor for the Palestinian people." It is also important to note that al-Habbash refers to the October 7 massacre as "self-defense." "Israel", he claims, "is the aggressor, while the Palestinians are simply defending themselves... we are the victims of the aggression and the terror... and we have the right to use all forms of self-defense as is laid down by international law... what we are doing is no more than self-defense against Israeli terrorism."
Mahmoud al-Habbash's words go hand in hand with one of the first broadcasts of the PA TV, immediately following the October 7 massacre. Here too, the incident was referred to as "self-defense."
A week ago, during his Friday sermon on the Temple Mount, an additional appointee of Mahmoud Abbas, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, sent "Greetings to the 'Murabatin' there in the Gaza Strip." Moayad Sha'aban, a PA minister and head of the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission on behalf of the PA, incited the crowd at a funeral of two terrorists in Tulkarm, speaking about "The sublime shahids" and saying that, "What is required now: is unity on the ground and an effort to fight in the alleyways of every refugee camp and all across the homeland." "Today", the PA's official media channel announced on October 7, "Gaza struck a blow that the Occupation will not forget... Today we stand together, in unity."
Numerous Fatah seniors from various locations across Judea and Samaria are now speaking with the same tone: Hassan Daraghmeh, a Fatah member from Tubas, refers to Israel as "The Zionist enemy", expressing satisfaction at the fact that the Israeli military, so often referred to as being 'invincible', was shown to be extremely weak, as he described it. Iyad Jarad, Fatah's secretary in Tulkarm, states: "We stand alongside our brothers in Gaza, as they are a source of pride, heroism and honor for the Palestinian people." "All our enemies have joined forces against us," he states, including in this list, "The Americans, the British, the French and the Germans." "The entire West is trying to save the enemy entity, but we, the Palestinian people, have taught them a lesson in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, within the 1948 territories and in the diaspora (the PA's official TV channel and the Fatah Facebook page, Tulkarm branch).
'A morning of joy'
Rifat Alian, currently a senior Fatah figure and the former Fatah spokesman in Jerusalem, also refers to the October 7 massacre as a "heroic action". Alian regards it to be "The natural outcome of the international bias in favor of Israel. The Palestinians have been left with no choice. They have no option apart from that of resistance."
Even the former Palestinian minister, Hanan Ashrawi, a seasoned politician who is no stranger to the refined social graces of diplomacy, and in fact the first woman to be elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), is in denial of the current reality, she is defending the terrorist organizations responsible for carrying out the massacre and dismisses as "nonsense" the diverse documentation and footage proving that the perpetrators did behead and rape their victims. "Hamas is not ISIL," she claims. "I am no Hamas supporter," she stresses, but is quick to state that Hamas accounts for "at least 30% of the population." An additional denier of the situation is Husam Zomlot, a senior PA diplomat, and its current ambassador to the UK. Zomlot states – when referring to the backing that President Biden gave to the accurate Israeli information regarding the fact that the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza was hit by a rocket fired by PIJ – that "the US President is a liar."
And then of course there is Jamal Al-Hawil. Let me introduce him. A member of the Fatah council, who is convinced that "Allah would like us to see in the West Bank similar images to those we have seen in Gaza... We need to return to the one-state solution, between the river and the sea," he recommends. "The occupation will be extremely surprised in the West Bank too," Al-Hawil believes, and he wishes: "We would like something similar to what happened in Gaza to develop in the West Bank." Al-Hawil seeks to return to the days of Arafat's Force 17 (which was heavily involved in acts of terrorism; NS), "to strike a blow and to stand beside Palestinian honor and national identity."
In contrast to Al-Hawil, Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Rab, a member of the Fatah branch in Jenin, does not make do with simply expressing such a hope, and "conveys a clear message on behalf of the Fatah movement in the district of Jenin, to all our brothers and members of the Palestinian people, that they must take action and participate in this heroic episode." He even made it clear immediately after the October 7 massacre, to his men and to the Palestinian people, that this is "A morning of victory, a morning of joy, a morning of pride. We ask that God should send a blessing to our heroic shahids in Gaza."
In addition to all the "good" taking place among the "good guys", which of course includes "other Palestinians who are not Hamas," with whom America wants to do business on behalf of Israel, there is also shocking and appalling visual evidence. Fatah in Bethlehem, for example, uploaded to its Telegram account a photo of a scared mouse, laying on its back on a Star of David, with its four legs and its tongue shaking in fear from a black army boot approaching it and threatening to crush it.
In another extremely distressing incident on the web, Palestinians from Judea and Samaria share a short clip uploaded by the Gaza-based news agency Shehab that belongs to the Al-Aqsa Network. The star of this clip is an eagle that is somewhat reminiscent of the eagle used as a symbol of the Third Reich. This large bird rests on the top of a steep cliff. Underneath one of its wings the word "Gaza" is written, while the words "West Bank" appear under the other wing. In the background gunfire can be heard while images from terrorist attacks are shown. The eagle then spreads its wings and soars above the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where it then digs its claws into the eyes of another bird, which appear as two Stars of David. The subtitle that marks the end of the clip following this vicious attack is: "In order to break and defeat the enemy – Gaza needs you. Oh, West Bank."
This short clip incorporates almost the entire story, that we as Jews, are now experiencing, at least on an associative level, at least as far as I am concerned: the attack by this eagle, which is so similar to the eagle of the Third Reich may be compared with the acts committed by the Nazis from Hamas just three weeks ago. When I see the eagle clawing out the Star of David shaped eyes of the enemy bird, I cannot help but intuitively think of the Hamas monsters, who – actually and literally – gouged out the eyes of two small Jewish infants, in front of their terrified parents. All four of them were then summarily executed. Even the appearance of Al-Aqsa in the clip underscores just how central an issue the incitement was, not only in the PA, but also among Hamas, who used the brazenly fictitious motto of "Al-Aqsa is in danger."
'This is also a war for Allah'
The fact that the Palestinians residing in the PA areas have been celebrating all these highly visual images, alongside the speeches delivered by the Fatah leaders, the numerous shows of sympathy in the Palestinian street and the education system that glorifies terrorism, educating the young to become 'shahids' and take part in 'jihad', is on the one hand completely untenable, yet on the other hand it is essential for anybody who seeks to really understand whom we are dealing with here. Study of such severely unpalatable materials might save us from any further foolish conceptions, this time in relation to the Palestinian Authority and Judea and Samaria.
This week, Itamar Marcus, the founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch for the last 27 years, summarized what he has both seen and heard, information and documents of which we have brought only the tip of the iceberg in this article: "Initially there was tremendous joy there. The feeling was that Hamas had fulfilled a dream that the PA could only ever have fantasized about. You are repeatedly witness to the use of words such as 'joy', 'pride' and 'heroic'. Most of those celebrating did not actually utter the word 'Hamas', as this is their bitter political enemy. The support and empathy are with the act itself, with the massacre. They embrace the acts just as they hug and embrace the terrorists from all the factions, from Hamas too. Just as they used to send, still send and will continue to send financial bonuses to the murderers or their families for each Jew they killed, and or each year they spend in prison. This is the case too for the slaughterers who took part in the October 7 massacre."
Only after a number of days, says Marcus, "When it became clear to the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, just how powerful and intense the IDF's response was, then the 'victim' narrative was added to the festivities, portraying them as enduring terrible suffering from Israel's acts of 'slaughter'. There were two more important motifs emerging from the mass of material that we collated. Firstly, this is also a war for Allah. The Palestinians today are no less, and perhaps even more, religious Muslims than they are Palestinians. Secondly, the fact that Israel suffered such a hard blow, even though it enjoys the support of a superpower such as the US, as well as other friendly states in Europe, is in their view something that serves to boost the 'achievement'. This is a recurring motif in our documentations."
In December 2022, a survey conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that in those areas under the PA, 72% of the inhabitants support the establishment of armed groups such as the "Lion's Den", and 87% oppose the arrest of members of such groups to prevent them from acting against the IDF. The center's director, Dr. Khalil Shikaki, stated that about ten years ago, the level of support among the Palestinian public for the idea of a two-state solution was 55%, and now it has declined to no more than 32%. A half a year later, in a survey conducted by the Palestinian Institute for Political and Economic Research from Ramallah, it emerged that the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, is more popular than the PA Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, and earns 56% support in contrast to 33% support alone for Abbas.
Additional surveys conducted in recent years present a similar picture, indicating growing Hamas' growing popularity in Judea and Samaria too, especially after military conflicts with Israel. For example, following IDF Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021, a survey conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that 53% of the Palestinians believe that Hamas should be the one to lead the Palestinians. Only 13% supported Mahmoud Abbas.
Mahmoud Abbas against Balfour
Dr. Adi Schwartz, a research fellow at the Jerusalem-based Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, and author (together with Dr. Einat Wilf) of the book entitled The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, states too that Hamas enjoys broad support among the population in Judea and Samaria. "Even 17 years after Hamas came to power in the Gaza Strip, and even though they can clearly see what is going on in Gaza, still, in the West Bank, the majority of people are in favor of Hamas."
As somebody who for years has been mapping the various shades across the entire spectrum of the Palestinian public and its leadership in terms of their attitude towards Israel, Schwartz asserts that "The only one who condemned the October 7 massacre explicitly and manifestly, saying that this was a horrendous and barbaric act that is clearly forbidden, was Mansour Abbas. Apart from him, not even one prominent leader, neither from the PA nor from among the Israeli Arabs, who renounced or expressed any clear horror at the massacre."
"There might," he says, "be certain differences between Fatah and Hamas regarding the desired image of the Middle East. It is clear that Hamas, as part of the Muslim Brotherhood, has a more Islamist agenda, but when it comes to their attitude to Israel as a Jewish state – there is no real difference between Fatah and Hamas, and between the two of them and other independent factions in the PA. As far as they are all concerned – there is no legitimacy for a Jewish state in this region, and the fabrication that is called 'the State of Israel; should be cut down, destroyed and eliminated."
Schwartz recommends that we should all "begin to take seriously what the Palestinians, from across the spectrum and all factions, have to say and we should firmly believe that they genuinely mean what they say. Mahmoud Abbas, for example, explained at a Fatah conference in Ramallah only a few months ago, that the Holocaust occurred due to the Jews' preoccupation with money. He means it. When he says that he opposes a Jewish state – there is no need to look for any different way of trying to interpret it. We simply should believe him and understand that this is his position.
"He and his population have adopted antisemitic expressions and thought as part of their stubborn opposition to a Jewish state. It is important to take note of the fact that they constantly talk about 75 years of occupation, in other words: it is not the 1967 borders to which they desire to return. They are seeking to return to 1948, prior to the establishment of the Jewish state.
"Pay attention – who is it that Mahmoud Abbas attacks?", stresses Schwartz, "Balfour, the person who granted the Jews the famous declaration regarding a 'national home for the Jewish people'. When Einat and I wrote our book, which documents the staunch devotion and refusal to compromise of the Palestinians in relation to the 'Right of Return' within Israel, we looked for one Palestinian, just one, who was prepared to say that a Jewish state has a legitimate right to exist. We couldn't find any. The PA too has never, at any stage, been prepared to recognize a Jewish state, nor has it ever been prepared to concede the Right to Return."
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