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US Gives $336 Million to Palestinians; PA Demonizes It as the ‘Head of Global Terror’
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, April 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed
The US has announced that it’s giving the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank additional humanitarian aid worth $336 million.
But in response to all the US support during the war (and prior), the Palestinian Authority (PA) is relentlessly demonizing the US as being the aggressor and mastermind behind Israel’s war against the Hamas and Hezbollah terror organizations, regardless of the fact that both terror organizations first attacked and continue to attack Israel and Israeli civilians.
Worse still, three days ago, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman also blamed the US for “the continuing chaos, wars, and instability” in the region:
Official Spokesman for the [PA] Presidential Office Nabil Abu Rudeina [said] … the successive American administrations bear responsibility for the continuing chaos, wars, and instability through their mistaken policy and provision of political, monetary, and military support for the continuation of the occupation [i.e., Israel], which has encouraged it to commit more crimes against our people and against the peoples of the region in Syria and Lebanon, alongside the ongoing threats against other regions.” [emphasis added]
[WAFA, official PA news agency, Sept. 29, 2024]
While many Western governments have been highly critical of Israel’s response to Hamas and Hezbollah’s attacks during the ongoing 2023 Gaza war, and have supported the idea of having the PA take power in Gaza after it is done, the PA and its ruling Fatah party have, on the other hand, made their hostility to the West clear in numerous recent conspiracy theories and statements of demonization.
Even as Abbas was again welcomed in the US last week, his PA and Fatah officials are busy bad-mouthing the US administration, accusing it of being behind the war and using Israel as its pawn.
A regular columnist of the PA’s mouthpiece Al-Hayat Al-Jadida accused the US of being guilty of “war crimes” in Lebanon:
The US has been a central partner in managing the operations against the Hezbollah leadership and its activists who are wanted by the [American] administration and Israel ….
The American administration is involved in the war crimes against the Hezbollah leadership and activists … [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, Sept. 22, 2024]
In a recent interview, Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki referred to the US as “the head of global terror.”
Perhaps this is no surprise considering that Zaki also serves as Fatah Commissioner for Arab and China Relations:
Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki… called for a comprehensive agreement and a code of honor between all parts of the Palestinian people and its movements, according to which the main contradiction is with the Israeli occupation and the rest are secondary differences that our preoccupation with them serves the plots of the occupation … led by the US, the head of global terror. [emphasis added]
[Al-Quds website, Sept. 8, 2024]
Earlier this year Zaki accused the US, and “not Israel,” of waging a war to “slaughter the Palestinian people”:
Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: “The US is the one waging the [Gaza] war, and not Israel …
[The US] is the one waging the war and it is the one that is striving with all its efforts to slaughter the Palestinian people … Our central issue is to stop this cursed war, this barbaric war, which is worse than Nazism.” [emphasis added]
[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, Jan. 20, 2024]
Similarly, Abbas’ advisor, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, has accused the US of pulling the strings in Israel’s war against Hamas, claiming Israel just “carries out American instructions” and the US is “pushing” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu “towards extremism” with its “hostile, immoral, and illegal position”:
Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “Israel’s sovereign is the US, unfortunately. The US even today opposes a resolution proposal at the [UN] General Assembly calling to end the occupation. Imagine, this is the level of American hostility to the Palestinian rights …
The one who is strengthening the position of [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu and pushing him more and more towards extremism is the American administration’s position.
The American administration’s position is a hostile position, an immoral and illegal position, and honestly it is the one that bears responsibility for the scope of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.” [emphasis added]
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Sept. 18, 2024]
Al-Habbash: “Everyone knows that all the cards are in the hands of the US, not in the hands of Israel. Israel is nothing more than the one who carries out the American policy. If the American administration would have wanted to tell Israel ‘Enough,’ the war would have ended. But it doesn’t do this and attempts to mislead and spread lies to extend the aggression to achieve the same goal. The goal is to erase the political aspect of the Palestinian cause and change the rules of the game, even in the West Bank.”
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Sept. 11, 2024]
Al-Habbash: “Israel exploited and used what happened on Oct. 7 [2023] as an excuse to carry out aggression that was planned and prepared in advance against the Gaza Strip, as part of the aggression against the Palestinian people. What happened on Oct. 7 is not the cause of the aggression …
[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu is just a clerk of the American administration, and all of Israel is just subordinate to the American administration and carries out its instructions and serves its policies.
Israel is nothing more than an American interest that is carrying out the American policies. We don’t need to speak with Netanyahu because he has no authority of his own. We must speak only with the American administration that alone bears the magnitude and responsibility for the continuation of this aggression.” [emphasis added]
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Jan. 29, 2024]
Al-Habbash has also called the US “the biggest liar” and “the true threat”:
Al-Habbash:“There is no bigger liar than the US administration, no bigger liar than [the US] exists.
The American administration is inventing lies against us, as it has done through all the last decades… We are an unarmed people. We are a people that has been living under occupation for more than 70 years…. We are just trying to protect our existence.” [emphasis added]
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Aug.29, 2024]
Palestinian Media Watch also reported on other anti-US remarks by another Abbas advisor, including the accusation that US President Biden is a “war criminal who should stand trial.”
While emphasizing that the real war is “against the US and not Israel,” Abbas Zaki has also stressed the Palestinians’ “strong connection and strategic partnership with China”:
Zaki: “Our war now [i.e., 2023 Gaza war] is a war against the US and not Israel because Israel’s guarantee of life is the US …
Old colonialism, in other words the European colonialist states, wanted to take the Jews and create a base close to them that is hostile to their surroundings, and offered to establish Israel in Argentina, Uganda, and the like.
But when the oil was discovered, the lifeline of modern industry, they wanted to take control of the Middle East region from the ocean to the gulf, and therefore Palestine fell victim to this oppressive criminal alliance …
Our connection with China is very strong, we have a strategic partnership with China. Our connection with Russia is very strong … Israel could not fight against any faction, not even against a state, if not for the US, and Allah willing the US will not be the world ruler.” [emphasis added]
[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, May 16, 2024]
Zaki also repeated the conspiracy theory that Israel is not fighting Hamas in Gaza for security reasons, but rather because it wants to steal natural gas resources discovered there:
Zaki emphasized that Israel is striving to decide the conflict and empty the land of its Palestinian owners, and he noted that the goal of the war in the Gaza Strip is not security-related, but rather it deviates beyond this and includes economic targets, like the [natural] gas reserve that was discovered northwest of Gaza. [emphasis added]
[Al-Quds website, Sept. 8, 2024]
The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.
The post US Gives $336 Million to Palestinians; PA Demonizes It as the ‘Head of Global Terror’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says
A closed Israeli military gate stands near Ramallah in the West Bank, February 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after Arab ministers planning to attend were stopped from coming.
The move, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government announced one of the largest expansions of settlements in the West Bank in years, underlined escalating tensions over the issue of international recognition of a future Palestinian state.
Saturday’s meeting comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, that is due to be held in New York on June 17-20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood, which Israel fiercely opposes.
The delegation of senior Arab officials due to visit Ramallah – including the Jordanian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Bahraini foreign ministers – postponed the visit after “Israel’s obstruction of it,” Jordan’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the block was “a clear breach of Israel’s obligations as an occupying force.”
The ministers required Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan.
An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud had delayed a planned trip to the West Bank.
Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognizing a Palestinian state was not only a “moral duty but a political necessity.”
Palestinians want the West Bank territory, which was seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as the core of a future state along with Gaza and East Jerusalem.
But the area is now criss-crossed with settlements that have squeezed some 3 million Palestinians into pockets increasingly cut off from each other though a network of military checkpoints.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the announcement this week of 22 new settlements in the West Bank was an “historic moment” for settlements and “a clear message to Macron.” He said recognition of a Palestinian state would be “thrown into the dustbin of history.”
The post Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Armed men hijacked dozens of aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip overnight and hundreds of desperate Palestinians joined in to take supplies, local aid groups said on Saturday as officials waited for Hamas to respond to the latest ceasefire proposals.
The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.
US President Donald Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close but Hamas has said it is still studying the latest proposals from his special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the proposals.
The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
On Saturday, the Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.
The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.
The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war began 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.
Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.
At the same time, a separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.
However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.
“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on the social media platform X.
NO BREAD IN WEEKS
The World Food Program said it brought 77 trucks carrying flour into Gaza overnight and early on Saturday and all of them were stopped on the way, with food taken by hungry people.
“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” it said in a statement.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.
He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”
Overnight on Saturday, he said trucks had been stopped by armed groups near Khan Younis as they were headed towards a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza and hundreds of desperate people had carried off supplies.
“We could understand that some are driven by hunger and starvation, some may not have eaten bread in several weeks, but we can’t understand armed looting, and it is not acceptable at all,” he said.
Israel says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.
The post Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy-designate Steve Witkoff gives a speech at the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of Trump’s second presidential term, in Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Hamas said on Saturday it was seeking amendments to a US-backed proposal for a temporary ceasefire with Israel in Gaza, but President Donald Trump’s envoy rejected the group’s response as “totally unacceptable.”
The Palestinian terrorist group said it was willing to release 10 living hostages and hand over the bodies of 18 dead in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. But Hamas reiterated demands for an end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, conditions Israel has rejected.
A Hamas official described the group’s response to the proposals from Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as “positive” but said it was seeking some amendments. The official did not elaborate on the changes being sought by the group.
“This response aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid to our people in the Strip,” Hamas said in a statement.
The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
A Palestinian official familiar with the talks told Reuters that among amendments Hamas is seeking is the release of the hostages in three phases over the 60-day truce and more aid distribution in different areas. Hamas also wants guarantees the deal will lead to a permanent ceasefire, the official said.
There was no immediate response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office to the Hamas statement.
Israel has previously rejected Hamas’ conditions, instead demanding the complete disarmament of the group and its dismantling as a military and governing force, along with the return of all 58 remaining hostages.
Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close after the latest proposals, and the White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the terms.
Saying he had received Hamas’ response, Witkoff wrote in a posting on X: “It is totally unacceptable and only takes us backward. Hamas should accept the framework proposal we put forward as the basis for proximity talks, which we can begin immediately this coming week.”
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had killed Mohammad Sinwar, Hamas’ Gaza chief on May 13, confirming what Netanyahu said earlier this week.
Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, the group’s deceased leader and mastermind of the October 2023 attack on Israel, was the target of an Israeli strike on a hospital in southern Gaza. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied his death.
The Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said on Saturday it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.
The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.
On Saturday, aid groups said dozens of World Food Program trucks carrying flour to Gaza bakeries had been hijacked by armed groups and subsequently looted by people desperate for food after weeks of mounting hunger.
“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” the WFP said in a statement.
‘A MOCKERY’
The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.
The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.
“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on X.
Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.
A separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.
However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.
He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”
Israel denies operating a policy of starvation and says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.
Hamas denies looting supplies and has executed a number of suspected looters.
The post Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.