Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters in New York, US, Sept. 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

The Palestinian Authority has demanded that Hamas disarm and vowed to implement internal reforms ahead of a United Nations conference this month on Palestinian statehood — a move that experts say is unlikely to succeed given the PA’s lack of credibility and support for terrorism against Israel.

In a letter delivered Monday to French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, co-chairs of the upcoming UN summit, PA President Mahmoud Abbas made a series of what France described as “concrete and unprecedented commitments” intended to secure international trust.

The upcoming conference, scheduled for June 16–18, will focus on advancing efforts toward international recognition of a Palestinian state in order to reach a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to Ahmad Sharawi, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank, the French- and Saudi-backed plan is fundamentally flawed because the international community will be trusting in the PA “an entity that has been promising but not delivering since 2006.”

“Despite its condemnations of the [Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel] and Hamas’s refusal to release hostages, individuals within the PA’s bureaucratic and security system are implicated in terrorist activity against Israel, they spew anti-Israel rhetoric publicly, they celebrate individuals who commit terror against Israel, and continue their pay-for-slay policy which encourages more Palestinians to kill Israelis,” Sharawi told The Algemeiner.

The PA, which has long been riddled with accusations of corruption, has also maintained for years a so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis. Under the policy, the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and injured Palestinian terrorists. Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.

Abbas had announced plans to reform the system earlier this year, but the PA has continued to issue payments, with top officials saying they will not deduct any of the funds.

Nonetheless, the PA is trying to position itself to play a leading role in Gaza once the current Israel-Hamas war ends. Abbas reportedly announced that the PA is “ready to invite Arab and international forces to be deployed as part of a stabilization/protection mission with a [UN] Security Council mandate.”

In an effort to secure international support, Abbas also wrote that “Hamas will no longer rule Gaza, and must hand over its weapons and military capabilities to the Palestinian [Authority] Security Forces.”

However, Sharawi explained that the PA “is not trusted by either Israel or the Palestinian people as a competent entity for governance.”

“The Gazan population sees the PA as collaborators with Israel and if they do end up governing Gaza, then it would look as if they came on top of Israeli tanks and thus it is expected that the popular sentiment will lead to the rise of other militias or a resurgence of a Hamas insurgency,” Sharawi told The Algemeiner.

A poll released last month by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) found that, if an agreement is reached to end the Gaza war, only 40 percent of Palestinians (46 percent in Gaza and 37 percent in the West Bank, where the PA exercises limited self-governance) “support the return of the PA to managing the affairs of the Gaza Strip and providing for the requirements of daily life and responsibility for reconstruction,” while 56 percent oppose it. The poll also showed that, among the Palestinian people in both Gaza and the West Bank, just 23 percent are “satisfied” with the PA’s performance, while an even smaller 15 percent expressed satisfaction with Abbas and a mere 24 percent did so for Abbas’s ruling Fatah party.

Despite the PA’s lack of support among the Palestinian people, Macron said last month that recognizing “Palestine” was “not only a moral duty but a political necessity.” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned France’s announcement, stating that such a move would only reward terrorism in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

Reuters reported that US President Donald Trump’s administration is discouraging governments around the world from attending next week’s conference on a possible two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, describing the event in a diplomatic cable as “anti-Israel” and “counterproductive.”

In his letter, Abbas also reportedly reaffirmed his commitment to long-promised administrative reforms, stating that he intends to hold presidential and general elections “within a year” under international supervision. Abbas was elected to a four-year term in 2005, and the PA has not held elections since then.

According to Sharawi, Abbas’s latest reform — appointing Hussein al-Sheikh as his vice president and potential successor — illustrates how the PA speaks of change yet continues to maintain the same entrenched inner circle.

“The challenge in trusting the PA is that the international community would be legitimizing an entity that is solely run by an executive council composed of Abbas and his affiliates who block any attempt of passing laws … and an incompetent security force that is unable to confront the threats made by groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the areas they control,” Sharawi told The Algemeiner.

In an apparent shift from previous remarks, Abbas in his letter also condemned the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling it “unacceptable.”

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israel-based nongovernmental organization, dismissed Abbas’s supposed criticism of the Hamas onslaught against the Jewish State, calling it “two-faced” and accusing him of hypocrisy.

“It took Abbas 20 months to figure out that Oct. 7 rape, beheading, torture, and murder of 1,200 is merely ‘unacceptable.’ What’s truly unacceptable is thinking that Oct. 7-defender Mahmoud Abbas has a gram of decency in him,” PMW wrote in a statement.

Last week, the NGO called on France and Saudi Arabia to cancel the upcoming conference unless Abbas publicly denounces Hamas terrorist attacks.

“As Western leaders plan to meet at the UN on June 17 to give PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas a present of recognition of a Palestinian state, Abbas continues to prove how unworthy the PA is of being a state,” PMW said in a statement on Sunday.

In the past, Abbas praised Hamas for achieving “important goals” with the Oct. 7 onslaught, describing the attack — the deadliest single-day massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust — as one that “shook the foundations of the Israeli entity.”

Other PA officials, including Mahmoud al-Habbash, Abbas’s adviser on religious and Islamic affairs, have similarly praised Hamas’s atrocities, describing them as “legitimate resistance.”

Ahead of next week’s UN summit, Abbas’s promises seek to counterbalance the PA’s history of corruption and its hardline anti-Israel policies, including the notorious “pay-for-slay” program.

According to The Guardian, recognition of a Palestinian state at the upcoming conference will be tied to several conditions, including a truce in Gaza, the release of hostages taken by Hamas, reform of the PA, economic recovery, and an end to Hamas’s terrorist rule in the war-torn enclave.

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Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Argentine President Javier Milei delivered an impassioned address to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Wednesday, in which he announced that Argentina would relocate its embassy to Jerusalem next year. He also declared his country’s full support for Israel’s war against Hamas and accused much of the international community of siding with terrorists.

“I am proud to announce before you that in 2026 we will make effective the move of our embassy to the city of west Jerusalem,” Milei declared. 

Milei said Argentina stood firmly with Israel at a time when, in his view, much of the international community had failed to do so. “Argentina stands by you in these difficult days. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about a large part of the international community that is being manipulated by terrorists and turning victims into perpetrators,” he said.

“How does the world allow a murderous terrorist organization to continue to hold innocent civilians hostage?” Milei asked, referring to the dozens of captives still being held in Gaza following the Hamas-led invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. “When both sides are good and evil, there is no moral equality here.”

Milei also attacked climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was detained and deported by Israel after she attempted to break the Gaza blockade by sea. “She became a hired gun for a bit of media attention, claiming that she was kidnapped when there are really hostages in subhuman conditions in Gaza,” he said.

Milei’s three-day visit to Israel – the longest leg of a ten-day foreign tour – began with a prayer at the Western Wall and included meetings with Israeli leaders, most notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who paused his corruption trial earlier in the day to host the Argentine leader. 

“Javier, you are a true friend,” Netanyahu said, speaking hoarsely. “We both woke up with sore throats. The question is, who infected whom? But we also ‘infect’ one another with friendship — both personally and between our nations.”

“For 20 months, we have been fighting human monsters,” Netanyahu said. “You said clearly: ‘We stand with you in the fight against the forces of darkness.’ This is a just war like no other. Terror seeks to drag us back to the darkness of the Middle Ages, and we will fight it with all our might.”

Milei framed his support for Israel within a broader critique of global threats to democratic societies. “Whether we like it or not, the West is being tested. Various forms of barbaric tyranny are attacking us and have no relation to democracy,” he said.

Arab lawmakers did not attend Milei’s Knesset address. 

During the visit, Milei met with survivors of Hamas captivity and relatives of Argentine hostages still being held in Gaza. Twenty-seven Argentine nationals were murdered on Oct. 7, 2023, and a further 21 were taken hostage, including Shiri Bibas and her two toddler sons, Ariel and Kfir, all of whom were murdered in captivity. 

“We continue to demand the unconditional return of the four Argentines who are still held captive – Eitan Horn, Ariel and David Cunio, and Lior Rudaeff – and all those kidnapped and still held by the terrorist organization Hamas,” Milei said during a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the president’s residence in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Herzog expressed the country’s admiration for Milei, saying, “During your presidency, my friend Milei, our relations have reached new heights – and will continue to rise. You love Israel – and we love you.”

A rocket fired by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group in Yemen on Tuesday evening triggered air raid sirens across Israel, sending millions – including Milei in his Jerusalem hotel – into shelters. The incident prompted him to write on X: “I strongly recommend that when you react to what happens in Israel, remember what it’s like to live in this situation. I witnessed this from the hotel where I’m staying in Jerusalem.”

The following day, Milei canceled a planned tour of the City of David archaeological site due to illness. His itinerary was expected to conclude Thursday with a return visit to the Western Wall.

Milei was also expected to unveil plans for nonstop flights connecting Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv, which would mark the first direct air link between the two countries since Israeli agents apprehended Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1960. 

Since taking office in December, Milei has made Israel a focal point of his foreign policy and has visited the Jewish state twice in as many years. He pledged to move Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem during his earlier visit.

The embassy move would place Argentina in alignment with the United States and five other countries: Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Paraguay, and Papua New Guinea, all of which moved their embassies from Tel Aviv. The Argentine embassy is currently located in Herzliya, a coastal city to the north of Tel Aviv.

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US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and President Donald Trump, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 20, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon hinted at the possibility of unfreezing billions of dollars the federal government put on ice to punish elite universities it deemed as soft on campus antisemitism and excessively woke.

“It would be my goal that if colleges and universities are abiding by the laws of the United States and doing what we’re expecting of them, they could expect to have taxpayer funded programs,” McMahon told Bloomberg’s Akayla Gardener during an interview which aired on Tuesday on the news outlet’s YouTube channel.

Responding to an additional question Bloomberg posed regarding President Donald Trump’s saying recently that Harvard University —  which lost over $2.26 billion during the spree of cuts — “is starting to behave” — McMahon agreed with the president, suggesting that Harvard and the administration are drawing near a compromise, perhaps even on reforms that conservatives have long said will make higher education more meritocratic and less ideologically biased.

“Clearly what he’s indicating is that we are, I think, making progress in some of the discussions, even though they [Harvard] have taken a hard line,” McMahon said. “They have, for instance, replaced their head of Middle East Studies. They have already put in place some of the things that we have talked about in our negotiations with Columbia.”

She added, however, that taxing Harvard’s $53.2 billion endowment, the value of which exceeds the gross domestic product of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and over 120 other nations, would benefit taxpayers. In April, Trump ordered the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to review Harvard’s tax-exempt status, a measure that was cheered by populists while being regarded as extreme by others who argue that following through on the revocation stands to make American higher education less competitive.

“You know, these are really outstandingly large endowments — $53 billion, you know, for Harvard, and that money doesn’t just sit still,” McMahon continued. “It is invested, and if it’s invested well, they can expect a good return on that investment. And so, if citizens of our country are providing tax support to universities that do take federal dollars, then maybe some of that should come back.”

Later on in the interview, McMahon said that Columbia University and the Trump administration have weighed agreeing to a consent decree, in which neither party concedes fault, to resolve the government’s claims against the institution. Only days earlier, her Education Department said the university should lose its accreditation with the Middle States Commission for being “in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws.” Such a measure would be catastrophic to the institution, which is one of the oldest in the US.

“After Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, Columbia University’s leadership acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus. This is not only immoral, but also unlawful,” McMahon said on June 4. “Accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid. They determine which institutions are eligible for federal student loans and Pell Grants. Just as the Department of Education has an obligation to uphold federal discrimination law, university accreditors have an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards.”

The Trump administration has launched a robust effort to fight antisemitism at every level of society. In February, it created a “multi-agency” Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. Its “first priority will be to root out antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses,” the US Justice Department said in a press release, which noted that the group will be housed inside the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and include representatives from the departments of education and health and human services.

The announcement came less than a week after Trump directed federal agencies to combat campus antisemitism and hold pro-terror extremists accountable for the harassment of Jewish students, fulfilling a promise he made while campaigning for a second term in office. Continuing work started during his first administration — when Trump issued Executive Order 13899 to ensure that civil rights law apply equally Jews — the new executive order, titled “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism,” calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”

The moves precipitated what became a fight over the future of elite higher education, against which conservatives have lodged a slew of criticisms for decades. In Harvard’s case, the administration called for “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat.” They also implore Harvard to begin “reforming programs with egregious records of antisemitism” and to recalibrate its approach to “student discipline.”

By that time, McMahon had already announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, securing the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Later, Princeton University saw hundreds of millions of dollars of its federal grants and funding suspended, as did Northwestern University, Cornell University, Brown University, and others.

The confiscations are now being fought in federal court, with Harvard University suing the administration to obtain a precedent setting summary judgement. Over a dozen institutions have sought and received permission to file an amicus brief on the school’s behalf.

“We stand for the truth that colleges and universities across the country can embrace and honor their legal obligations and best fulfill their essential role in society without improper government intrusion,” Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, said in a statement announcing the legal action. “That is how we achieve academic excellence, safeguard open inquiry and freedom of speech, and conduct pioneering research — and how we advance the boundless exploration that propels our nation and its people into a better future.”

For some, Harvard’s allegations against the Trump administration are hollow.

“Claiming that the entire institution is exempt from any oversight or intervention is extraordinary,” Alex Joffe, anthropologist and editor of BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner in April. “Moreover, the idea that cutting voluntary government funding is de facto denial of free speech also sounds exaggerated if not absurd. If an institution doesn’t want to be subjected to certain requirements in a relationship entered into voluntarily with the government, they shouldn’t take the money.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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