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Palestinian Authority Says Hamas Is Stealing Aid Meant for Gaza Civilians
Pro-Hamas protesters outside the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. Photo: Ron Sachs via Reuters Connect
While Israel continues to let humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, members of the terror organization Hamas continue to steal the aid in order to both resupply for their terror war, and to sell it at exorbitant prices to civilians in need.
Official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV in the Gaza Strip reported that the aid convoys are being “robbed” by “the merchants of war,” who then “sell it in the market at very high prices”:
Official PA TV reporter in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza: “Many aid convoys are suffering from acts of piracy. There are robbers armed with firearms who steal the aid before it reaches the needy, and they take control of it …
The merchants of war [i.e., Hamas] are taking the aid and selling it in the market at very high prices, even though it is written on them that they are aid supplies not designated for sale.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Sept. 18, 2024]
In July, the Palestinian Authority celebrated its unity deal with Hamas — a dream come true for the PA. But at the same time, the PA is frustrated with its “partner.”
Throughout Hamas’ war against Israel, the PA has on the one hand wooed Hamas for partnership and applauded the terror organization for its massacre and murder of approximately 1,2000 people on Oct. 7, 2023. But the PA has also criticized Hamas for looking out for its own and Iran’s interests, thereby ignoring the welfare of Gazan civilians, as Palestinian Media Watch has documented.
And despite the unity deal, the PA’s frustration has continued.
When Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed and Hamas appointed Yahya Al-Sinwar as its new Political Bureau chairman, an editorial in the official PA daily strongly criticized Al-Sinwar and Hamas for only having their own interests at heart and not “the Gaza Strip with its residents, homes, structures, streets, schools, and hospitals”:
Apparently the structural skeleton of the Hamas Movement is immeasurably more important than the structural skeleton of the Gaza Strip with its residents, homes, structures, streets, schools, and hospitals.
This was revealed in the Islamic Jihad Movement’s congratulations to Hamas on selecting Yahya Al-Sinwar as its Political Bureau chairman. The congratulations described this selection as “a strong message to the Zionist enemy,’” and it said that “Hamas is still strong and united,” and that “the enemy has not harmed its structural skeleton one bit”!
…
Hamas does not intend to locate itself outside of the tunnels. It will continue to hold onto ‘the [Al-Aqsa] Flood’ ]Hamas’ name for its terror war against Israel] as its central decision …
Let us be clearer and more honest — and this is in Allah’s hands — which of the two is more important: The people’s structural skeleton, their status, their infrastructures, their life paths, or the [political] party’s structural skeleton? …
What is the resistance’s [Hamas’] criterion of an achievement — that its structural skeleton will be whole and intact, while the structural skeleton of its public is crushed?” [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, Aug. 8, 2024]
Likewise, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash has accused Hamas of being selfish, having launched the 2023 Gaza war “to make gains for Hamas and Hamas’ allies”:
Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “I have no doubt and I have had no doubt that these goals that were declared [by Hamas] are not the real goals behind the war, and they are not the real goals behind what Hamas carried out on Oct. 7, [2023]
Everyone knows what the real goals are, including us, including the Arab states that knew the real goals. The real goals were to make gains for Hamas and Hamas’ allies.” [emphasis added]
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, July 17, 2024]
The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.
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Iran Currency Plunges to Record Lows Amid Escalating US Tensions
ILLUSTRATIVE: The Iranian flag waves in front of the IAEA headquarters before the beginning of a board of governors meeting, in Vienna, Austria, March 1, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Lisi Niesner
Iran’s currency fell on Saturday to a new all-time low against the US dollar after the country’s supreme leader rejected talks with the United States and President Donald Trump moved to restore his “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran.
The rial plunged to 892,500 to the dollar on the unofficial market on Saturday, compared with 869,500 rials on Friday, according to the foreign exchange website alanchand.com. The bazar360.com website said the dollar was sold for 883,100 rials. Asr-e-no website reported the dollar trading at 891,000 rials.
Facing an official inflation rate of about 35%, Iranians seeking safe havens for their savings have been buying dollars, other hard currencies, gold or cryptocurrencies, suggesting further headwinds for the rial.
The dollar has been gaining against the rial since trading around 690,000 rials at the time of Trump’s re-election in November amid concerns that Trump would re-impose his “maximum pressure” policy against Iran with tougher sanctions and empower Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites.
Trump in 2018 withdrew from a nuclear deal struck by his predecessor Barack Obama in 2015 and re-imposed U.S. economic sanctions on Iran that had been relaxed. The deal had limited Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, a process that can yield fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Iran’s rial has lost more than 90% of its value since the sanctions were reimposed in 2018.
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US Envoy’s ‘Zionist’ Ring Sends Shockwaves on Social Media
Lebanon’s army chief Joseph Aoun walks after being elected as the country’s president at the parliament building in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
i24 News – A photo showing US President Donald Trump’s deputy Middle East envoy donning a ring embellished with the Star of David to a meeting with Lebanon’s leader triggered outrage in Arabic social and broadcast media.
As Morgan Ortagus, who is Jewish, shook hands with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, her Star of David ring was visible in the frame, sparking accusations such as her being “more Zionist than her predecessors.”
Her direct superior, Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff, is likewise Jewish-American, as is his predecessor Amos Hochstein, who was born in Jerusalem and served in the Israel Defense Forces.
Ortagus is the first senior Trump admin official to visit Lebanon amid the fragile ceasefire agreed by Israel and the Lebanon-based Shiite jihadists of Hezbollah.
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UK: Pro-Palestinian Activists Applied for a March Permit on Oct 7 as Massacre Was Ongoing
Supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir at a pro-Hamas rally in London. Photo: Reuters/Martin Pope
i24 News – Anti-Israeli activists in Britain applied for a permit to stage a demonstration through London on the morning of October 7, 2023, as Gazan jihadists were rampaging through southern Israel and slaughtering civilians, the Daily Telegraph reported.
At 12:50 PM, as the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was still ongoing, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) notified the Metropolitan Police that they intended to hold a rally the following week.
Reports and videos of the Hamas-led onslaught began appearing on social media, and Israeli and then international broadcast media, several hours earlier.
“The Met was contacted on Saturday Oct 7 at approximately 12.50pm via telephone call and informed of the intention to protest,” a police spokesman was quoted by the Telegraph as saying. “The Met committed this to our systems on the same day and are satisfied being contacted by telephone was a sufficient means in which to notify the MPS as the event was taking place seven days after notification.”
The group’s spokesperson defended the move, telling the Telegraph it was “clear” as early as Saturday noon that “the Israeli attacks on Gaza would be of an indiscriminate violence we had not witnessed before, and that 2.3 million people in Gaza – more than 50 percent of them children – were at severe risk.”
The post UK: Pro-Palestinian Activists Applied for a March Permit on Oct 7 as Massacre Was Ongoing first appeared on Algemeiner.com.