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Top Palestinian Authority Official Predicts Trump Will ‘Destroy Iran,’ Decimate Hamas
Then-Republican presidential nominee and current US-President-elect Donald Trump looks on during a rally at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in Uniondale, New York, US, Sept. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
A top Palestinian leader has predicted that US President-elect Donald Trump will “destroy Iran” and thereby eviscerate the remaining capacities of its proxy Hamas after he enters office next month.
“We see that Trump and the ruling government in Israel are planning to destroy Iran, so Hamas [followers] will have no other choice than to become Palestinian,” Mohammad Hamdan, secretary general of the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah Party, told the New York Post in a new interview.
Hamdan claimed that the Palestinian Authority’s efforts in “confronting Hamas’s ideology” have been stymied by the terrorist group’s ties to the Iranian regime. However, Hamdan told the Post that he believes the Trump administration’s presence will lead to Iran and Hamas’s complete collapse.
In the year following Hamas’s brutal invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7, Israel has decimated the terrorist group’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza. At the same time, Hamas has increased its activity in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) exercises limited self-rule, often engaging in direct confrontation with the PA.
Some anti-Israel activists have accused the PA and Fatah, the main Palestinian faction in the West Bank and the movement that controls the PA, of “collaborating” with the Jewish state due to its efforts to combat terrorist activity in the West Bank.
The PA, a rival of Hamas, has sought to publicly distance itself from the terrorist group while also engaging in Palestinian reconciliation talks. Meanwhile, PA officials have been regularly rationalizing Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and in some cases even denying it took place or falsely claiming Israeli forces carried out the onslaught.
Fatah in April lambasted Iran for meddling in internal Palestinian affairs, accusing the Iranian regime of spreading chaos in its territory.
Two months later, the office of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah, said that Iran wants to “sacrifice the blood of the Palestinians” after Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
US officials in the Biden administration have reportedly expressed support for a “revitalized” PA — which has long been riddled with allegations of corruption and authoritarianism while governing the Palestinians in the West Bank — to take over Gaza following the Israel-Hamas war.
Nonetheless, Hamdan criticized US influence in the Middle East, arguing that Washington’s decision-making has likely entrenched Islamic extremism in the region.
“Look what happened in Syria. First, the US declared the rebels to be al Qaeda, and then [last week] an American delegation visited Syria,” he told the Post. “And the one before that, when the Americans struck deals with the Taliban in Afghanistan.”
“We as Palestinians believe that most of these extremist Islamic groups are produced by America by its effort to create a new Middle East,” he added.
Despite polling showing the PA’s unpopularity with the general Palestinian population, the Palestinian leader predicted that the end of the war in Gaza could present a “historically unprecedented opportunity” for the PA to consolidate its power in both the coastal enclave and the West Bank.
The post Top Palestinian Authority Official Predicts Trump Will ‘Destroy Iran,’ Decimate Hamas first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.