Uncategorized
The real Jewish history behind Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ and the WWII rescue mission that inspired it
(JTA) — While the United States swung its door shut to most refugees during World War II, a young American in France saved thousands, including some of the 20th century’s defining artists and thinkers — such as Marc Chagall and Hannah Arendt — from the Nazis.
The rescue mission of Varian Fry, which went largely unrecognized during his life, is the subject of Netflix’s new drama “Transatlantic,” launching Friday from “Unorthodox” creator Anna Winger.
Starring Cory Michael Smith as Fry, the seven-episode “Transatlantic” aims to recreate his operation in Marseille after the Nazis defeated France and before the United States entered the war. Winger has injected several imagined romances, war efforts and characters into the fictionalized series, including one posed as Fry’s lover, named Thomas Lovegrove (played by Israeli Amit Rahav). Although Fry’s son has said that he was a “closeted homosexual,” no such person is known to have existed.
Winger believes these inventions will invite Netflix viewers to learn more about the true story.
“The people who lived through these stories are dying out,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “My job is to bring this to a wide audience, to people who don’t know anything about it.”
The story behind the series
The real Varian Fry, a 32-year-old journalist and suit-clad Harvard graduate, showed up in Marseille with $3,000 taped to his leg and a list of 200 names in August 1940.
After France surrendered to Germany, Fry was among 200 Americans — including journalists, artists, museum curators, university presidents and Jewish refugees — to create the Emergency Rescue Committee at the Hotel Commodore in New York. This group was concerned with Article 19 in France’s armistice with Germany, which required French authorities to surrender any individuals demanded by the Germans.
The private relief organization drew up frenzied lists of anti-Nazi intellectuals who were trapped in France. With the help of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the ERC obtained some emergency visas and sent Fry to lead the rescue efforts in Marseille, a port city in the southern, unoccupied part of France.
What he found there was impossible to manage alone. His mission began in his room at the Hotel Splendide, where long lines of refugees waited in the morning before he woke up and at night after he went to bed. They sometimes walked straight into his bedroom without knocking, Fry wrote in a letter to his wife shortly after he arrived.
Gathering a small devoted staff, including Frenchmen, refugees and American expatriates, Fry moved his office to Rue Grignan and later Boulevard Garibaldi. Outside of Marseille he rented the Villa Air-Bel — colorfully recreated in “Transatlantic” — to house eminent writers and eccentric Surrealist artists waiting for visas.
The group developed legal and illegal branches, with the cover organization offering humanitarian relief while a behind-the-scenes operation flouted the law to help refugees escape. Using Marseille’s lively black market, the staff found hiding places, forged documents and bribed officials. Bil Spira, a Jewish Austrian-born cartoonist, forged passports for the ERC. (He was caught and deported to Auschwitz, but survived.) Resistance fighters Hans and Lisa Fittko devised an escape route to Spain, guiding refugees across the Pyrenees mountains on foot.
By the time he was forced out in October 1941, Fry’s shoestring operation had enabled 2,000 Jewish and other anti-Nazi refugees to flee Europe, including such towering artists as Chagall, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp, and intellects such as Arendt, Heinrich Mann and André Breton. It has been estimated that 20,000 refugees made contact with the rescue center in Marseille.
Fry’s illegal efforts made him plenty of enemies from his own country, who accused him of interfering with American neutrality in the war. He angered the state department, officials at the American consulate in Marseille and ERC members in New York. In August 1941, he was arrested by Vichy police and sent back to New York.
Fry died in 1967 at the age of 59. Only a few months earlier, he had received the Croix de Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest decoration of merit — and the only official recognition in his lifetime. In 1994, he became the first American honored by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and history authority, as Righteous Among the Nations.
The Emergency Rescue Committee merged with another relief organization and became the International Rescue Committee in 1942. It is still in operation today and currently led by a Jewish CEO, former British politician David Miliband.
What’s in the show, and why some are against it
Some of Fry’s colleagues are fictionalized in “Transatlantic,” including the Jewish Berliner Albert Hirschman (Lucas Englander), who would become an economist in the United States; the Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold (Gillian Jacobs); and the Jewish Austro-Hungarian activist Lisa Fittko (Deleila Piasko). American diplomat Hiram Bigham, who gave Fry crucial help and even hid writer Lion Feuchtwanger in his home, is also a character in the show.
Throughout the seven episodes, rescue missions swirl around a series of fictional love affairs. In addition to Fry’s relationship, a triangle unfolds between Hirschman, Gold and the fictional American Consul Graham Patterson. (There is no evidence that Gold romanced either with her comrade or with any American consul in Marseille.) Lisa Fittko has an affair with the fictional character Paul Kandjo, who organizes armed resistance to Vichy.
Gillian Jacobs as heiress Mary Jayne Gold. (Anika Molnar/Netflix)
Several wartime plot points are also invented, including a prison break at Camp de Mille and Gold’s collaboration with British intelligence.
The degree of fictionalization has angered some people close to the real history. Pierre Sauvage, president of the Varian Fry Institute, called the show’s trailer “shocking.” Born in 1944, Sauvage survived the end of the Holocaust in the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, although his Jewish parents were turned down by Fry’s overwhelmed committee. He became close friends with some of Fry’s fellow rescuers in their later years, including the late Gold, Hirschman and Fittko.
“Are there any red lines?” he said. “Can one fictionalize at will, with no concern for the reality of the story, for the false impression that people will get — and for the way it affects the private lives of the families of people portrayed?”
Sheila Isenberg, who documented Fry’s operation in her book “A Hero of Our Own,” has described the series as a “travesty.” Thomas Fischer Weiss, a child survivor who attempted Fry’s escape route through the Pyrenees at 5 years old, also said the historical events needed no embellishment.
“I think you should tell it straight,” he told the JTA.
The legacy of the ‘troublemakers’
Sauvage believes that if Fry and his associates were alive today, they would like to be remembered for their convictions.
“These were people who were sort of in your face,” he said. “People who knew clearly what they felt and expressed it. They would often describe themselves as troublemakers. Mary Jayne [Gold] said about Varian that he was an ‘ornery cuss’ — it took orneriness to stick to your guns.”
That orneriness was critical at a time when many Americans were apathetic to the plight of European Jews — a 1938 poll in Fortune magazine found that fewer than 5% believed the United States should raise its immigration quotas for refugees. By the summer of 1941, it was too late to open the doors. The German policy of expelling Jews had changed into extermination.
According to Sauvage, America’s refusal to accept more refugees had something to do with that shift.
“The Nazis could legitimately come to the conclusion that the world wouldn’t do anything about the murders and wouldn’t really care all that much,” he said. “What the Varian Fry mission symbolizes is people who cared.”
Varian Fry with Miriam Davenport in the first offices of the Centre Américain de Secours in Marseille in 1940. Davenport, a friend of Mary Jayne Gold, also worked in the rescue effort but is omitted from “Transatlantic.” (Varian Fry Institute)
After their year in Marseille, the rescuers settled into more ordinary lives. Hirschman became an economist with appointments at Yale, Columbia and Harvard. Lisa Fittko ended up in Chicago, where she worked hard in import-export, translation and clerical jobs to earn money, eventually joining protests against the Vietnam War. Gold divided her time between New York City and a villa on the French Riviera.
They all remembered the rescue mission as their finest hour. Speaking with Sauvage, Gold called that year “the only one in her life that really mattered.”
A refugee story for troubled times
Fry’s rescue mission inspired Julie Orringer to write “The Flight Portfolio,” a 2019 novel that became the basis for “Transatlantic.” Orringer was captivated by the image of a young man arriving in Marseille, idealistic and unprepared for the depth of anguish he would find.
“The task was way too big,” she told the JTA. “He realized quite early on that he was going to ask for help, that he was going to have to turn to others who had deeper experience. And in collecting this group of incredible individuals around him, he assembled a kind of collective mind that really could make a difference under the very difficult circumstances that he faced.”
She believed that Fry left an example for the inexperienced. “If you‘re the kind of person who wants to take action on behalf of refugees, but doesn’t know how to do it, ask for help,” she said.
Winger, a Jewish Massachusetts native who has lived in Berlin for two decades, conceived of making a series about Fry in 2015. Germany saw an influx of more than a million migrants that year, most of them fleeing Syria’s horrific civil war. She optioned Orringer’s book in 2020.
“I thought a lot about the fact that people like us — artists, Jews, both — had to leave Berlin as refugees, but now there were so many people coming to Berlin as refugees,” said Winger.
Then, just as she started filming “Transatlantic” on location in Marseille, a new war broke out in Europe.
“The war in Ukraine started three days into the production and there was a whole other wave of refugees coming to Berlin,” she said. “Suddenly we were making it in another refugee crisis.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit close to the show, whose cast and crew hail from across the continent. Winger’s cinematographer is married to a Ukrainian woman. In Berlin, she saw thousands of refugees crowding into the central train station, some without shoes, food or plans for shelter.
“I think it gave us all a strong sense of purpose,” said Winger.
—
The post The real Jewish history behind Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ and the WWII rescue mission that inspired it appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
How a klezmer parade became part of the annual carnival in Sao Paulo
דעם פֿאַרגאַנגענעם חודש איז אין סאַאָ־פּאָולאָ, בראַזיל פֿאָרגעקומען דער יערלעכער כּלי־זמר קאַרניוואַל און פּאַראַד — אַ טייל פֿונעם אַלגעמיינעם קאַרנאַװאַל וואָס איז די גרעסטע פֿאָלקס־שׂמחה אין לאַנד.
יעדן פֿעברואַר פֿאַרשטעלן זיך מיליאָנען מענטשן און גײען טאַנצן אױף די גאַסן פֿון טױזנטער שטעט און שטעטלעך צום טאַקט פֿון פֿרײלעכער מוזיק, דער עיקר — סאַמבאַ און אַשע מוזיק. אין באָם־רעטיראָ, אַ געגנט װאָס האָט זיך אױסגעפֿורעמט דורך כּסדרדיקע און פֿאַרשײדנאַרטיקע אימיגראַציע־כװאַליעס, איז די דאָזיקע שׂמחה געװאָרן אַ פּלאַטפֿאָרמע צו פֿײַערן אויך די ייִדישע קולטור.
אַ װידעאָ פֿונעם פּאַראַד קען מען זען דאָ.
די טעמע פֿונעם הײַיאָריקן פּאַראַד, וואָס איז פֿאָרגעקומען דעם 8טן פֿעברואַר, איז געווען „באָמרעלע“ — די הײמישע באַצײכענונג פֿון דער געגנט וווּ אימיגראַנטן האָבן געוווינט אױפֿן סאַאָ־פּאַולער ייִדיש. דער ציל איז געװען אָפּצוגעבן כּבֿוד די אומפֿאַרגעסלעכע ייִדישע פּאַרשױנען פֿונעם פֿאָלקלאָר פֿון דער אָרטיקער קהילה. אָט זענען עטלעכע פֿון זיי:
- מעכעלע דער קליענטלטשיק (פּעדלער, אױף בראַזיליאַנער ייִדיש) מיט זײַן גראָבן מאַנטל, פֿול געפּאַקט מיט סחורה
- בעני־יאַנגאַ, אַ ייִד פֿון ראַזשאַסטאַן װאָס האָט זיך אַזױ גוט אױסגעלערנט ייִדיש אַז ער איז געװאָרן אַ ייִדיש־לערער אין דער אָרטיקער שלום־עליכם שול
- דער בײגל־פֿאַרקױפֿער װאָס פֿלעג גײען איבער די גאַסן פֿון באָם־רעטיראָ שרײַענדיק „דער בײגלמאַן גײט שױן אַװעק!“
צװישן אַנדערע פֿיגורן האָט מען אויך אָפּגעגעבן כּבֿוד די אַזױ גערופֿענע „פּאָלאַקאַס“ — די ייִדישקעס, דער עיקר פֿון פּױלן, װאָס זײַנען געװאָרן קרבנות פֿון פֿרױען־האַנדל דורך דער „צבֿי־מגדל מאַפֿיע“ און אַנדערע קרימינעלע באַנדעס. דערבײַ האָט דאָס דערמאָנט אַלטע מחלוקתן און װײטיקדיקע קאַפּיטלען פֿון דער בראַזיליאַנער ייִדישער געשיכטע.
די מערהײט פֿון די דאָזיקע פֿרױען האָט מען אָפּגענאַרט נאָך איידער זיי זענען אַוועק פֿון פּוילן, צוזאָגנדיק זיי חתנים און פֿעסטע אַרבעט־שטעלעס. אָנקומענדיק קײן בראַזיל, האָט מען זײ אָבער געצװוּנגען צו אַרבעטן ווי פּראָסטיטוטקעס. די ייִדישע קהילה, אַנשטאָט זײ אױפֿצונעמען און העלפֿן פֿאַרבעסערן זײער לאַגע, האָט זײ באַרעדט און זיי אויסגעשלאָסן פֿון דער געזעלשאַפֿט. האָבן די דאָזיקע מוטיקע פֿרױען געמוזט גרינדן זײערע אײגענע ייִדישע אינסטיטוציעס, שולן און בית־עולמס.
די געגנט באָם־רעטיראָ איז דער טראַדיציאָנעלער ייִדישער קוואַרטאַל פֿון סאַאָ פּאַולאָ, װוּ טױזנטער ייִדישע אימיגראַנטן, דער עיקר פֿון מזרח־אײראָפּע, האָבן זיך באַזעצט במשך דעם 19טן און 20סטן יאָרהונדערט. אַחוץ ייִדן, האָט די געגנט מקבל־פּנים געװען איטאַליענישע, גריכישע און אַרמענישע אימיגראַנטן, װי אױך בראַזיליאַנער פֿון צפֿון־מזרח לאַנד. הײַנט װערט די געגנט איבערהױפּט באַצײכנט דורך די קאָרעאַנישע און לאַטײַן־אַמעריקאַנער באַפֿעלקערונגען. לעצטנס האַלטן די באָליװיאַנער אײַנוווינער אָפּ זייער אײגענעם קאַרנאַװאַל־פּאַראַד אין דעם קװאַרטאַל.
פּונקט אין דער דאָזיקער פֿאַרשײדנאַרטיקער טעריטאָריע דעפֿילירט די קאַפּעליע, „בלאָקאָ כּלי־זמר“. יעדעס יאָר קלײַבט זי צונױף איבער 30 כּלי־זמרים און ברענגט דערמיט די ייִדישע מוזיק צו די גאַסן לױטן בראַזיליאַנער סטיל׃ מיט שװוּנג און פֿרײד פֿון טאַנצנדיקע מאַסן.
דער בלאָקאָ באַגרענעצט זיך ניט נאָר מיט מוזיק, װאָרן עס באַטײליקן זיך אין פּאַראַד אױך אַקטיאָרן, פֿאָרשערס, פּאָעטן, פּראָדוצענטן, דעזײַנערס און אײַנװױנערס פֿון דער געגנט, װאָס גרײטן זיך צו במשך די פֿילצאָליקע רעפּעטיציעס ממש אַ יאָר לאַנג. דורך פֿילפֿאַרביקע קאָסטיומען און גרויסע טאַנצנדיקע ליאַלקעס ווערט די גאַס פֿאַרװאַנדלט אין אַ לעבעדיקן אַרכיװ פֿון ייִדישן געדעכעניש פֿון שטאָט.
דער „בלאָקאָ“ האָט דעפֿילירט צום ערשטן מאָל מיט צװײ יאָר צוריק און איז זינט דעמאָלט ממשותדיק געװאַקסן. אין 2025 איז דער לאָזונג פֿון פּאַראַד געװען „ס’איז פֿרײלעך אין שטעטל“ און מע האָט געפֿײַערט די „חתונה“ צװישן דער כּלי־זמר־מוזיק און דעם בראַזיליאַנער קאַרנאַװאַל, מיט אַ קאָלעקטיװן טאַנץ אונטער אַ גיגאַנטישער חופּה, װאָס איז געשטעלט געװאָרן אין מיטן גאַס.
אינספּירירט דורכן קאָנצעפּט פֿון דאָיִקײט, האָט דער בלאָקאָ װידער אױפֿגעלעבט די זכרונות פֿון אַ מאָל און באַװיזן אַז ייִדן געהערן אױך צו דער פֿילמיניקער קולטורעלער לאַנדשאַפֿט פֿון בראַזיל. דער בלאָקאָ כּלי־זמר האָט אױך דערװיזן אַז די רײַכע קולטור־ירושה פֿון מזרח־אײראָפּעיִשן ייִדנטום לעבט דאָ װײַטער, מחוץ אַרכיװן און אַקאַדעמישע אַנשטאַלטן. זי לעבט אױך אין דער היץ פֿונעם טראָפּישן זומער, צװישן קאָנפֿעטי, שװייס און די קלאַנגען פֿונעם קלאַרנעט.
[דער אַרטיקל איז רעדאַקטירט געוואָרן מיט דער הילף פֿון גוסטאַװאָ־גרשום עמאָס]
The post How a klezmer parade became part of the annual carnival in Sao Paulo appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Chabad on high alert after false Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens war claims
Jewish institutions are on high alert after Tucker Carlson falsely claimed on his podcast Wednesday that the Chabad-Lubavitch movement is behind the war in Iran.
Carlson claimed that Chabad is orchestrating a religious war aimed at destroying the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Old City so that the Third Temple could be rebuilt in its place.
“This has been going on a long time in public through, in part, the efforts of a group called Chabad. C-H-A-B-A-D,” Carlson said.
Chabad, a sect of Hasidic Judaism known for its global religious outreach and houses on hundreds of college campuses, does not function as a political advocacy organization. Its teachings describe the rebuilding of the Third Temple as part of a future messianic redemption achieved through acts of mitzvot — not a project to be advanced through modern warfare or the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
“To blame it on a Hasidic movement based in Brooklyn that just goes around the world, spreading Judaism, spreading love, spreading kindness, it’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Yossi Farro, a member of the Chabad movement known for wrapping tefillin with celebrities, told the Forward in a phone interview. “He’s appealing to people that have never heard of Chabad and now, their first opinion is, this is horrible, these people are warmongers — which is the exact opposite of what we represent.”
The right-wing podcaster Candace Owens amplified the claim, posting to X, “Tucker is telling the truth about the Chabad Lubavitch.”
The comments come as Congress is set to vote today on a war powers resolution that would halt President Donald Trump’s military action in Iran. Several polls show that Republicans overwhelmingly support the decision to attack Iran, while a majority of Democrats oppose the military action.
The rhetoric also follows a series of attacks targeting Chabad celebrations. In December, a gunman opened fire at a Chabad Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. The incident left 15 people dead, including a Chabad rabbi, a Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old girl.
In January, a driver repeatedly rammed his car into an entrance to the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, damaging the building on a night thousands had gathered there to celebrate.
Both Owens and Carlson have ramped up their use of conspiratorial anti-Israel rhetoric over the past year. In October 2025, Carlson drew widespread condemnation after hosting avowed antisemite and white nationalist Nick Fuentes for a friendly conversation.
During yesterday’s podcast, Carlson showed photos of IDF soldiers wearing patches embroidered with an outline of the Temple Mount as evidence of his claim that Chabad was behind the war in Iran, saying that “it seems like, from the reading we did recently, that those patches actually came from Chabad.”
The photos Carlson shared match those posted by the Temple Institute in January 2024 — long before the U.S. military campaign in Iran. The Temple Institute is a Jerusalem-based nonprofit that aims to “bring about the building of the Holy Temple in our time” and is unaffiliated with Chabad.
“He is also wrong about the Temple patches. They did not come from Chabad. Had he done even basic research, that would be clear,” Rabbi Yaacov Berman, a Chabad spokesperson, posted to X. “It would also show that many who wear the Temple patches see them as symbols of faith and hope for peace, and a yearning for the day when there will be no more war.”
The post Chabad on high alert after false Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens war claims appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Top PLO, Fatah Officials: Hamas Should Join Us, No Need to Disarm
Hamas police officers stand guard, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, Oct. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
The Palestinian Authority (PA) appears eager to hijack the Board of Peace’s UN Security Council-approved administration of Gaza and unite with Hamas to control the Strip themselves, according to comments made by a top PLO official in a new interview documented by Palestinian Media Watch.
According to Egyptian reports, PLO Executive Committee Secretary Azzam Al-Ahmad has been in Cairo meeting with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad:
Two informed Palestinian sources said Azzam Al-Ahmad, the secretary-general of the PLO Executive Committee, held talks in Cairo with faction leaders including Hamas and Islamic Jihad about the two movements joining the PLO.
[Manassa.news (Egypt), Feb. 22, 2026]
Officials from the governing PA and its parent political body the Palestine Liberation Organization have been making repeated overtures to Hamas to join the PLO.
In November 2025, Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub called on Egyptian help to “bridge the gaps” between Fatah and Hamas so they can unite against Israel.
The previous month, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash declared “our hands are extended, and our hearts are open to rapprochement with Hamas.”
The implicit hope behind the unity push is that move might satisfy international demands for Hamas to relinquish control of Gaza. Back in October, Al-Habbash said that Hamas needed to disarm, but clearly the PA position has since softened. As a sweetener for Hamas to agree to join the PLO, the PLO says it is now ready to appease the terror group by allowing it to keep its weapons and remain an armed force on the ground.
The PA and PLO are aware that to legitimize absorbing Hamas into the PLO, Hamas – the perpetrators of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – must also be laundered of the stigma of being defined as a terror organization.
During al-Ahmad’s visit, he was interviewed by an Egyptian newspaper, tacitly confirming his mission:
They [US President Donald Trump and the Board of Peace] do not want Hamas to play any role in the Gaza Strip, and we reject this completely, because Hamas is part of the Palestinian national activity. It is true that it has not yet joined the PLO, but we are in a constant national dialogue with them to complete what is required for their entry into the PLO. Therefore, all talk about disarming Hamas and it being a terror organization is unacceptable to us, because Hamas is not a terror organization. [emphasis added]
[Shorouk News (Egyptian paper), Feb. 23, 2026]
The immediate follow-up question in the interview was seen as so important by Al-Ahmad that he made it into a post for his Facebook page:
Shorouk News’ Mohammed Khayal: “You mean clearly that you in the PLO do not view Hamas as a terror organization?”
Azzam Al-Ahmad: “We have never viewed it as a terror organization, and we always oppose when a decision is made by any international institution or any government classifying them as a terror organization, because they are part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
[Azzam Al-Ahmed’s Facebook page, Feb. 23, 2026]
Lest anyone thought that Al-Ahmad had misspoken, his strong statement was soon backed by Rajoub:
“Fatah Central Committee [Secretary and] member Jibril Rajoub emphasized that [PLO Executive Committee member] Azzam Al-Ahmad did not err in defending the weapons of the Hamas Movement and stating that it is part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
[Shahed, independent Palestinian news website, Feb. 24, 2026]
Meanwhile, without referencing Al-Ahmad directly, Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki doubled down on the renewed push for unity with the Islamist terror groups.
“Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki emphasized that national dialogue among Palestinian factions, foremost among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad, constitutes a ‘necessary path and an urgent national need… The real enemy of this unity is the Israeli occupation, and those who stand behind it politically and militarily, foremost among them the US, which is working to rearrange the region in a way that will serve Israel’s sovereignty at the expense of the Arab and Islamic rights.’”
[Sanad News, independent Palestinian news agency, Feb. 26, 2026]
Statements like these are nothing new for PA or PLO officials, who have been making overtures to Hamas for years. Yet the timing and stridency of this particular effort is everything, as it seeks to directly undermine the Trump-brokered ceasefire agreement and Gaza reconstruction plan based on the establishment of a technocratic government.
A technocratic government, to be known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), was chosen as the most effective way to begin to restore services to Gazans, and that makes sense. It provides the administrative structure to deliver essential services while at the same time depriving oxygen to any resumption of warfare against Israel from the territory – at least the parts of Gaza that Hamas no longer controls.
While the PA has decided to go along with the plan, a recent letter from PA Vice Chairman Hussein Al-Sheikh welcoming a PA liaison office with the NCAG stressed the PA’s expectation that this was all just a “transitional” prelude to PA control.
“These constitute practical transitional steps that contribute to alleviating the suffering of our people and providing administrative and security services, without creating administrative, legal, or security duality among our people in Gaza and the West Bank, and while reinforcing the principle of one system, one law, and one legitimate authority over arms.”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 21, 2026]
In the PA’s mindset, whatever moves can hasten the end of this transition, the better, as the notion of suspending conflict with Israel in any Palestinian-populated area even temporarily is anathema to the PLO and Hamas alike.
As evidenced by Al-Ahmad’s latest remarks and others, the PA and PLO have no problem whatsoever with Hamas’ zeal for terrorism – but only appear to differ with the Islamist terror group on who gets to decide when and how it is used.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.