The Bidenites Think That the Palestinian Authority Leaders are ‘Moderate,’ But It’s an Illusion

Why are the Bidenites only now speaking of a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, instead of three years ago? Why have the Bidenites been holding regular meetings with the PA leaders, without ever mentioning the need for a “revitalized” authority? If the Bidenites think that the PA is”incompetent,” why doesn’t it stop trying to persuade the Palestinian Authority to take over Gaza and think of a different successor to Hamas? “Can the Palestinian Authority Be ‘Revitalized’? Can the Cat Guard the Cream?,” by Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute, December 5, 2023:

According to World Bank data, the use of favoritism and nepotism is considered the most frequent form of corruption in the PA public sector. Other forms of corruption allegedly occurring in the public sector include conflicts of interest, unauthorized personal use of resources, and large-scale corruption (such as stealing money and public property). Many of the officials managing the PA are the same ones who helped establish it in 1994 and were responsible for its rampant corruption. This corruption is one of the main reasons why Hamas won the PA parliamentary election in 2006, when the Islamist movement ran under the banner of “Change and Reform.”…

Mahmoud Abbas, together with his two sons Tarek and Yasser, has accumulated a family fortune worth $400 million. 

The Bidenites have gotten into their head that the PA leaders are “moderate,” but it’s an illusion. The PA operatives don’t shoot or throw bombs at Israelis, the way Hamas does, but they do keep up a steady flow of virulent anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiments in their schoolbooks, in the khutbas delivered by imams in the mosques the PA controls, in their own public statements.

The PA is just as determined to fight against the continued existence of the Jewish state as is Hamas. Its preferred method is different; instead of terrorism, the Slow Jihadists of the PA prefer to encourage a worldwide campaign, both diplomatic and economic, to isolate and weaken the Jewish state. While Hamas’ Charter proclaims that its goal to destroy the state of Israel, the PA does not openly state such a goal, which it hopes to achieve more slowly. The PA talks instead of a “two-state solution” that would squeeze Israel back within the 1948 armistice lines, giving it a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea, which would allow an invader’s tanks coming from the East to cut the country in two within an hour, depriving Israel of its right to “secure [i.e. defensible] and recognized boundaries” as called for in UN Security Council Resolution 242 (Nov. 22, 1967). The PA also demands that this new state “will have Jerusalem as its capital” — another demand that Israel will find it impossible to meet. The P.A.’s intention is to use its new state not in order to be a peaceful neighbor to Israel, but as an enemy that will continue to exert pressure, with lopsided votes at the UN, the UNHRC, the UNSC, the ICC, condemning Israel at every point.

Let me end by repeating what I think is the only conceivable government for Gaza once Hamas has been destroyed. It is not the Palestinian Authority, which cannot be “revitalized” as Biden, Blinken and Sullivan fondly think; it will always be corrupt, inept, and meretricious, and an enemy of Israel. It is not Israel, which has no desire to rule Gaza, but only wants to ensure that the Strip will forever lack the military wherewithal to threaten Israel. It is not some Western coalition, led by the US, which will only stir up trouble among a volatile and hostile Muslim population unwilling to be ruled by Infidels.

The one group that could reasonably rule Gaza, either directly, or through its local representatives, are the rich Arab states that will be the ones supplying almost all of the funds — hundreds of billions of dollars — for Gaza’s reconstruction (no one else has that kind of money to spare). The Arab monarchies of the Gulf both hate and fear Hamas as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an enemy of all the Arab monarchies. They would like to get back on track with Israel, with the UAE wanting to increase economic ties to Israel and Saudi Arabia wanting to at long last normalize ties to Israel. The Gazans would not resent them, for they are fellow Arabs, but be grateful for their economic aid, that technocrats appointed by the UAE and Saudi Arabia will ensure are not diverted by corrupt officials, as so much of it was during the reign of Hamas. That’s what the Bidenites should be talking about — stop going to Ramallah to urge the Palestinian Authority to “revitalize” itself (whatever that means) and start talking to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh about the “day after” the guns fall silent in Gaza.