Abbas Tells Turkish Parliament Just What He Wants

For the Western world, Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, presents himself as a “moderate,” a benign presence so different in his aims from Hamas, someone with whom Israel can find a “partner for peace.” In reality Abbas differs from Hamas only in tactics and timing, but not in the ultimate aim he shares with the terror group, which is the disappearance of Israel and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab state — “Palestine.” Recently Abbas addressed the Turkish Parliament and for that audience of antisemites he did not hold back. More on his speech can be found here: “Abbas tells Turkish parliament his goal is all of Israel,” Elder of Ziyon, August 16, 2024:

PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas addressed the parliament of Turkey on Thursday.

The speech was filled with lies like “Israel’s real goal from the war of extermination in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem is to uproot the Palestinian presence from our homeland, and to forcibly displace the Palestinians from Palestine once again. ” His text included the words “genocide” and “starvation.” He received plenty of standing ovations during the speech.

Usually, when PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas speaks to international forums, he will be careful to say that his goal is a Palestinian state on the so-called “1967 borders” with Jerusalem as its capital. It is a template he has used hundreds of times.

The “1967 borders” are in fact the 1949 armistice lines which, were Israel to be squeezed back within them, would leave the Jewish state hopelessly vulnerable, with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea. That would be catastrophe enough for Israel. But in fact, Abbas only claims that goal in front of Western audiences, and at the UN. With Muslims he can tell the truth: he wants “every atom of Palestine.”

He didn’t say that in his speech to the Turkish parliament on Thursday.

There is one small line that was in his written speech (it is unclear if it was said exactly like this, around 6:55 in the video), where he mentioned how all of Jerusalem was Palestinian and non-negotiable. But he went beyond that:

For you and for us, it is a red line. There is no one among us, nor from us, who would give up an atom of the soil of Palestine or a stone of Jerusalem, which is the trust of religion and the trust of history.

These speeches are finely tuned, and every word is chosen carefully. His not mentioning a two state solution, or that Israel has any rights to the lands at all, is deliberate and significant. And his saying that Muslims will not give up an atom of the soil of Palestine – not Jerusalem, but Palestine – was equally deliberate.

When he says no one would give up an inch of “Palestine” he is clearly not referring to the West Bank and Gaza. That was a purposeful message to Turkey that the ultimate goal is all of Israel, and any two state solution is merely a stage towards that goal.  Yasir Arafat famously said in 1974 that the entire land would be captured in stages, and nothing that Abbas has ever said has contradicted it.

In Istanbul, before the Turkish Parliament, a Muslim speaking to Muslims, he abandoned any pretense of “only” wanting Israel to be squeezed within the 1949 armistice lines. He did not talk about a “two-state solution.” For Abbas that “two-state” outcome would not be the “solution,” but merely a waystation toward the elimination of Israel. Salami tactics: first the “1967 borders” and then, with Israel forced to defend these new, and nearly indefensible borders, the Palestinians, and all the other Arabs and Muslims who might wish to join them, would go in for the kill.

When Abbas says “we will not give up an atom of Palestine,” he means that the future state of Palestine will cover every inch of the area “from the river to the sea.” This is what is promised children in the PA’s schoolbooks, what the imams proclaim from their pulpits, what the Palestinians expect to be achieved in a peace deal — not a permanent peace, but a truce treaty that, like Muhammad’s treaty with the Meccans at Al-Hudaibiyya in 628 A.D., will last only until the Palestinians feel that the “Zionist entity” has been weakened sufficiently for a final assault to succeed.