JNS
The Palestinian Authority leader’s letter to Donald Trump was both laughable and typically mendacious.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump took the opportunity of his announcement on Tuesday that he was “looking forward to seeing Bibi Netanyahu on Friday, and even more forward to achieving peace in the Middle East,” to share with his Truth Social followers a letter he had received nine days earlier from Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.
“It is with grave concern that I have received news and later on watched footage of your attempted assassination,” wrote Abbas. “Acts of violence must not have a place in a world of law and order. Respect for the other with tolerance and valuing of human life is what must prevail.”
Anyone who stopped reading at this point due to a fit of laughter missed out on the rest of the comedy routine—and chutzpah.
“Despicable acts of attempted or successful assassinations are acts of weakness with failed understanding of peaceful measures to resolve conflicts,” Abbas continued. “Differences must be resolved through communication with freedom of expression.”
Ramallah’s chief terrorist-in-a-tie concluded, “Our thoughts are also with the families of those who lost their life and were injured.”
Referring to himself as the “president” of the “State of Palestine”—an entity that exists solely in the fantasies of Israel-haters—he signed off by bidding Trump “strength and safety.”
As Trump frequently does when responding to someone else’s printed words, he replied to Abbas with a handwritten note in the margins of a copy of the original page.
“Mahmoud,” he penned with a Sharpie, adding his signature at the end. “So nice. Thank you. Everything will be good. Best Wishes.”
That he headlined the July 14 exchange with a cheerful reference to his upcoming meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was clearly purposeful. The comment about “peace in the Middle East” kind of gave that away.
And Trump knows something about the art of the peace deal, as he illustrated through the Abraham Accords that he brokered between Israel and four Muslim countries in the region. Nor could he possibly be fooled by Abbas, who snubbed him for treating Israel like the true U.S. ally it is.
In his gut, Trump understood what Netanyahu has been saying for decades: that the road to Mideast peace doesn’t require Palestinian statehood—or even Palestinian participation, for that matter.
What does run through Ramallah, though, is war. Despite gargantuan efforts to portray Abbas and his Fatah faction that rule the roost in the P.A. as “moderate”—and to differentiate them from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations popular among Palestinians—the jig has long been up.
In the first place, Fatah members took part in the Oct. 7 atrocities. Secondly, Abbas educates the populace he governs to glorify martyrdom in the name of Allah.
From the moment they’re born, children in the P.A. are taught that Israel is evil and illegitimate and educated to strive for its annihilation, with extra brownie points for killing Jews.
The P.A.-controlled press and preachers convey hate-filled messages about the Jewish state and the West. None of the “free speech” or “valuing of human life” that Abbas lied about in his letter to Trump. But that’s OK because he says what he means in Arabic.
He’s been clear in his native tongue, for instance, that he has no intention of reversing his “pay for slay” policy. He thumbed his nose at the Taylor Force Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 2018 to coerce the P.A. to cease incentivizing and rewarding terrorists through hefty monthly stipends.
He has reiterated time and again that if he had “only a single penny left, it would be paid to families of the martyrs and prisoners.”
Furthermore, well before Fatah and Hamas met in Beijing this week to bury the hatchet that both have been using separately as a tool with which to slaughter Jews, the P.A. was forking out oodles of cash to those who carried out the massacre and mass abductions nearly 10 months ago.
As the research organization Palestinian Media Watch revealed on Tuesday, there are 9,750 terrorists in Israeli prisons now deemed by the P.A. as eligible for monthly payments. This number is up from 4,300 before Oct. 7.
Not only that. According to PMW, the P.A. has accepted Hamas’s "martyr" count, leading to a total of 38,983 new families of terrorists killed in the line of murder duty currently eligible to be put on Abbas’s payroll. The P.A. also recognizes 899 terrorists who were captured in the Gaza war as “prisoners of war,” which entitles them to lots of money as well.
This is the body that the incumbent administration in Washington views as deserving of independent statehood, the realization of which is key to peace in the region. It beggars belief that anyone in his right mind still holds that position.
No, this isn’t a dig at President Joe Biden’s questionable mental acuity. The official who’s been most vocal on this issue is Secretary of State Antony Blinken. And if it weren’t for the major upheaval that's taking place in D.C., he’d probably still be shouting it from the rooftops of Foggy Bottom.
Meanwhile, the Knesset voted overwhelmingly last week in favor of a resolution rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state. The perpetration by Palestinians of the worst attacks on Jews since the Holocaust will do that.
Even Trump acknowledged recently that a two-state solution wasn’t likely in the cards, let alone on the table. “I’m not sure anymore [it’s] gonna work,” he told Time magazine in May.
Note to Trump: It was never going to work. Just ask Abbas.
