Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party is generally seen as the more moderate of the Arab factions and is seen as a “partner for peace” with Israel.
However, that notion may be completely off, according to comments recently made by the PA’s Ambassador to India, Adli Sadeq.
In an article he wrote in the official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, on November 26, Sadeq admitted that Fatah does not respect Israel anymore than Hamas does, and that moreover, the PA and Fatah utterly reject that Israel has any right to exist.
Sadeq’s comments were translated by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) research institute and presented on its website.
According to Sadeq, Israelis “have a common mistake, or misconception by which they fool themselves, assuming that Fatah accepts them and recognizes the right of their state to exist, and that it is Hamas alone that loathes them and does not recognize the right of this state to exist. They ignore the fact that this state, based on a fabricated [Zionist] enterprise, never had any shred of a right to exist…”
He added, “The demands of this enemy [Israel] are strange and amazing demands, unique in the history of conflicts… They [Israelis] are not satisfied with Palestinian recognition that is a function of their state and its existence, but want recognition of the eternal right of Israel to exist. Possibly their nature will bring them to ask for compensation for the years that have passed without their state’s existence, during the time it had the right to exist upon our skulls.”
Sadeq also noted that Hamas, Fatah and the other factions “are not waging war against Israel right now for reasons related to balance of power. There are no two Palestinians who disagree over the fact that Israel exists, and recognition of it is restating the obvious, but recognition of its right to exist is something else, different from recognition of its [physical] existence.”
PMW often reports on the PA’s “double talk” when it comes to Israel. The PA’s leaders often say they want to negotiate with Israel when speaking to foreign media, but in their own media they encourage terrorism.
One such example involved the naming of a square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, the female terrorist who led the Coastal Road Massacre in March of 1978 which ended with 37 Israelis dead, including 13 children.
Abbas told Israel’s Channel 2 News that he is against such commemorations and condemns them. When he spoke to the Al-Hayat Al-Jadida newspaper, however, he said: “Of course we want to name a square after her…What is it [that Israel wants]? That we renounce our history? How? We… carried out a military activity; can I then later renounce all that we have done?”
Nevertheless, Israeli politicians such as opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who met with Abbas on Wednesday, continue to say that he is a true partner for peace.
