Tag: Palestinian Authority

Is Israel preparing for the inevitable civil war in the West Bank?

Eric R. Mandel – July 10, 2021

As President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken ponder how to entice the Palestinian Authority (PA) to negotiate with Israel, a far more significant problem is being ignored. The Biden team marched along, facilitating a transfer of money to the PA and reopening the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem, another Palestinian demand, without tangible reciprocity. But this will not reveal the elephant in the room: an inevitable, coming uprising by Hamas in the West Bank.

Hamas instigated the Gaza war in May as part of a strategy to weaken Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party and increase Hamas’s popularity among Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank. As Amos Harel writes in Haaretz, the rule of Abbas “is less stable. … The succession battles among his subordinates are being waged openly and, above all, Hamas is continuing to gain popularity against the backdrop of what is perceived as its success in standing up to Israel during the fighting in May.”

The U.S. evidently thinks it can strengthen the PA’s standing with the Palestinian people by insisting any rebuilding of Gaza be coordinated through the PA and not Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror organization. But covering over the rot of the PA with increased foreign aid is a Band-Aid at best. Hamas may allow some money to flow through the PA to Gaza, but Abbas won’t control it for long.

Are Israel, America and their Middle Eastern allies planning a strategy for the likely possibility of a civil war in the West Bank? Do they believe that funneling humanitarian aid to Gaza through the PA will lead to a long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas or inhibit Hamas from setting the West Bank on fire once sufficient arms, material and money get into their hands?

The attention of the international community is focused on Gaza, but Hamas apparently is one step ahead, strategizing with its Islamist patrons to find opportunities to move closer to taking over the West Bank. Then it could impose Muslim Brotherhood control on the rest of the Palestinian State. Funding from Iran, Qatar and Turkey is in place to help make this happen.

Israel’s next war with Hamas may be not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank, centered in Judea and Samaria, as happened during the Second Intifada of the early 2000s. This time, Israel may be fighting on three fronts simultaneously. Add to that Iranian-controlled militia embedded in Syria and Iraq, ready to transfer arms and troops to tip the balance in favor of Hamas.

https://thehill.com

PA tells Palestinians: The Western Wall belongs only to Muslims

DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS – January 22, 2020

The Western Wall belongs only to Muslims and must be defended even to the death, Palestinians living in the West Bank were told during a filler piece between programs on official Palestinian Authority TV and in a news article in the official PA newspaper.

In a short video broadcast on November 29, an official PA TV narrator told viewers: “The historical documents in the possession of the Palestinians of Jerusalem testify that Jerusalem is a city of Arab origin for thousands of years, and its history and culture are Islamic. Since Islam’s conquest [in the 7th century], the al-Buraq Wall [the Western Wall] has remained an Islamic waqf [an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law]. The Muslims have the absolute right to it and there is not even one rock there that dates back to the period of King Solomon, as the Jews claim.”

The voice over was set to images of daily life within Jerusalem’s Old City, and of the Western Wall, which is part of Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount. The wall is a remnant of a large retaining wall built by King Herod to support the mount for the Second Temple; no part of Solomon’s First Temple remains, although artifacts from that period have been found in the area.

According to Palestinian Media Watch, a research institute that studies the PA’s messages to its people, the Western Wall is referred to by Muslims as al-Buraq, because the prophet Mohammed is said to have traveled to al-Aqsa mosque and tied his flying horse, named al-Buraq, to a stone or rock. In the 1920s, Arab Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini identified that rock as the Western Wall, and Muslims adopted the name for it.

https://www.jpost.com