Abbas has taken on Israel at the UN. UN headquarters. Illustrative. By Joshua Spurlock
Turns out Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ vicious anti-Israel speech at the United Nations isn’t the worst thing he’s planning against the Jewish State. Media reports, including from Ma’an News Agency, claim he plans to eventually call for a UN-mandated timeframe on the carving out of Israel a state of Palestine, a threat that the United States is likely to veto.
But if that happens, a senior Palestinian official from Abbas’ Fatah party has a new threat—Abbas will wage “political war” against Israel, according to Ma’an. Media reports have postulated that response could include taking Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on trumped-up war crimes charges. In the meantime, Abbas’ approach to Israel has the backing of a terror group.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), according to Ma’an, supported Abbas’ speech against Israel—which included unfounded accusations of Israel committing genocide in Gaza. Despite the use of human shields in Gaza by Hamas terrorists there, Israel made efforts to warn civilians to leave the danger zones.
The PFLP, meanwhile, also backs Abbas’ plans to go to the UN Security Council to get them to force Israel into conceding territory for a state of Palestine.
The PFLP’s support isn’t even the strongest backing a terror group has given Abbas. The Hamas group in Gaza has reconciled with Abbas’ Fatah group to support a unity Palestinian government.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took time on Tuesday to clarify his comments at the UN comparing Hamas to ISIS. According to an Israeli press release regarding Netanyahu’s comments to a Jewish group in the US, the Israeli leader held up a picture of a pending Hamas execution during the Gaza fighting. He noted that the terror group killed dozens of Palestinians in the latest Gaza war “just to impose fear and force the population of Gaza into submission.”
Said Netanyahu, “It’s true there are some differences between Hamas and ISIS—for example ISIS beheads people and Hamas puts a bullet in the back of their heads. But to the victims, and the victims’ families, the horror is the same.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, September 30, 2014)