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Fatah Militias Prepare for War with Israel and/or Revolt against Mahmoud Abbas

Oct. 26 2016

While Mahmoud Abbas’s faction of the PLO has, by and large, refrained from attacks on Israelis in the past several years, there are now signs that that is about to change, even as some Fatah elements have split off in loathing for the PA president himself. Khaled Abu Toameh writes:

The armed wing of Fatah, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, announced [recently] that its members have been enrolled in a new military academy for training “fighters” in the Gaza Strip . . . “in the context of a program for preparing for any future battle” with the “Zionist enemy.” . . .

[There are several] Fatah-affiliated militias that continue to operate in the Gaza Strip despite Hamas’s violent takeover of the area in the summer of 2007. These groups pose no threat to the Hamas regime, which is why they are allowed to operate freely. . . Their express purpose is to prepare for war with Israel and launch terror attacks against Israelis. Hamas, however, which expelled their leaders from the Gaza Strip and continues to persecute dozens of Fatah activists there, is not on their hit list. . . .

These groups believe that they represent the real Fatah, the one that never recognized Israel’s right to exist and holds on to armed struggle as the only way to “liberate Palestine.” . . .

The power play among Fatah militias in Gaza reflects the wider division among Fatah’s political leaders. According to Palestinian sources, Fatah leaders in the strip have dissociated themselves from the faction’s leadership in the West Bank. Abbas’s aides blame exiled Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan for the schism. . . . [Recently], thousands of Fatah members who are loyal to Dahlan staged a large demonstration in the Gaza Strip against Abbas. During the protest, they burned and trampled on pictures of the PA president.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Fatah, Gaza Strip, Israel & Zionism, Mahmoud Abbas

 

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic