Abbas’s Tongue Targets Temple Mount, and Israel Says the Result is Terror

The Hamas terrorist group is open about its mission of destroying Israel. But the current wave of Palestinian terror consuming the Jewish state has led Israeli leaders to instead blame the unrest on Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas over his failure to condemn terrorism and his incitement of violence, casting doubt on the common assessment of Abbas as a moderate by Western governments and media.

Under Abbas, the PA has not held formal elections since 2006 and only maintains control in the West Bank after being ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007. Abbas has maintained a security relationship with Israel out of a shared fear of Hamas, but has also threatening numerous times to break off all such ties with Israel.

Many fear that if a Palestinians election were held today, Hamas—which won the last election in 2006—would beat out Abbas’s Fatah party once again. Many Palestinians cite Fatah’s notorious legacy of financial and administrative corruption as their reason for supporting Hamas.

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“Abbas is very aware of this dynamic, and for that reason it has led him to continue to embrace this idea of security cooperation with Israel, although I do question the extent to which he is committed to it,” Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank, told JNS.org. “But he is fully aware that the current chaos in the West Bank can unseat him, so he tepid about this. He is also aware that standing against this uprising or violence pits him against his own people.”

According to FDD’s Schanzer, the recent spate of Palestinian terror attacks throughout Israel, especially in Jerusalem, have largely been the work of Hamas and the Islamic Movement in Israel.

“For all indications right now, Hamas is stoking the violence in the West Bank, while keeping a lid on the violence in Gaza, for a very strategic reason: they can’t afford to have another war in Gaza,” Schanzer said. “But they can afford to see unrest in the West Bank, which can ultimately led to upheaval and the toppling of Abbas.”

“Meanwhile, his own Fatah party does seem to be glorifying the violence and praising those who carry out the violence against the Israelis,” Schanzer said, calling the situation a “very strange dichotomy.”

Schanzer believes that Abbas now finds himself in a similar to that of his predecessor, Arafat.

“To a certain extent, it mirrors the position Yasser Arafat was in during the second intifada. [Arafat] had lost a lot of legitimacy due to corruption and the failed peace process. Arafat saw [supporting the intifada] as a way of consolidating power,” Schanzer said.

“It ended up being a huge mistake [for Arafat] and I think Abbas surely recalls this history. In fact, it was Abbas who benefited from Arafat’s mistake,” he added.

Nevertheless, for Netanyahu, the focus remains on Abbas’s incitement as well as his attempts to isolate Israel in the international community.

“The way to undercut [Abbas’s moves at the U.N.] is to undermine Abbas himself,” Schanzer said. “One can understand why Netanyahu is doing this…If Abbas is fully against the violence and thoroughly outspoken on it, we might be looking at a different situation.”

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