יום שלישי, כ״ט תמוז תשפ״וTuesday, July 14, 2026
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Khaled Abu Toameh, an Arab Muslim, is a veteran award-winning journalist who has been covering Palestinian affairs for nearly three decades.
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A public opinion poll published last week by a Palestinian center found that 68% of respondents support the medical cooperation with Israel.
Both the PA and Hamas, even during the difficult time of a pandemic, as they have made abundantly clear, do not hesitate to pursue their repressive measures against anyone who dares to speak out against financial and administrative corruption, or expresses views that annoy any Palestinian leaders.
The Palestinian leaders, who are pursuing their efforts to prosecute Israelis for "war crimes," have been concealing from their own people and the international community the fact that Israel is assisting them in the war on the coronavirus.
The Lebanese, Egyptians and most Arabs perceive the Palestinians as Israel's problem. When the current virus crisis has passed, it is to be hoped that the Palestinians will remember that one country alone came to their rescue: Israel
Israeli authorities announced that they had facilitated 105,495 humanitarian crossings for Palestinians to receive medical treatment in Israel during the last week of February. Yet, rather than showing gratitude toward the Israeli authorities for their assistance, the Palestinian Authority and its media outlets and officials are continuing their campaign of incitement against Israel.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will have to continue accepting the reality of living under the unelected and totalitarian leaders of the PA and Hamas. For the Palestinians, each Israeli election serves as a sad reminder of the catastrophic failure of Palestinian leaders and the complete absence of democracy under the PA and Hamas.
The Palestinians seem to believe that they are the ones entitled to set conditions to those who are offering to improve their living needs and help them march towards prosperity and a better future for their children.
Several key Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, seem to be fed up with the ongoing Palestinian rejection of every proposed Palestinian-Israeli peace plan. The Palestinians have never even proposed a counter-offer.
Many Arab citizens of Israel see how Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip are subject to human rights violations on a daily basis.
In fact, the wording of Trump's plan is quite compatible with the position of Abbas and his PA officials in the West Bank.
The whole idea of boycotting Israel is designed to prevent the world from learning about the good things that Israel stands for and actually provides.
The European Union is said to be pressuring the Palestinians to hold long overdue presidential and parliamentary elections. It is not clear, however, how the Palestinians would hold new elections at a time when the PA and Hamas are busy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip locking up their political opponents.
Palestinian leaders fear that reports about corruption could contribute to a drying up of international funding of the PA. If donor countries got whiff of the fact that their taxpayers' money is being squandered and stolen by senior PA officials, the cash cow might just kick over the PA bucket.
Palestinians are victims not only of their Arab brothers, but also of the double standards of the international community, which continues to be obsessed only with Israel.
Now that Hamas has again – clearly – reminded the world that it has not changed and continues to seek the destruction of Israel, the question is: Why are some world leaders, governments and organizations continuing to embrace the leaders of the movement?
Iran's leaders see the situation in Gaza: "We are not sending these groups and militias cash and guns so that they can strike ceasefire deals."
Hate for Israel has blinded people to the point where they align themselves with their own executioners.
The next time anyone talks about the harsh conditions in the Gaza Strip, the world needs to realize that those who are trying to block aid to their people are the Palestinian leaders.
This is not a good guy/bad guy scenario. Instead, it is a temporary rift between two extremely bad guys, both of whom are wholly committed to destroying Israel, even if that means destroying their own people along the way as well.
Criticism is fine, of course -- if it is directed at the Palestinians' arch-enemy, Israel. Otherwise, Palestinian journalists had best keep their criticism to themselves -- lest the PA and Hamas decide to leave them in critical condition.
Hamas's support for Erdogan's war on the Kurds seems to be in the context of its attempt to persuade the Turkish authorities to allow its members to continue using Turkey as a base for masterminding terrorist attacks against Israel.
It is only Palestinians who are held by Israel for terrorist-related crimes who Abbas and his friends remember to mention in their endless litanies of complaints.
Instead of encouraging and assisting their people to move on with their lives and seek a better future for their children, Hamas and other Palestinian groups continue to lie to the refugees by promising them that one day they will go back to their villages and towns in Israel.
Why do Egyptians have to travel all the way to Israel to discuss supplying the Gaza Strip with food, medicine and fuel (through Israel) when Egypt can easily do so through its shared border with the Gaza Strip? The world seems to have forgotten that the Gaza Strip has a shared border not only with Israel, but with Egypt as well.
"Palestinians bring disaster to anyone who hosts them. Jordan hosted them, and there was Black September; Lebanon hosted them, and there was a civil war there; Kuwait hosted them, and they turned into Saddam Hussein's soldiers. Now they are using their podiums to curse us."
The story of the mistreatment of Palestinians in Lebanon is a microcosm of a bigger problem: the Arab "betrayal" and "abandonment" of Palestinians.
The voices emerging from the Gaza Strip are anguished and reflect the Palestinians' growing sense of disillusionment with Hamas. These voices, however, are still small in numbers. Hamas's brutal methods of suppression and torture have deterred a large number of Palestinians from speaking out. These voices will grow only if the international community heeds them and calls out Hamas for its brutal crackdown on Palestinians.
The Egyptian and UN mediators, in failing to call out the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad for their deception and conflicting messages, are permitting the two groups to deploy the ceasefire with Israel as a cover to prepare for the next war.
It is high time for the pro-Palestinian groups on university campuses in the US, Canada, Britain and Australia to organize an "Arab Apartheid Week" instead of accusing Israel of "discriminating" against Palestinians. It is also high time for the international media to take notice of anti-Palestinian measures taken by Lebanon against the Palestinians at a time when Israel is increasing the number of Palestinian workers allowed to enter Israel for work.
Sadly, thousands of Palestinians continue to heed Hamas's call for trying to breach the border with Israel every Friday while ignoring that it is their leaders who are mainly responsible for dragging them from one disaster to another.
Evidently, Palestinian leaders do not grasp that the Palestinian public cares a great deal more about being treated like human beings by their own leaders than about anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric.
New elections [the initiative of Mahmoud Abbas] are certain to result in the creation of another Hamas-controlled entity in the West Bank. The Palestinians would end up with two Hamas-run mini-states, one in the West Bank and one in the Gaza Strip.
The decision of six Arab states to attend the Bahrain conference despite the Palestinian boycott call shows that the Arabs have chosen to endorse a new direction – one that will leave the Palestinians to fend for themselves in a hell of their own making. For their choice to thumb their noses not only at the US but also at influential Arab states, the Palestinians are likely to emerge as the biggest losers.
Palestinian leaders do not give a damn about the welfare of their people. If they did, it would be hard to justify their impressive efforts to foil an economic conference whose main goal is to lift their people out of the economic hell these very leaders created and vigorously maintain.
Palestinians will not only deprive themselves of billions of dollars, but will also damage -- perhaps irrevocably -- their relations with influential Arab countries. By all accounts, the Palestinians appear to be heading toward another "nakba" (catastrophe).
One is left wondering how any Arab leader would accept any peace plan with Israel when a mayor is being widely condemned and shamed for being caught on camera in the company of Israelis.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas understood that he had made a grave error in calling out his Arab brothers for their tightfistedness. This was a massive mistake because his Arab brothers do not tolerate any form of criticism. For them, Abbas should only be criticizing Israel and the US.
Hamas and other Palestinian terror group consider Israel one big settlement that needs to be annihilated.
According to the logic of the PA, the conflict started when Israel fired back. The PA leaders are afraid to condemn the rocket attacks on Israel. They evidently do not want to be accused by their people of betraying the Palestinian "resistance" against Israel.
{Originally posted to the Gatestone Institute website} Palestinians appear finally fed up with the apartheid and discriminatory laws they have been subjected to in Lebanon in the past few decades. They appear fed up with the ongoing apathy towards their plight in the international community and media. They also appear fed up with the international […]
Hamas is now accusing the PA and Fatah of exploiting the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip to call on Palestinians to overthrow the Hamas regime. Fatah, for its part, is accusing the "dark forces" of Hamas of acting on orders from outside parties to establish a separate Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip.
In the world of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the only "good" journalists are those who report negatively about Israel.
Even if some Arabs do sign peace treaties with Israel, there will always be those Muslims who will denounce them as "traitors" and accuse them of acting against the Koran and the rulings of Islam.
The only way for the Palestinians to move forward is by protesting against their failed leaders in the PA and Hamas. Many Palestinians, however, are afraid to speak out against their rulers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Why would any Palestinian speak out against Abbas or Hamas when he or she knows that this would endanger their lives?
The Trump administration must persuade the Arab states to abandon the Palestinians, and to continue focusing on the regional threat from Iran. If the US completes its pullout from Syria, Iran will successfully complete its long-desired "land-bridge" to the Mediterranean
It seems the Palestinian leadership would rather see Iran continue to pose a threat to Arab countries than see peace between those countries and Israel. Several Arab countries appear completely fed up with the Palestinians.
Holding Palestinian leaders accountable for their systematic abuses of public freedoms, assaults on journalists and incitement is the only way to encourage badly needed moderate and pragmatic Palestinians and Arabs to speak out.
Where are all the international human rights organizations and pro-Palestinian groups around the world that feign concern for the suffering of the Palestinians?
Hamas and its allies are openly working and encouraging the eruption of a new anti-Israel uprising in the West Bank, and they have been emboldened by the recent failure of the UN General Assembly to adopt a US-sponsored resolution condemning Hamas and other Palestinian groups for firing rockets at Israel and inciting violence.
It is supposedly fine for Mahmoud Abbas and his officials to condemn Hamas on a daily basis. It is supposedly not fine, however, for the US administration to condemn Hamas for its terrorist attacks against Israel.
Palestinians are moving on 3 levels to thwart Trump's upcoming plan: rallying worldwide support for the Palestinian position against the plan, uniting all Palestinians, and opposing attempts to normalize relations between the Arab countries and Israel.
The renewed US sanctions on Iran are good news, however, for many Arabs and Muslims who feel threatened by Tehran's actions and rhetoric. Iran has long been systematically working towards undermining moderate Arabs and Muslims in the region.
Saudi money will never change the hearts and minds of Palestinians, especially regarding a peace agreement with Israel.
No one cares when an Arab country mistreats and discriminates and kills Palestinians. But when something happens in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, the international media and community suddenly wake up. Why? Because they do not want to miss an opportunity to condemn Israel.
A Palestinian was executed in Gaza by three bullets to the chest, because he lived among people who consider homosexuality a sin punishable by death -- and who act on it.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh recently admitted that the Palestinian protests are aimed at thwarting Trump's yet-to-be-announced plan for peace in the Middle East rather than improving conditions for Gazans
Dropping barrels of dynamite on houses and hospitals in a Palestinian refugee camp is apparently of no interest to those who pretend to champion Palestinians around the world. Nor does the issue seem to move the UN Security Council.
Abbas is fortunate to have Israel sitting with him in the West Bank. Otherwise, Hamas would have succeeded in its effort to topple his regime and "transfer" its weapons to the West Bank.
No US peace plan would comply with Palestinian demands. Abbas wants 100% of the territories Israel secured in 1967-- the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.; Hamas is demanding 100% of everything, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
A Palestinian girl who punched an Israeli soldier in the face draws more media interest than Arab apartheid against the Palestinians.
Iran's message to Hamas: If you want us to continue providing you with financial and military aid, you must continue to hold on to your weapons and reject demands to disarm.
The deal does not require Hamas to dismantle its security forces or armed wing. Nor does the agreement require Hamas to lay down its weapons or stop amassing weapons and preparing for war. Hamas could not have hoped for a better deal.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and ISIS may disagree on many issues, but targeting Jews and "infidels" is not one of them. On that point, they are in savage agreement.
Abbas and his government are quietly and successfully turning the PA into an autocratic one man-show, making it a private Abbas fiefdom. He seeks to fire or appoint PA judges whenever he feels like it. Where is the outcry from the various human rights "authorities"?
Most comments posted by Palestinians and other Arabs in response to the joint Palestinian-Israeli camp vilify the Palestinian girls and their families. The postings brand them as traitors, sluts, filthy people who are not ashamed to be seen in the company of Israeli girls. Then there is the barrage of abuse that is not fit for print.
This latest dictatorial move by the PA should tell the world the current readiness of the Palestinian leadership for statehood, and what such statehood would look like. It would resemble its brutal Arab neighbors.
The Palestinian Authority has proven to be not much different than most of the Arab dictatorships, where democracy and freedom of expression and the media are non-existent.
Abbas is well aware that the Palestinian house is on fire. Instead of working to extinguish the blaze, however, Abbas spends his time spreading the lie that peace in our time is possible, if only Israel would succumb to his demands.
Lawlessness and anarchy ruke Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank driving many residents to move to nearby cities and villages. Most West Bank refugees no longer live inside UNRWA-run camps
Any "regional solution" involving Arab countries would be doomed to fail because the Palestinians and their Arab brethren hate each other and regarded as an "American-Zionist dictate."
By refusing to hold the PA accountable for its crackdown on public freedoms, American and European taxpayers actively contribute to the emergence of another Arab dictatorship in the Middle East.
From Abbas's point of view, Hamas's terrorism will only increase the pressure on Israel to capitulate. Here Abbas has an ally in Hamas: to multiply jihads to force Israel to its knees.
Israel is facing two Palestinian camps: Hamas does not want to make peace with Israel because it believes Israel ought not to exist, and Fatah can't make peace with Israel because it is too weak
Hamas's decision to participate in the upcoming local and municipal elections will further strengthen the movement and pave the way for it to extend its control from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.
By calling the election and allowing Hamas to participate, Abbas is digging his own grave, and presiding over the burial of any so-called peace process with Israel.
Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have become in the past few decades bases for various innumerable militias and terrorist groups.
The Jordanian public opposes confederation, fearing the confederation would lead to the "dilution" of the Jordanian identity, creating instability and undermining security.
Abbas turned 81 last week and appears ready to remain at the helm until his last day -- free elections for Palestinians be damned.
Abbas has perfected the art of distraction by regularly blaming Israel & threatening to resign
Hamas can't tolerate Palestinians rejoicing & celebrating-Hamas is the "Grinch" who stole New Year!
Is Abbas serious about stepping down? Critics claim he's bluffing, others believe he intends to
Few Arab Israelis found anything positive in the decision of its MKS to join any Gaza flotilla.
Egypt has been more effective against Gazan smuggling tunnels than Israel's military operations
Hamas is continuing to prepare its next war against Israel instead of improving conditions in Gaza
Riot started when Muslim students wore the Pal. kaffiyeh and Druze students demanded them removed
Kerry and Obama must start listening to what Palestinian leaders are telling their people in Arabic.
Adult activists who send and encourage children to take part in violence should be held accountable.
To flee Gaza, Palestinian migrants reputedly paid $1000s to Hamas officials and Egyptian smugglers.
Fatah: Hamas stole relief aid for Gaza and distributed it amongst its followers in mosques.
Arab leaders who want the US to stop Islamic State are afraid of being dubbed traitors and US agents
Hamas and Islamic Jihad are actually fighting to "liberate Jerusalem and all Palestine."
Hamas seems to have reached the conclusion that the reconciliation pact with Abbas will not do it any good.
The dispute over money between Hamas and Fatah shows that each group signed the reconciliation agreement for its own interests.
While they continue to hate Israel and seek its destruction, many Arabs admire the independence of Israel's judicial system.
The Palestinian Authority has jailed more than 350 Arabs for "security" reasons in just 2014.
Kerry has literally been "begging" Abbas to agree to the extension of the peace talks.
Abbas and the Arab leaders thumb their noses at U.S. conditions, instead they set their own.
Even if Abbas is forced -- under U.S. Pressure and threats -- to make concessions, the Palestinians will not "relinquish their rights."
Palestinians are worried that Daesh terrorists will perpetrate atrocities against those who oppose their ideology and activities.
While in English Abbas was touting peace, in Arabic his officials were supporting "armed resistance" against Israel.
July 10, 2026 
