On Thursday, Jibral Rajoub—a senior figure in the Fatah faction that has controlled the Palestinian Authority (PA) since its inception—and Saleh al-Arouri, the head of the Hamas military, gave an unprecedent joint press conference. The two pledged unity in countering the Trump administration’s peace proposal and Israeli plans for extending its sovereignty into areas of the West Bank. David Horovitz comments:
Here . . . was one of President Mahmoud Abbas’s most senior colleagues . . . and potential successor, who once worked in close coordination with Israeli security forces, grandly declaring that Fatah was henceforth partnering with Hamas: an Islamist terror organization . . . that thirteen years ago brutally forced Abbas’s Fatah out of the Gaza Strip, and would have long since finished him off in the West Bank too, were he not protected by Israel’s ongoing security presence there.
It was . . . a stinging blow to the lingering hopes of those on the Zionist left who, in the face of years of contrary evidence, still insistently regard Abbas as a potential peace partner with whom Israel might be able to reach a dependable peace agreement. It was bitter confirmation for the consensus view in Israel, hardened in the course of Abbas’s intransigent stewardship of the PA after the death of Yasir Arafat, that Israel dare not risk relinquishing adjacent territory to the Palestinians under his rule.
Plainly, the Trump administration can put aside any thought of the Palestinian leadership engaging with its Peace to Prosperity vision, notwithstanding U.S. officials’ intermittent assurances that the proposal’s terms are not final, and that the goal is for the Palestinians to come back to the table, where they could propose changes.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-day-abbas-moved-from-rebuffing-trump-to-joining-forces-with-the-terrorists/