PA leader devoid of credibility

While world leaders look ahead to a model of leadership that ultimately could lead to a viable two-state solution, the Palestinian Authority has done itself immense damage by promoting the insane notion that Israel, not Hamas, somehow was responsible for the October 7 massacre of Jews. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed out on Sunday, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, 88, “in the past has denied the existence of the Holocaust”.

That odious record does not excuse Mr Abbas’s foreign ministry disseminating absurd claims that “Israeli helicopters bombed Israeli civilians on October 7 during the Supernova music festival” allegedly “to justify its attack on Gaza”. In a video statement in Hebrew and English, Mr Netanyahu rightly condemned the PA’s claim as “utterly preposterous” and “a complete reversal of the truth”. His anger is well-founded when, as Joe Biden made clear on Sunday, “a revitalised PA” is front and centre of US-led plans for post-war Gaza and, more broadly, for Palestinian statehood as part of a two-state solution to the crisis.

But with the PA apparently in self-denial over Hamas terrorists’ responsibility for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Mr Biden’s hopes for a new post-war order are not promising. The PA’s absurd, shameless attempt to blame the savagery of October 7 on Israel rather than where responsibility wholly belongs, with Hamas, is not surprising, however. Under Mr Abbas (a graduate of Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University) since 2006 and his predecessor and mentor, Yasser Arafat, Palestinians have faced decades of disappointment from their leaders over the creation of a Palestinian state. Through the years, three Israeli prime ministers – Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert – have offered good terms for a Palestinian state that covered all of Gaza, almost all of the West Bank, plus compensating territory from Israel proper and a capital in east Jerusalem. Mr Netanyahu, too, has been willing to negotiate a two-state solution, only to be rebuffed.

Now, as the world looks to the PA for sensible leadership, Mr Abbas and his comrades have come up with ludicrous claims that will further damage the prospects for peace. Such is the disarray among the Palestinian leadership.

The PA’s misguided malice should do nothing to impede Israel’s aim of achieving the total obliteration of Hamas and its structures. CCTV footage found at al-Shifa hospital on Sunday leaves no skerrick of doubt about Hamas’s responsibility for the October 7 massacre. It clearly shows Hamas terrorists forcing some of their 240-plus hostages to the hospital. The footage also shows a fortified tunnel found beneath the hospital. The Israel Defence Forces report the 55m-long tunnel is 10m underground, beneath the hospital, and concealed by a booby-trapped pick-up truck loaded with weapons including anti-tank missiles.

The discoveries demonstrate the shallowness of World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and soft-left political leaders and media around the world who have claimed that al-Shifa and other Gazan hospitals should be off-limits to attack following the October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians. Hamas’s decision to put the hospital at the centre of its campaign reflects its evil disregard for lives, Palestinian as well as Jewish.