Mahmoud Abbas. Photo: World Economic Forum.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is urging the European Union to remove Hamas from its list of terrorist organizations, using as his justification the similarity of Hamas policy to PA policy.

“If Hamas is committed to the cease-fire and if it openly pledges to stick to the peaceful popular resistance, I don’t see much difference between their policy and ours,” Abbas said in an interview with the Russian network RT that was cited by Israel Hayom. “In this case, there is no need to label them as a terrorist organization.”

When the interviewer pointed out that unlike Hamas, Fatah was not firing rockets at Israel, Abbas said, “neither we nor Hamas did. Not any longer.”

“After the Second Intifada, we decided to give up on armed resistance,” he said. “And let me be totally frank with you: We don’t want to launch any armed resistance whatsoever. Hamas has said the same. Yes, there were clashes in the past, but they have stopped—and I’m grateful to Allah for that.”