Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, April 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

The US has announced that it’s giving the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank additional humanitarian aid worth $336 million.

But in response to all the US support during the war (and prior), the Palestinian Authority (PA) is relentlessly demonizing the US as being the aggressor and mastermind behind Israel’s war against the Hamas and Hezbollah terror organizations, regardless of the fact that both terror organizations first attacked and continue to attack Israel and Israeli civilians.

Worse still, three days ago, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman also blamed the US for “the continuing chaos, wars, and instability” in the region:

Official Spokesman for the [PA] Presidential Office Nabil Abu Rudeina [said] … the successive American administrations bear responsibility for the continuing chaos, wars, and instability through their mistaken policy and provision of political, monetary, and military support for the continuation of the occupation [i.e., Israel], which has encouraged it to commit more crimes against our people and against the peoples of the region in Syria and Lebanon, alongside the ongoing threats against other regions.” [emphasis added]

[WAFA, official PA news agency, Sept. 29, 2024]

While many Western governments have been highly critical of Israel’s response to Hamas and Hezbollah’s attacks during the ongoing 2023 Gaza war, and have supported the idea of having the PA take power in Gaza after it is done, the PA and its ruling Fatah party have, on the other hand, made their hostility to the West clear in numerous recent conspiracy theories and statements of demonization.

Even as Abbas was again welcomed in the US last week, his PA and Fatah officials are busy bad-mouthing the US administration, accusing it of being behind the war and using Israel as its pawn.

A regular columnist of the PA’s mouthpiece Al-Hayat Al-Jadida accused the US of being guilty of “war crimes” in Lebanon:

The US has been a central partner in managing the operations against the Hezbollah leadership and its activists who are wanted by the [American] administration and Israel ….

The American administration is involved in the war crimes against the Hezbollah leadership and activists … [emphasis added]

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, Sept. 22, 2024]

In a recent interview, Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki referred to the US as “the head of global terror.”

Perhaps this is no surprise considering that Zaki also serves as Fatah Commissioner for Arab and China Relations:

Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki… called for a comprehensive agreement and a code of honor between all parts of the Palestinian people and its movements, according to which the main contradiction is with the Israeli occupation and the rest are secondary differences that our preoccupation with them serves the plots of the occupation … led by the US, the head of global terror. [emphasis added]

[Al-Quds website, Sept. 8, 2024]

Earlier this year Zaki accused the US, and “not Israel,” of waging a war to “slaughter the Palestinian people”:

Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: “The US is the one waging the [Gaza] war, and not Israel …

[The US] is the one waging the war and it is the one that is striving with all its efforts to slaughter the Palestinian people … Our central issue is to stop this cursed war, this barbaric war, which is worse than Nazism.” [emphasis added]

[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, Jan. 20, 2024]

Similarly, Abbas’ advisor, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, has accused the US of pulling the strings in Israel’s war against Hamas, claiming Israel just “carries out American instructions” and the US is “pushing” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu “towards extremism” with its “hostile, immoral, and illegal position”:

Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “Israel’s sovereign is the US, unfortunately. The US even today opposes a resolution proposal at the [UN] General Assembly calling to end the occupation. Imagine, this is the level of American hostility to the Palestinian rights …

The one who is strengthening the position of [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu and pushing him more and more towards extremism is the American administration’s position.

The American administration’s position is a hostile position, an immoral and illegal position, and honestly it is the one that bears responsibility for the scope of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.” [emphasis added]

[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Sept. 18, 2024]

Al-Habbash: “Everyone knows that all the cards are in the hands of the US, not in the hands of Israel. Israel is nothing more than the one who carries out the American policy. If the American administration would have wanted to tell Israel ‘Enough,’ the war would have ended. But it doesn’t do this and attempts to mislead and spread lies to extend the aggression to achieve the same goal. The goal is to erase the political aspect of the Palestinian cause and change the rules of the game, even in the West Bank.”

[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Sept. 11, 2024]

 Al-Habbash: “Israel exploited and used what happened on Oct. 7 [2023] as an excuse to carry out aggression that was planned and prepared in advance against the Gaza Strip, as part of the aggression against the Palestinian people. What happened on Oct. 7 is not the cause of the aggression …

[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu is just a clerk of the American administration, and all of Israel is just subordinate to the American administration and carries out its instructions and serves its policies.

Israel is nothing more than an American interest that is carrying out the American policies. We don’t need to speak with Netanyahu because he has no authority of his own. We must speak only with the American administration that alone bears the magnitude and responsibility for the continuation of this aggression.” [emphasis added]

[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Jan. 29, 2024]

Al-Habbash has also called the US “the biggest liar” and “the true threat”:

Al-Habbash:“There is no bigger liar than the US administration, no bigger liar than [the US] exists.

The American administration is inventing lies against us, as it has done through all the last decades… We are an unarmed people. We are a people that has been living under occupation for more than 70 years…. We are just trying to protect our existence.” [emphasis added]

[Mahmoud  Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Aug.29, 2024]

Palestinian Media Watch also reported on other anti-US remarks by another Abbas advisor, including the accusation that US President Biden is a “war criminal who should stand trial.”

While emphasizing that the real war is “against the US and not Israel,” Abbas Zaki has also stressed the Palestinians’ “strong connection and strategic partnership with China”:

Zaki: “Our war now [i.e., 2023 Gaza war] is a war against the US and not Israel because Israel’s guarantee of life is the US …

Old colonialism, in other words the European colonialist states, wanted to take the Jews and create a base close to them that is hostile to their surroundings, and offered to establish Israel in Argentina, Uganda, and the like.

But when the oil was discovered, the lifeline of modern industry, they wanted to take control of the Middle East region from the ocean to the gulf, and therefore Palestine fell victim to this oppressive criminal alliance …

Our connection with China is very strong, we have a strategic partnership with China. Our connection with Russia is very strong … Israel could not fight against any faction, not even against a state, if not for the US, and Allah willing the US will not be the world ruler.” [emphasis added]

[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, May 16, 2024]

Zaki also repeated the conspiracy theory that Israel is not fighting Hamas in Gaza for security reasons, but rather because it wants to steal natural gas resources discovered there:

Zaki emphasized that Israel is striving to decide the conflict and empty the land of its Palestinian owners, and he noted that the goal of the war in the Gaza Strip is not security-related, but rather it deviates beyond this and includes economic targets, like the [natural] gas reserve that was discovered northwest of Gaza. [emphasis added]

[Al-Quds website, Sept. 8, 2024]

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.