Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters in New York, US, Sept. 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

As Western leaders plan to meet at the UN on June 17 to possibly give Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas recognition of a Palestinian state, Abbas continues to prove how unworthy the PA is of being a state. Abbas and the PA’s continued embrace of Oct. 7, 2023, show that the PA remains a terror-supporting entity, diametrically opposed to the values of the very countries that plan to recognize a Palestinian state.

Abbas has reminded us once again that if the PA were to become a state, it would be a terror state.

Last Sunday, the PA’s official daily published an interview that Abbas gave in August 2024, which included the straightforward question of how Abbas views the Oct. 7 atrocities. It turns out that the brutal murders, rape, torture and kidnappings are not atrocities at all from Abbas’ perspective, but rather Hamas’ attempt to achieve “important goals” which embarrassed Israel and showed its weaknesses.

Abbas defined Oct. 7 by listing the “important goals” that Hamas achieved:

• Hamas “killed 1,200 Israelis, abducted 250 others, and took them as hostages. This attack shook the foundations of the Israeli entity”;
• Hamas “exposed the [false] claims that … [Israel] has an invincible army”;
• Hamas exposed the “glaring failure of this entity’s [i.e., Israel’s] components, especially the army and the various security forces”; and
• The “entity” failed “to discover what Hamas was planning, and failed to block the attack and prevent heavy losses”[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 1, 2025]

However, according to Abbas, there was one problem with Hamas’ achieving these “important goals”: they were not equal to the devastation that Hamas brought on Gaza:

As important as the goals that Hamas attempted to achieve through this attack may have been, they are not comparable to the damages and heavy losses that the Gaza Strip, its residents, and the Palestinian cause have suffered …

Without absolving the hated Israeli occupation of the primary responsibility for the destruction of the Gaza Strip, Hamas provided this occupation [i.e., Israel] with the excuses to do what it did: genocide and war crimes against our people.

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 1, 2025]

The publication of Abbas’ interview lauding Hamas’ accomplishments comes shortly after an interview given by Abbas’ senior advisor, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who defended the Oct. 7 atrocities as “legitimate resistance,” five times in one interview:

Al-Habbash: “What Hamas carried out on Oct. 7, I start from the assumption that resistance is legitimate. We agreed from the start that the resistance is legitimate, and no one can dispute the legitimacy of the resistance … What happened on Oct. 7 is a legitimate thing, okay? It’s legitimate.” [emphasis added]

Abbas’ interview and his advisor’s recent defense of Oct. 7 must serve as a wake-up call for all Western countries that plan to attend the UN event later this month.

To his people in Arabic, Mahmoud Abbas remains a terror-supporting leader. When he meets world leaders, he continues his years of deception.

Palestinian Media Watch calls on France and Saudi Arabia — the sponsors of the June 17 UN event — to condemn Mahmoud Abbas’ support for Oct. 7, and demand that Abbas retract this statement and publicly condemn the Oct. 7 massacre in Arabic on official PA TV, in the official PA daily, through the official PA news agency WAFA, and in mainstream and popular Arabic media.

If Abbas refuses to condemn the Oct. 7 atrocities, there is no justification for the June 17 UN event, and it should be cancelled.

The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.