Rockets are launched by Palestinian into Israel, amid Israeli-Palestinian fighting in Gaza, August 7, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Mohammed Salem

While the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas may argue among themselves over tactics, timing, and optics, they are united on the core issue — the legitimacy of terror.

In a single radio interview, the Fatah spokesman in the Gaza Strip — representing the ruling party of the PA, which is now positioning itself as a future governing authority in Gaza — revealed three truths that Palestinian leaders usually avoid stating so openly: that Gaza was not an unlivable hell before October 7, that the mass murder of Israelis is not rejected in principle, and that the internal Palestinian debate is about how much terror is useful, not whether terror is acceptable at all.

Fatah Spokesman in the Gaza Strip Mundhir Al-Hayek: ” … The Gaza Strip before Oct. 7 was a paradise. The situation was very good.

But Hamas exploited this and took over all the economic areas and collected taxes, and unfortunately, the result was moving towards the uncalculated October 7. We needed 10% of Oct. 7 to convey a message to the world that the Palestinian people is persecuted and oppressed, and it needs self-determination. But the political leadership [Hamas] failed.” [emphasis added]

[Radio Mawtini (Fatah radio station), Facebook page, Jan. 6, 2026]

Al-Hayek’s admission that “the Gaza Strip before October 7 was a paradise” and that “the situation was very good” directly contradicts two years of Palestinian claims that October 7 was launched in response to unbearable humanitarian conditions or Israeli “siege.”

According to a senior Fatah official speaking from Gaza itself, life there was not only tolerable, but “very good” until Hamas chose war.

Equally revealing is what Al-Hayek did not condemn.

“I’m not talking about the operation itself,” he emphasized, meaning the atrocities of October 7, but only about what followed. The massacre itself is not rejected. It is treated as a given.

As Palestinian Media Watch has documented consistently, the Palestinian Authority does not morally condemn terror overall, nor October 7 in particular.

Instead, it criticizes October 7 for being politically or tactically mishandled. For Al-Hayek, the failure was not the slaughter of civilians, the rapes, the kidnappings, or the mass atrocities, but that Hamas did not “rescue our people” afterward and failed to manage the consequences of the violence it initiated.

Perhaps the most instructive statement came when Al-Hayek argued that the massacre itself was excessive, not unjustified: “We needed 10% of October 7 to convey a message to the world.”

So, what does “10% of October 7” mean? Does it mean kidnapping 25 people instead of 251? Does it mean murdering 120 people instead of over 1,200? Does it mean raping fewer women or burning fewer families alive?

The answer exposes the PA/Fatah’s true ideology, which does not see terror as a moral question but a quantitative one. Indeed, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas described October 7 as an attempt to achieve “important goals,” while his senior advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash called it “a legitimate thing.”

Al-Hayek’s remarks underscore the PA/Fatah view that terror is acceptable and is constrained only by political utility and cost.

Ephraim D. Tepler is a researcher at Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), where a version of this article first appeared.