Smoke rises after reported Iranian missile attacks, following United States and Israel strikes on Iran, as seen from Doha, Qatar, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

No matter how clear it is who is to blame for a problem, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is always ready to blame Israel for any disaster, death, or disagreement.

As a Palestinian Authority (PA) TV preacher once taught: “If a fish in the sea fights with another fish, I am sure the Jews are ‎behind it.”

When Iranian missiles hit Gulf states or fall on Turkey, Oman, and Kuwait, the situation is no different.

Obviously, Israel must be guilty, and an Israeli Arab journalist found the perfect frame for the blame: Those missiles were “coordinated” by the Mossad and the US:

Israeli Arab journalist Suheil Diab:“So far, in at least three proven cases, it has become clear that several [Iranian] missile attacks on Turkey and Oman, as well as some of the missiles that were launched towards Kuwait, were coordinated with the Israeli Mossad with the knowledge of the US to create tension and conflict between the Iranians and the Gulf states.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA TV, March 16, 2026]

Similarly, a regular columnist writing for the official PA daily claimed Iran and Israel have “overlapping goals” to “weaken the Arab states.”:

… the overlapping goals that Israel and Iran seek to achieve through this war will not materialize. Both are interested in weakening the Arab states, casting doubt on their ability to maintain their sovereignty, and harming the strategic Arab depth components of the Palestinian people and of the central cause of the Arab nation: the cause of Palestine. [emphasis added]

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 15, 2026]

In the beginning of the current war, Palestinian Media Watch reported on the PA’s sole concern for the “Palestinian cause.”

The PA daily columnist accused Netanyahu of seeking to unify and make alliances with the very Arab states he is supposedly seeking to weaken.

Netanyahu was said to need them in his war against Iran, and by mobilizing them he would be able to erase the “pan-Arab national struggle” against “the international Zionist colonialist project,” and expand into “Greater Israel… between the Nile River and the Euphrates River”:

At the same time, he [Netanyahu] will exploit the hostility and desire for revenge … to achieve his goal: to make the Arab states that are in [Iran’s] sights (the Arab Gulf states) [parentheses in source] be in one united front with Israel against Iran, meaning to erase the truth and trends in the Arab-Zionist conflict, as a Palestinian and pan-Arab national struggle against an existential threat, which is embodied by the international Zionist colonialist project.

[This threat] unabashedly expresses the policy of the state of occupation and settlement colonialism (Israel) [parentheses in source], which still believes that the borders of Greater Israel are between the Nile River and the Euphrates River.

The columnist conveniently tied his imagined alliance between Israel and Iran to another libel that is part of the PA’s regular arsenal of libels and has been exposed by Palestinian Media Watch, and has also been repeated heavily by the PA during the current war. According to the libel, Israel is using the war to realize its “plot” to conquer the surrounding Arab states — Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia — and create “Greater Israel.”

A PLO official likewise lashed out and accused the US of wanting to “subjugate Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Turkey,” while using Israel as the region’s “bad cop”:

Palestinian National Council Committee for Foreign and Parliamentary Affairs member Fawzi Al-Samhouri: “The second goal of the American plan after taking control of Iran’s oil resources is to continue afterwards to Pakistan …

They also want to subjugate the region by integrating Israel into the heart of the Arab homeland to impose it as the bad cop in the region. At the same time, the US is now subjugating this region – the region of the Arab homeland and the large Islamic states surrounding it such as Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Turkey. Turkey, despite it being a NATO member, is also part of the American plan.

The US wants first to weaken Hezbollah and then also to fully control Turkey due to its geographical location.” [emphasis added]

[Fatah-run Awdah TV, Facebook page, March 16, 2026]

The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this story first appeared.