Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar gesture to supporters during a rally marking the 30th anniversary of Hamas’ founding, in Gaza City, Dec. 14, 2017. Photo: Reuters / Mohammed Salem.

Mahmoud Abbas’ senior advisor has accused Hamas of intentionally sending Palestinians in Gaza to “go and die” for the sole purpose of selling stories of dead Palestinians to the media.

Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Abbas’ Adviser on Islamic Affairs and his Supreme Sharia Judge, delivered a sermon last Friday from Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah, in the presence of Abbas. In the speech, Al-Habbash accused Hamas of deliberately encouraging civilians to endanger themselves: “You Palestinians, our people, go and die so that we’ll go to the TV and media with strong declarations.”

Al-Habbash claimed that the Palestinian population are not being fooled by Hamas anymore, and “sides with the PLO.” Al-Habbash further said:

The Palestinian people … doesn’t care about those [Hamas] with ‘the emotional stories of heroism,’ those with the slogans of heroism — slogans that when you hear them, you think that the people saying them are inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque after they liberated it. And afterwards you discover that they’re only selling illusions, trading in suffering and blood, trading in victims, [saying]: ‘You Palestinians, our people, go and die so that we’ll go to the TV and media with strong declarations.’ These [Hamas] acts of ‘heroism’ don’t fool anyone anymore. The Palestinian people … sides with the PLO.”

While Abbas’ advisor was criticizing Hamas for sending Palestinians to their deaths, Abbas’ Fatah Movement celebrated the participation of an infant in the recent Gaza demonstrations. Fatah posted a photo of a six-month-old baby who had been placed on a pile of tires. The tires would eventually be burned at the Gaza demonstrations:

Here is the posted text:

A child no older than six months was among the participants in the demonstrations today (Friday) [April 6, 2018] and in the March of Return events on the eastern border of the Gaza Strip”
[Official Fatah Facebook page, April 6, 2018]

Itamar Marcus is the director of Palestinian Media Watch.