Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas attends a virtual meeting, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sept. 3, 2020. Photo: Alaa Badarneh / Pool / File photo via Reuters.

A group of retired Israeli military officer and intelligence officials issued a warning on Friday against placing any political trust in Palestinian Authority President and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

A position paper shared on Friday with The Algemeiner by “Habithonistim” — a group of 1,800 retired Israeli generals, officers and Mossad operatives — asserted that “Abu Mazen (Abbas’s nom-de-guerre) and the PLO have never given up the way of terrorism, and they consider all kinds of struggle against Zionism legitimate and complementary of each other.”

It argued: “While Abu Mazen, like many other Palestinians, thinks that at this point, popular violence without using firearms and explosives is more effective than armed struggle as a tool for promoting Palestinian goals, he is ready to support all sorts of struggles conducted by other factions within the Palestinian community, including those who are part of the PLO, like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and those who are not members of the PLO,  such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”

The paper highlighted the PA’s “payments of hefty salaries to terrorists who are imprisoned in Israel, as well as monthly stipends to the families of dead terrorists and a wide variety of additional benefits to the arrested terrorists and to their relatives.”

The paper argued that the “explanation for the gap between the public image of Abbas and the PLO and their real behavior is clear when looking at the history of the PLO and the phased program [for the elimination of Israel as a sovereign state.]”

It concluded: “Israel and the United States should not be fooled again by Palestinian deception. Abu-Mazen’s presumed willingness to reach a settlement with Israel should be regarded as merely one of a series of steps in a plan to annihilate the Jewish state. In short, if Abu Mazen expects the United States to remove the PLO from the terror organizations list, than the PLO should change its entire policy and stop terrorizing Israel.”