The Palestinian Authority has voiced uncommon criticism of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei following his commendation of the October 7th massacre.
At a Tehran event marking 35 years since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s passing, the Islamic Republic’s leader remarked, “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood (the terrorists’ designation for October 7th) was exactly what the region needed. Our region needed this operation.”
“This operation was a decisive blow to the Zionist regime,” he elaborated.
Khamenei claimed the massacre thwarted a US-supported multinational plot designed to let Israel “dominate the politics and economy” of the Middle East.
“This scheme had reached its final moments. At such a critical moment, the Al-Aqsa Flood attack began and destroyed all the plans of the enemy,” he observed.
He further asserted that the massacre set Israel “on a path that will end in nothing but decay and destruction.”
The office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas denounced these comments. According to the PA’s official news agency WAFA, the office stated, “The Palestinian people are paying the price of the Israeli war. They are the first to be affected by this war, which sheds their blood, and has resulted, since last October 7, in the killing of more than 36,000 Palestinians, wounding 83,000 others, the destruction of infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, mosques, and churches, displacing thousands of citizens, and exterminating hundreds of families.”
The PA’s statement continued: “These declarations, which clearly express an intent to sacrifice Palestinian blood and countless children, women, and the elderly, and to devastate Palestinian land, will not lead to the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Palestinian people have been fighting and struggling for a hundred years, and they do not need wars that do not serve their aspirations for freedom and independence, and the preservation of Jerusalem and its Islamic and Christian sanctities.”
“What we seek is to end the occupation and realize our independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, not policies that undermine Palestinian national goals, which include the liberation of Jerusalem and its sanctities, and that devastate the Palestinian people and displace them from the land whose identity they have struggled to maintain for generations,” the statement added.
The Presidency emphasized that “we are in continuous confrontation alone with Israel, and with successive US administrations that constantly use the veto to deny Palestinians their legitimate rights, and are attempting to remove Jerusalem from the equation, providing weapons and money to maintain the Israeli occupation, and preventing the raising of the Palestinian flag over Jerusalem and the holy sites.”
It should be highlighted that the Palestinian Authority and its Fatah leadership strive to be seen as a moderate faction, aiming to gain American and Western support and to replace Hamas in Gaza. Nevertheless, concurrently, Fatah’s militant arm, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, has engaged in terrorist activities both in the Gaza Strip and in Judea and Samaria.
This denunciation of the Iranian Supreme Leader mirrors past statements by PA officials regarding October 7th, focusing on the subsequent war against Hamas and its impacts while largely overlooking the mass murder and rape of civilians by the terrorists.
{Matzav.com Israel}
The PA wants to take over Gaza after the war. This is clearly just a PR stunt, probably done with the approval or direction of Iran, in order to curry favor with western powers, and improve the PA’s political position. Nobody should buy it.
It’s a ruse no doubt!
It’s a bigger Shock that Matzav is in Shock.