The European Union's decision to grant the Palestinian Authority (PA) a sum of $2 billion to assist them to "reform themselves" can only be the result of willful blindness, cognitive dissonance and what by now can only be ascribed to a proud European tradition of Jew-hate.
The PA, despite claiming to be secular, is saturated with an Islamist mentality in support of jihadists. The PA plays the West by displaying a veneer of reasonableness, victimhood and the bogus claim that it would, in an ever-extending future, accept some kind of peace with the Jews. This fiction is supposedly backed by an equally bogus claim that it would be willing -- under conditions which would always be suicidal for the Jews to accept -- to establish a two-state solution in Israel's ancestral homeland.
This romantic fantasy persists in the face of the Palestinian Authority's elaborate, extremely concrete programs with the European Union to appropriate land which, according to the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords, must still be negotiated, as well as a continuing jobs program that the PA offers, similar to Murder, Inc. The PA's "Pay for Slay" program lavishly rewards Palestinians who murder Israelis. The more Israelis they murder, the greater the sum. A 2024 report notes that the PA disburses more than $16 million each month to the Palestinian murderers and their families.
The Palestinian Authority, located in the biblical Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria, is a hugely corrupt, authoritarian, dictatorial, Islamist political entity whose sole agenda consists of ruling the entire State of Israel under Sharia law while ridding the land of its Jewish population.
Not surprisingly, the PA has yet to condemn Hamas's slaughter of 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023 and the kidnapping of 251 people - 59 of whom are still held hostage in Gaza. Fewer than 24 of them are thought still to be alive.
When PA President Mahmoud Abbas, now enjoying the 20th year of his four-year term, calls Hamas "sons of dogs," this does not mean that Hamas and the PA disagree on obliterating Israel. It only means the PA has not forgotten that Hamas forcibly expelled the PA from Gaza -- including by throwing at least one member of the PA to his death from the 15th floor -- after Hamas was elected in 2006.
Abbas, notwithstanding his corrupt, despotic rule for two decades, is warmly received by Western leaders as he presents them with plans whereby the Palestinian Authority would once again govern Gaza after a make-believe peace is supposedly secured between Israel and Hamas.
According to the Times of Israel:
"'The Palestinian government, under President Abbas's directives, has completed all preparations to assume full responsibility in Gaza,' including the return of the displaced, providing basic services, crossings management, and reconstruction of the war-torn territory, according to a statement from the PA president's office."
In 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, unconditionally gave the Gaza Strip to the PA, to be used as an independent home for Palestinians, and ruled by the PA. All Jews were physically forced out of their homes there by the Israel Defense Forces. Several American Jews had even bought greenhouses in the Gaza Strip from the expelled Jews, and gave them to the Palestinians as running start to transforming Gaza into a "Singapore on the Mediterranean." Within days of the transfer, all the greenhouses were looted and destroyed. It was two years later that Hamas vehemently escorted the PA out of Gaza.
To this day, the Palestinian Authority, with its double-standards and corrosive, corrupt governance, is deeply unpopular with Palestinians, and the reason so many had voted for Hamas in the first place. Israel maintains a superficial co-operation with the PA, mainly for matters of security. According to the EU, however, why not try the Gaza experiment all over again? Perhaps this time -- with more money -- it will work?
Oh absolutely! With our funds, the Palestinian Authority will surely reform itself and live peacefully and happily with all its neighbors, the way we do in Europe! Such is the inebriated view of the EU.
Israel's warnings of the PA continuing to seize Israel's land by phases -- as planned by the PLO 10-Point Program of 1974 and advanced by former PA Prime Minister Salman Fayyad's plan -- to "create facts on the ground" with illegal buildings -- are largely ignored by the West. So far, the PA, with the funding from the EU, has built more than 97,581 illegal structures on Israeli land that is still to be negotiated.
The Palestinian Authority also full-throatedly incites terrorism in its education system and bountifully funds terrorist acts. The total so far disbursed as remuneration for the PA's "Pay-for-Slay" program and acts of terrorism reportedly exceeds $1 billion. This transaction has been in place for decades.
Abbas is now calling for unity with Hamas, as "Hamas is part of the Palestinian people," and "Our arms and hearts are open" to Hamas. The PA would doubtless have liked to return to former PA President Yasser Arafat's Gaza Strip house, which Hamas looted in 2005, before IDF troops razed it in 2024.
In the view of the EU, the Palestinian Authority will reform itself even as it blames Israel for the horrific events of October 7, 2023, claiming Hama's massacre was an action in the "context of the defense war our people are waging," due to Israel's "aggression on all the Palestinian lands."
The jihadist ideology of Jew-hatred, apparently issuing from the Qur'an and the Hadith, and amplified by Adolf Hitler's collaborator Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during much of the British Mandate for Palestine, is now enshrined in the PA-PLO charter. Fatah's Central Committee Secretary General Jibril Rajoub asserts that "Hamas is part of our political and social fabric and of our struggle, and their involvement is important." With Hamas's onslaught against civilians, many PA ministers "celebrated what happened."
According to Nan Jacques Zilberdik, a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch:
"[T]he Palestinian Authority (PA)'s Fatah leaders are confident that the PA and Fatah will unite with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror organizations and rule Gaza together.
Some PA and Fatah leaders have been adamant about joining forces with the terror organizations."
The EU's naiveté (to be kind) is already bringing disaster upon many of its member nations by allowing unlimited Muslim migration, presumably in an unconditional desire for every vote imaginable. This unvetted immigration brings with it the rise of violent political Islam combined with unmitigated Jew-hatred, and allows it to thrive in its midst. Europe's leaders, supposedly tasked with protecting Europe's Judeo-Christian culture, are selling out their nations to radical Islam for a mess of pottage.
In all this, no one seriously considers the views of Israel and its people concerning their neighbors and the two million Arab-Muslim Israeli citizens who live and work among them.
Israelis are understandably against an untenable two-state solution -- which they accurately see as no solution at all. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied to the EU's plans calling for an independent Palestinian state, and that Islamists should again rule Gaza, by saying:
"There was a Palestinian state. It was called Gaza. Look what we received. The biggest massacre since the Holocaust. I will not make any agreement that endangers the State of Israel. I will not do it."
In a mid-April telephone call, Abbas and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed "the possibility of the Palestinian Authority assuming 'full responsibility' in Gaza, including security duties, with the goal of 'international legitimacy, one system, one law, and one legitimate source of arms.'"
According to a report in the Jerusalem Post last month:
"Macron said on Wednesday France could recognize a Palestinian state in June, adding that in turn some countries in the Middle East could recognize the state of Israel.
"'We need to move towards recognition (of a Palestinian state). And so over the next few months, we will. I'm not doing it to please anyone. I'll do it because at some point it will be right,' he said during an interview on France 5 television."
Macron might possibly be the stimulating force behind the EU's intent to lavish a non-reforming PA with billions of euros.
A Biblical quotation describes the EU's futile endeavor to reform a dedicated Islamist organization such as the PA: "Can a leopard change its spots?" The question concludes with, "Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil."
Jews and Israelis know this well, but the EU and others apparently do not or, more to the point, apparently do not care: So what, it is only a few Jews we are talking about.
Nils A. Haug is an author and columnist. A Lawyer by profession, he is member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Dr. Haug holds a Ph.D. in Apologetical Theology and is author of 'Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity'; and 'Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age.' His work has been published by First Things Journal, The American Mind, Quadrant, Minding the Campus, Gatestone Institute, National Association of Scholars, Jewish Journal, James Wilson Institute (Anchoring Truths), Jewish News Syndicate, Tribune Juive, Document Danmark, and many others.
