Nan Jacques Zilberdik | Sep 24, 2024
While Israel continues to let humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, members of the terror organization Hamas continue to steal it in order to both resupply for their terror war, and also to sell the free aid at exorbitant prices to civilians in need and exploit them.
Official PA TV’s journalist in the Strip reported that the aid convoys are being “robbed” by “the merchants of war,” who then “sell it in the market at very high prices”:
Official PA TV reporter in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza: “Many aid convoys are suffering from acts of piracy. There are robbers armed with firearms who steal the aid before it reaches the needy, and they take control of it… The merchants of war (i.e., Hamas) are taking the aid and selling it in the market at very high prices, even though it is written on them that they are aid supplies not designated for sale.”
[Official PA TV, Sept. 18, 2024]
In July, the Palestinian Authority celebrated its unity deal with Hamas – a dream come true for the PA. But at the same time, the PA is frustrated with its “partner.” Throughout Hamas’ war against Israel, the PA has on the one hand wooed Hamas for partnership and applauded the terror organization for its massacre and murder of over 1,100 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. But the PA has also criticized it for looking out for its own and Iran’s interests, thereby ignoring the welfare of Gazan civilians, as Palestinian Media Watch has documented.
And despite the unity deal, the PA’s frustration has continued. When Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed and Hamas appointed Yahya Al-Sinwar as its new Political Bureau chairman, an editorial in the official PA daily strongly criticized Al-Sinwar and Hamas for only having their own interests at heart and not “the Gaza Strip with its residents, homes, structures, streets, schools, and hospitals”:
“Apparently the structural skeleton of the Hamas Movement is immeasurably more important than the structural skeleton of the Gaza Strip with its residents, homes, structures, streets, schools, and hospitals! This was revealed in the Islamic Jihad Movement’s congratulations to Hamas on selecting Yahya Al-Sinwar as its Political Bureau chairman. The congratulations described this selection as ‘a strong message (!!) to the Zionist enemy,’ and it said that ‘Hamas is still strong and united,’ and that ‘the enemy has not harmed its structural skeleton one bit’!
What derives from this is that the Gaza Strip’s structural skeleton is not [Hamas’] affair, and that its destruction is not [Hamas’] destruction! The other arms of Tehran said similar things, at a time when the Gaza Strip’s structural skeleton is laid on the ground as huge ruins, and at a time when the blood of the Martyr victims is covering even the air there…
Hamas does not intend to locate itself outside of the tunnels. It will continue to hold onto ‘the [Al-Aqsa] Flood’ (Hamas’ name for its terror war against Israel; see note below -Ed.) as its central decision! …
Let us be clearer and more honest – and this is in Allah’s hands – which of the two is more important: The people’s structural skeleton, their status, their infrastructures, their life paths, or the [political] party’s structural skeleton? … What is the resistance’s [Hamas’] criterion of an achievement – that its structural skeleton will be whole and intact, while the structural skeleton of its public is crushed?“
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, Aug. 8, 2024]
Likewise, PA Chairman Abbas’ advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash has accused Hamas of being selfish, having launched the 2023 Gaza war “to make gains for Hamas and Hamas’ allies”:
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairsand Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “I have no doubt and I have had no doubt that these goals that were declared [by Hamas] are not the real goals behind the war, and they are not the real goals behind what Hamas carried out on Oct. 7, [2023] (i.e., Hamas’ invasion and massacre to launch its terror war on Israel). Everyone knows what the real goals are, including us, including the Arab states that knew the real goals. The real goals were to make gains for Hamas and Hamas’ allies.“
[PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page,
July 17, 2024]The following is a longer excerpt of the PA editorial criticizing Hamas:
Excerpt of an editorial in the official PA daily
“Apparently the structural skeleton of the Hamas Movement is immeasurably more important than the structural skeleton of the Gaza Strip with its residents, homes, structures, streets, schools, and hospitals! This was revealed in the Islamic Jihad Movement’s congratulations to Hamas on selecting Yahya Al-Sinwar as its Political Bureau chairman. The congratulations described this selection as ‘a strong message (!!) [parentheses in source] to the Zionist enemy,’ and it said that ‘Hamas is still strong and united,’ and that ‘the enemy has not harmed its structural skeleton one bit’!
What derives from this is that the Gaza Strip’s structural skeleton is not [Hamas’] affair, and that its destruction is not [Hamas’] destruction! The other arms of Tehran said similar things, at a time when the Gaza Strip’s structural skeleton is laid on the ground as huge ruins, and at a time when the blood of the Martyr victims is covering even the air there…
Hamas does not intend to locate itself outside of the tunnels. It will continue to hold onto ‘the [Al-Aqsa] Flood’ (Hamas’ name for its terror war against Israel; see note below -Ed.) as its central decision! It is still deluded that the axis of resistance, with its supporting fronts whose decisions are made by Iran, can serve it as a straw that will protect it against drowning in the waters of its flood!
If ‘the axis of resistance’ is interested in seeing reality, it will see that Iran and no one else is the one that needs the supporting fronts more than anyone, because Israel has harmed its sovereignty in a most arrogant manner. This means that if the supporting fronts will take action, they will do so to rehabilitate this sovereignty [of Iran] and not to aid Hamas in the Gaza Strip!
Let us be clearer and more honest – and this is in Allah’s hands – which of the two is more important: The people’s structural skeleton, their status, their infrastructures, their life paths, or the [political] party’s structural skeleton? What is the value of a healed party… at a time when the public’s structural skeleton is spilling blood? What is the resistance’s criterion of an achievement – that its structural skeleton will be whole and intact, while the structural skeleton of its public is crushed?
Let us hope that the opinions saying that Al-Sinwar is in the end a pragmatic and realistic person and a man of negotiations will turn out to be correct. [Senior Hamas official] Osama Hamdan made great efforts two days ago [Aug. 6, 2024,] on the Al-Jazeera TV screen to market Al-Sinwar as a man of negotiations, and as proof he said that he was not absent from the negotiations for a deal [with Israel]. We say that we hope that these opinions will turn out to be correct, but the popular idiom that says ‘The [content of the] letter is known according to its title’ remains present in this context, sad as it may be!”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, Aug. 8, 2024]
Yahya Al-Sinwar – Palestinian terrorist and senior member of the Hamas terror organization. Al-Sinwar was involved in the kidnapping and murder of Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman in October 1994. Israeli soldier Nir Poraz was murdered during Israel’s attempt to rescue Wachsman. Al-Sinwar was sentenced to 4 life sentences, but was released in the exchange deal for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011.
Mahmoud Al-Habbash also serves as Chairman of the Supreme Council for Shari’ah Justice. In August 2019, PA Chairman Abbas dismissed all his advisors by Presidential decree. It is unclear what their status is today.
Hamas war on Israel October 2023 – Over 1,100 Israelis, including over 800 civilians, were murdered and over 5,000 wounded, in addition to approximately 251 who were abducted into the Gaza Strip (including 153 later released or liberated – among them 36 whose bodies were retrieved – and at least 41 who were killed on Oct. 7 whose bodies were abducted to Gaza), in a Hamas terror war that began when approximately 3,000 Hamas terrorists and thousands of Gazan civilians broke through Israel’s security fence at the Gaza Strip border and launched a surprise attack, taking control of several Israeli towns and attacking a music festival on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, which fell on the Sabbath, Oct. 7, 2023. During the massacre the terrorists tortured, raped, shot, beheaded, and burned their victims alive, murdering entire families and leaving at least 21 children without parents. Hamas terrorists also fired at least 5,000 rockets at Israeli population centers. In response, Israel launched Operation Iron Swords to counter the Hamas terror threat. Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon joined Hamas’ terror war starting from the following day, attacking Israel from the north. Frequent rocket launches, drone attacks, and shootings continued from Lebanon throughout the war, in which approximately 20 Israeli civilians and 20 Israeli soldiers were killed and nearly 200 Israelis were wounded. As a result of the attacks from Gaza and Lebanon, roughly 200,000 Israeli residents of the north and south were internally displaced during the war. A ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal began on Nov. 24, 2023, in which Israel agreed to release 150 terrorist prisoners, pause drone surveillance in the Gaza Strip, and allow movement between the northern and southern Gaza Strip, in return for 50 Israeli female and child hostages held by Hamas. The deal was subsequently extended with additional releases, until Hamas violated the agreement and resumed attacking on Dec. 1, 2023.
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