THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY AND HAMAS ARE PARTNERS IN TERRORISM

Fatah shares Hamas’s goal to destroy Israel

Much of the international community has clung to the fiction that Hamas and Fatah are different—that Hamas is irredeemably extremist, while Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, is flawed but pragmatic. 

 

By Moshe Phillips 

 

JNS

Jam 19, 2026

 

 

Senior Fatah leader Abbas Zaki

 

Abbas Zaki, a senior Fatah leader and member of its Central Committee, the Palestinian Authority’s ruling political party, said recently that “Israel is doomed to perish.”

This is not an isolated incident; when examined closely, there’s little difference between the future that Fatah and Hamas want. And that is a future where Israel does not exist.

Zaki said this is as part of a Jan. 9 interview with Arabi 21, an Arabic news website based in the United Kingdom: “In the end, the winner is the one who remains on the land … and those who will remain are the ones with the idea, the idea that says there is no escaping the fact that this land will be liberated, and that the land of peace cannot be based on revenge. Israel is doomed to perish.”

There is no ambiguity here. No mistranslation. No context that softens the meaning. This is not the rhetoric of a partner for peace or the language of a movement committed to a peaceful future. It is a declaration of intent—one that mirrors, almost perfectly, the genocidal aims openly proclaimed by Hamas.

But there’s more. Zaki is not a marginal figure in Fatah. Twenty years ago, he served as the top representative to Lebanon for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which at the time was one of the terror group’s most visible and important foreign-affairs posts. He went on to a position in Beijing. Fatah is the dominant faction of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.

Nor was this anywhere near the first time Zaki spoke honestly about his desire to see Israelis and Jews slaughtered. In 2014, he said, “These Israelis have no religion and no principles, they are an advanced instrument of evil,” and “I believe that God will gather them so we can kill them.”

And just days after Hamas led the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, The Times of Israel reported: “In an interview with the Lebanese channel, Fatah’s Abbas Zaki thanked the armed wings of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, responsible for the Oct. 7 onslaught.”

For years, much of the international community has clung to the comforting fiction that Hamas and Fatah are fundamentally different—that Hamas is irredeemably extremist while Fatah, which dominates the P.A., is merely flawed but pragmatic. Zaki’s words expose that illusion. It is really hard to tell what separates Hamas and Fatah.

As uncomfortable as it may be for New York Times pundits and leaders of groups like J Street, who have spent decades heavily invested in the “peace process,” the truth is this: Hamas and Fatah share more in common than what separates them, and chief among their shared goals is the elimination of the Jewish state.

The P.A. and Hamas are partners in terrorism. The past moments of tension between the two terrorist groups reflected either internal disputes unrelated to Israel or arguments over tactics regarding Israel, not differences in their overall goals.

In July 2024, Hamas and Fatah agreed to form a unity government together after the Israel-Hamas war ends, and they issued a joint statement about their commitment to future meetings. The unity pact their representatives signed in Beijing (of all places) made their true motives very clear. Mahmoud Abbas, head of the P.A., has not made any official new statements since Beijing, saying that he will no longer abide by his July 2024 pledge that he would work with Hamas.

That unity agreement should have been a diplomatic earthquake. Instead, it was met with shrugs, rationalizations and willful blindness. Western governments that bankroll the P.A. continue to pretend that Fatah is a moderating force, even as it openly aligns itself with Hamas—the very organization responsible for mass murder, hostage-taking and the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

Consider that the 90-year-old Abbas has also long been given a free pass from the United Nations and others regarding the P.A.’s harboring and protecting of terrorists. The P.A. has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world (more than 60,000 men), largely armed and trained by the United States. Yet instead of using those forces to arrest and extradite terrorists—as the Oslo Accords require—Abbas and friends pay salaries to terrorists and their families, and shelter fugitive terrorists so Israel can’t capture them.

This is not a failure of capacity. It is a failure of will—and, more accurately, a reflection of intent. The P.A. does not arrest terrorists because it does not see them as criminals. It sees them as assets.

That truth became even clearer with the cosmetic rebranding of the notorious “pay-for-slay” system that has rewarded Palestinian Arab terrorism for decades. We were told this system had been reformed. We were told it is now humanitarian, not ideological. This, too, was a lie.

The only way to truly end “pay-for-slay” is for the P.A. to announce that anybody who has engaged in violence against Israel is disqualified from any P.A. payments. That would demonstrate that the entity sincerely rejects terrorism. Anything less is a sham, which is designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community.

Zaki said the quiet part out loud: Israel is “doomed to perish.” Hamas has been saying the same thing for years. The difference is no longer substantive, only stylistic.

It is long past time for the international community to stop rewarding duplicity. Diplomatic recognition of the P.A., financial aid without conditions and the pretense that Abbas represents a peaceful alternative have all failed. They have not moderated P.A. leadership; they have emboldened it.

If words still matter, then Zaki’s utterances must have consequences. Governments that genuinely oppose terrorism and support Israel’s right to exist should immediately suspend diplomatic recognition of the P.A.; cut off funding that enables terrorism; and demand real, verifiable rejection of violence, not empty promises.

The future cannot be built on fantasies. And it certainly cannot be built with partners who openly proclaim that Israel “is doomed to perish.”