New York – For the past week, Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas has been partially paying the salaries of 3,000 members of Hamas’ so called Executive Force, an armed terrorist group created by Hamas in May. Hamas, which calls in its Charter for Israel ‘s destruction (Article 15) and the murder of Jews (Article 7) and which won Palestinian legislative elections in January, has not received direct Western aid because of its refusal to formally accept Israel’s existence, renounce the use of terrorism and accept previous signed agreements with Israel. As recently as last weekend, Hamas/PA prime minister Ismail Haniyeh declared at a rally, “I tell you with all honesty, we will not recognize Israel, we will not recognize Israel, we will not recognize Israel” ( Washington Post, October 11, 2006). Abbas, who claims before Western audiences that he recognizes Israel, said in a television interview only a few days ago that “Hamas is not required to recognize Israel… It is not required of Hamas, or of Fatah, or of the Popular Front to recognize Israel” ( Al-Arabiya [Dubai] and PA TV, October 3).

In the five months since it was created, Hamas’ Executive Force has nearly doubled in size from 3,000 armed men in May to a 5,600 strong force today. It is composed mostly of members of Hamas’ Iz el-Din al-Qassem Brigades, which has carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings against Israeli civilians since the start of the Palestinian terrorist campaign in September 2000 ( Reuters, October 6). Both Abbas’ Fatah and Hamas have been equally involved in the Palestinian campaign of terrorism. Fatah terrorists have killed 405 Israelis between September 2000 and December 2005, while Hamas has killed 442 Israelis in the same period.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “Mahmoud Abbas has demonstrated yet again that promoting, funding and assisting terrorists is his stock in trade. It is instructive that even as reports indicate tension and rivalry between Abbas’ Fatah and Hamas, it is clear that Abbas has no real problem with Hamas’ agenda, as he is even willing to pay the salaries of Hamas terrorists, not merely his own. Neither Fatah nor Hamas recognize or accept Israel — both Fatah and Hamas call for its destruction in their respective Charters.

“The claim that Mahmoud Abbas is some sort of moderate is absurd — he has never even revised the Charter of his own Fatah party, let alone provided moderate and courageous leadership. The PA under both Arafat in the past and Abbas now has never fulfilled its commitments under successive signed agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan to fight, arrest, extradite and jail terrorists and confiscate their weaponry and end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that feeds it. On the contrary, anti-Semitic theories are propagated and terrorism glorified in the PA, PA maps, atlases and textbooks do not even display a country called Israel and streets, schools and sports teams are named after suicide bombers. Abbas himself has said of Palestinian terrorists that “Israel calls them terrorists, we call them strugglers” (Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2004) and further described them as “heroes fighting for freedom” ( The Age [Melbourne], January 3, 2005). When asked by President Bush at the Aqaba summit last year to state publicly that he accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, Abbas refused to do so. Abbas is a man who not only co-founded Fatah with Yasser Arafat and served as his deputy for 40 years, but also funded the Munich massacre and wrote a PhD thesis and book denying the Holocaust.

“The news that Abbas himself is actually funding Hamas terrorists, who are internationally recognized as terrorists, ought to put an end to the fiction that Abbas and his PA are something other than a terrorist-supporting regime. The ZOA renews its recent call upon the Bush Administration to recognize the cynical duplicity of Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah and the PA and end all relations with the PA and Mahmoud Abbas