The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has renewed its calls for the termination of all U.S. aid to Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) following outrageous, brazen PA statements claiming that the hundreds of many billions of dollars that it has received over the years in U.S. aid is a “right” which the U.S. is obligated to provide. This week, Fatah spokesman Faiz Abu Aytah declared, “There is a moral and human obligation which rests with some of the donor countries, including the American administration, since they are morally responsible for the human tragedy which has befallen the Palestinian people since the Nakba [ZOA: “Catastrophe” – the name given by Palestinians and other Arabs to their unsuccessful aggression aimed at destroying Israel in embryo in 1948 which gave rise to the flight of Palestinian refugees].” Also, the official PA daily reported that Fatah said, “We are opposed to blackmail by the American Congress; the aid is a political and moral right … The Fatah movement viewed the decision by Congress to withhold the transfer of aid funds to the PA as political blackmail and bias in favor of the Israeli occupation state” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, October 3, 2011).

The PA’s outburst demanding U.S. aid sits curiously with its past mocking of U.S. aid. In February, PA prime minister Salaam Fayyad, “We did not agree, and will not agree, to extortion, and our people will never agree to that. We are not interested in the first place in receiving assistance from any source that threatens to halt its aid for political reasons” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, February 21, 2011). Fayyad also said, “We have never referred to this [US] aid as a replacement for our legitimate aspiration to achieve all our national rights. Absolutely [not]. Because our national rights are not for sale or trade for a handful of [American] dollars.” (PA TV (Fatah), February 22, 2011). Also, in January, Abbas spoke proudly of defying U.S. wishes, “The US is assisting us in the amount of $460 million annually. This does not mean that they dictate to us whatever they want. I recall that they [the U.S.] said, ‘Don’t go to the Arab Summit in Damascus,’ but we went. They demanded that we should not sign the Egyptian reconciliation document [between Fatah and Hamas], but we sent Azzam Al-Ahmed to sign it.” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, January. 24, 2011).

A Palestinian youth group, Independent Youth Activity, has also claimed that U.S. aid is unwanted and damaging. “The Youth Activity [group] said that this funding is leading to perpetuation of backwardness, increased dependence, the consolidation of [American] hegemony and a weakening of the struggle, since it causes and seeks distortion of consciousness and perceptions, by creating a limbo which they [America] claim represents development, while in fact it is nothing but a bridge to normalization with the enemy (i.e., Israel)” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, September 11, 2011).

Also, in February, Palestinian municipalities decided to boycott the U.S. and reject U.S. financial assistance. Hatem Abd Al-Qader, who holds Fatah’s Jerusalem portfolio, explained that they would not be “humiliated” by receiving what he dismissed as “a bit of aid” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, February 24, 2011) while the director of the Palestinian National Theater, Kamal Al-Basha,  bragged earlier this year that, in a production by the company, he had “inserted a political statement against America with American money” (PA TV (Fatah), July 6 and September 15, 2011, all translations from ‘PA: US funding freeze is “blackmail” and “collective punishment,”’ Palestinian Media Watch bulletin, October 5, 2011).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The PA’s outburst demanding U.S. aid as right and, indeed, as a form of reparations for the U.S. having supported the creation of Israel in 1948 underscores the PA rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, something which PA leaders in any case openly state all the time.

“Additionally, if Israel’s establishment is something for which those who supported it owe Palestinians reparations, then the PA has clearly not disavowed the goal of Israel’s destruction or acknowledged Palestinian responsibility, by their original aggression in 1948, for turning hundreds of thousands of their own people into refugees.

“We didn’t need these statements to know that Palestinian seek to destroy Israel and therefore refuse to accept its existence as a Jewish state. However, how much more evidence of vicious Palestinian intentions and cynical, vicious, anti-peace behavior by the PA is required before President Barak Obama stops munificently providing unprecedented sums of U.S. taxpayer-funded aid to an undeserving, terrorist-supporting, terrorist-glorifying anti-American regime? The U.S. Congress understands the problem. When will President Obama?”