The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized the Obama Administration for its refusal to condemn or to explain that severe consequences will follow the unity government agreement reached last week between Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) and the terrorist organization Hamas. Hamas calls in its Charter for the destruction of Israel (Article 15) and the murder of Jews (Article 7), and has launched over 10,000 missiles on Israeli civilians. President Obama should have made clear, as U.S. law requires, that this alliance ends the possibility of a further $500 million in aid to the PA or continued negotiations – ending any possibility of a deal leading to genuine peace.
Put simply, the Fatah/Hamas agreement is a vicious alliance that clearly indicates that Abbas and the Fatah/PA have no qualms at uniting in government with a genocidal terrorist organization. Yet, the Obama Administration has not condemned or penalized the PA but, on the contrary, refused to condemn it. In fact, as former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Zalman Shoval, has observed, “U.S. officials have said that the Administration does not oppose the Doha declaration [the Fatah/PA/Hamas alliance]” (Zalman Shoval, ‘Is the US moving closer to Hamas?,’ Israel Hayom, February 15, 2012).
State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said on February 6, “questions of Palestinian reconciliation are an internal matter for Palestinians … we are not going to give a grade to this thing until we have a chance to talk to Palestinian Authority leaders about the implications… We want to talk to the Palestinian Authority about what this might mean” (‘Daily Press Briefing,’ February 6, 2012). And on February 7, Ms. Nuland said, “we’ve seen these reports about what happened in Doha … I think our view is that we wait to see whether this arrangement will actually be implemented, whether it will actually change anything. At the moment, the fundamentals have not changed, which is that Abbas remains the president, Fayyad remains the prime minister. That has been important for this process” (‘Daily Press Briefing,’ February 7, 2012).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “Despite the passage of several days since the Fatah/Hamas agreement, President Obama has not condemned it. This means he expressed no criticism of the PA reaching an agreement with a U.S. recognized terrorist organization that calls for the worldwide murder of Jews. He did not state that consequences would flow for the PA, that further U.S. aid would be ended, that no further negotiations and diplomatic support for the PA would be forthcoming. This failure is deeply troubling.
“Instead, it was left to a State Department official to say that the Administration takes no position on internal ‘reconciliation’ between Palestinian factions, that ‘the fundamentals have not changed’ and that it wants to look at ‘the implications.’
“Hamas is not merely a Palestinian faction. It is a genocidal terrorist organization. The clear implication of the PA reaching a unity agreement with Hamas is that it has no qualms at uniting in government with a genocidal terrorist organization and is clearly not interested in a genuine peace with Israel.
“President Obama is duty-bound to condemn this development and penalize the PA. He has done neither.”