Palestinian Authority Leaders Hail October 7

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The Palestinian Authority likes to present itself as the “moderate” representative of the “Palestinian people,” in stark contrast to the terrorists of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. But the Palestinian Authority continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on its “Pay-For-Slay” program, which provides generous stipends to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of terrorists who died while conducting their attacks. In this way, the “moderate” PA both rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorism.

Now the senior religious adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, has clearly explained that what the civilized world sees as atrocities — the torture, rape, mutilation, and murder of 1,200 people — he sees, as do almost all Palestinians, as “legitimate resistance.” The only objectionable aspect of that Hamas attack on October 7 in his view is not moral, but practical — too many Palestinians were killed by the IDF in the aftermath. Robert Spencer wrote about this here, and more on his view, endorsing mass murder of Israelis but deploring the subsequent deaths of Palestinians, can be found here: “Abbas’ advisor: Oct. 7 massacre was ‘legitimate resistance,’” by Itamar Marcus, Palestinian Media Watch, March 30, 2025:

One of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ top aides, his Advisor on Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash, still celebrates Hamas’ massacre and slaughter of over 1,100 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023 as “legitimate resistance.” To be sure he is not misunderstood, he uses the word “legitimate” five times in reference to the Oct. 7 massacre.

Al-Habbash then adds that the only problem with Oct. 7 is the “catastrophic consequences” of 60,000 killed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which makes “what Hamas carried out illegitimate”:

Al-Habbash: “What happened on Oct. 7, [2023,] what Hamas carried out on Oct. 7 (i.e., Hamas’ massacre and atrocities), I start from the assumption that resistance is legitimate. We agreed from the start that the resistance is legitimate, and no one can dispute the legitimacy of the resistance… What happened on Oct. 7 is a legitimate thing, okay? It’s legitimate, but its consequences? …60,000 people were killed, 150,000 were wounded, and 90% of the Gaza Strip was destroyed. This makes the thing illegitimate. Therefore, what Hamas carried out in terms of its consequences is illegitimate because it led to catastrophic consequences.”

[PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash, YouTube channel, March 11, 2025]…

Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, made clear in 2010 that the Palestinians are too weak to fight alone, but would happily join a pan-Arab force, coming in the rear:

Abbas: “We tried the [second] Intifada (i.e., PA terror campaign 2000-2005, more than 1,100 Israelis murdered) in 2000, and it destroyed everything that we had built. If the Arabs would want to fight, we’d be the first to fight. I told them at the [Arab] Summit in Sirt [Libya]: ‘If you want war, take the lead.’ It’s not possible for us [Palestinians] to go ahead alone; they must be first, with us behind them.”

[Al-Ayyam, independent Palestinian newspaper, Sept. 6, 2010]…

Fatah Spokesman Iyad Abu Zneit: “If Israel could have not left any Palestinian alive in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip since 1967, it would have done so. Israel is always waiting for [Palestinian] mistakes. For example, after Oct. 7, [2023,] Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and carried out this destruction in the Gaza Strip. If Oct. 7 hadn’t happened, this wouldn’t have happened.”

[Al-Hadath TV, YouTube channel, March 19, 2025]

What is Iyad Abu Zneit talking about? Had the Israelis wanted to, after the Jewish state’s victory in the Six-Day War, they might have pressured, or even forced, the Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria to leave. But the proof that they did no such thing is this: in 1967, when Israel took over Gaza, there were 400,000 Palestinians in the Strip. By 2005, when Israel pulled out all of its civilians and soldiers from Gaza, the Palestinian population had more than tripled, to 1.3 million. In Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank), the Palestinians numbered 900,000 in 1967, when Israel took it over, and now they number three million. Not only did Israel not force any Palestinians out of the territories it won in 1967, but under benign Israeli rule, and with access to advanced medical care, the Palestinian population in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria skyrocketed.

Notice that like the PA’s religious affairs adviser Mahmoud Al-Habbash, the Fatah Spokesman Iyad Abu Zneit has not the slightest moral qualms about the October 7 attack by Hamas. Mass rape, killing babies, tying families together with wire and burning them alive, slicing off the breasts of women, while cutting off the genitalia, and gouging out the eyes of male victims while they were still alive — to all of that, just like Al-Habbash, Abu Zneit has no objection. But he thinks the October 7 attack was ill-advised, because it provided Israel with all the excuse it needed to respond with overwhelming force, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans and the destruction of so much of the Strip’s infrastructure. And that is his only objection to the Hamas atrocities.

The next time some foreign policy maven assures you that the Palestinian Authority is run by “moderates,” “the kind of people Israel can deal with,” and who “deserve a state of their own,” then patiently explain to them that those “moderates” have never expressed a moral objection to even the worst atrocities committed by Palestinian terrorists, but only criticized them for being counterproductive.