The Palestinian Media Watch watchdog organization highlighted in a report several recent instances in which Fatah officials blame the US - and in some cases Israel - for weakening the Arab states.
“What was called the Arab Spring, was really a destructive winter for the economic and social Arab reality, and an internal weakening of the internal ethnic unity and that which is connected to the religious streams,” said Fatah Revolutionary Council member Rifat Shanaah on a PA TV program on June 25. “All of this was American and external handiwork, the goal of which was to destroy the Arab states so that all of them would be weak, accept orders, and not have advanced national positions to support the Palestinian cause."
Similarly, in a June 15 op-ed penned by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the columnist compares Hamas’ takeover of Gaza to the Arab Spring:
"[Hamas'] coup [in Gaza] was prepared in advance according to a clear goal and agenda, and for the interests of the Israeli and American enemy and the opposing revolutionary forces in the Arab homeland and the region,” Al-Ghoul wrote. “The coup was tantamount to the spearhead of the so-called Spring of Arab Revolutions, and the engine of acts of destruction within the states and peoples of the Arab nation.”
On the same day, Fatah Central Committee member Azzam Al-Ahmad wrote in a separate piece in the same paper that, "The attempts to spread terror in the Arab region under the cover of the so-called Arab Spring have proven that it was an Israel-American arid summer meant to destroy and divide the Arab states."
PMW regularly translates Arab writing and TV programs to help expose PA libel about the US and Israel.