The West has helped Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas keep the Palestinian people “hostage,” Fatah political leader and president of the Jerusalem Development Fund Samer Sinijlawi told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
“I don’t have any hard feelings towards Israelis, none. I have lots of hard feelings towards the West that keeps seeing us [Palestinians] as not 100% human beings who deserve democracy and internal human rights and keeps endorsing and embracing a leader who has been proving that he is a burden on his people for years,” he commented, referencing the 91-year-old president who has held his position for 21 years.
Despite his anger at Western countries reinforcing Abbas’s control over the West Bank and sometimes even suggesting that control should expand to the Gaza Strip, Sinijlawi spoke with the Post after returning from Britain, where he took the unusual step of speaking with several Jewish and Zionist groups.
Though he had once held a lot of anger towards Israelis, even throwing stones at them during the First Intifada, Sinijlawi described how his ideology shifted during his five-year detention, a shift he thinks Palestinian society should make.
Like many held in Israeli prisons, including assassinated former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, he learned to speak Hebrew during the five-year sentence he served for his stone-throwing activities.
Unlike the others, he learned the Israeli perspective on the Jewish-Palestinian conflict and understood, “This conflict now is not an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a conflict between the moderates on both sides against the radicals.”
The radicals, he said, have dominated Palestinian and Israeli politics, leaving thousands of Palestinians to pay the toll for their extremism.
“Moderate sometimes means a responsibility towards everybody, because if I have a moderate, pragmatic plan that will work, it will benefit even the Palestinian who does not believe in it. So I am a mainstream Palestinian politician,” he explained.
“All my life, I have been a Fatah activist. I am now the voice of opposition.”
Current Palestinian leadership 'tired' and a losing battle
Calling for the establishment of a new Palestinian Liberal Democratic Party, Sinijlawi asserted there was an entire generation that had come to realize that reforming the Palestinian Authority was a losing battle and only a significant refresh to the tired leadership could bring Palestinian prosperity.
“That’s why we have mobilized ourselves in a movement that has participated in local elections and succeeded in the local elections, and this could be the basis, the starting point for a new Palestinian Liberal Democratic Party that believes in democracy, in respecting the rights of Palestinians, and the right to participate in political life,” he continued.
Part of this dramatic change would mean direct dialogue with Israel and a recognition that Palestinian freedom depends on Israeli security.
“The only way to achieve things with Israelis is to try to convince them, touch their hearts and minds, and make them see that we are a qualified partner to achieve a solution for this conflict. And the solution is so, so simple,” he highlighted.
“It’s security on one side and freedom on the other side.”
Simple though the solution may be, Sinijlawi said it was lost on Abbas, who was more focused on creating a succession plan for his son.
Yasser Abbas, a 64-year-old millionaire who runs tobacco and contracting firms in the West Bank, is expected to seek one of 18 seats on Fatah’s Central Committee that are being contested during a party conference in Ramallah from May 14-16, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
He has also participated in several high-ranking meetings in recent months, including with bodies representing Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons.
While Abbas may be hopeful his son will follow in his footsteps, critics say allegations that he used public funds to expand his businesses are a sign that Fatah is not serious about rooting out the corruption it has long been criticized for enabling.
“He wants to create a Palestinian Abbas kingdom where his son is a continuation of his unproven legacy. This is not a person that I can consider moderate,” Sinijlawi quipped.
Separate from the issue of Israel, Abbas’s presidency has seen a devastated Palestinian economy.
Schools in the West Bank are open only three days a week, state employees have received only 80% of their pay since 2022, and hospitals began striking only weeks ago after medical staff received only a fraction of their normal pay.
While all these financial issues have created a significant burden on Palestinian households, the PA has continued making payments to terrorists and their families.
The issue of pay-for-slay payments is “a very symbolic issue,” Sinijlawi commented.
Explaining the payments were a “mistake,” he claimed Abbas made promises he couldn’t deliver on and is now caught between angering the international community and the Palestinian apparatus with conflicting promises.
“I think what could be done is that a Palestinian leadership could say, ‘From today on, we are not paying anything. So we are totally against any violence. Those who would like to resort to violence, it’s up to them.’
“We don’t have any national duty, but most of the people in prison were instructed by Fatah, [and] were mobilized by Fatah to do whatever they have done. So that’s why there is a contradiction about being able to implement that policy or not,” he continued.
While educators and healthcare workers have had to settle for a fraction of their pay and reduced working hours, the PA has continued spending 35% of the national budget on security forces so that there is now one law enforcement officer for every 49 civilians.
Sinijlawi noted that such ratios are not seen in successful economies.
There is little trust in Abbas, as “there is a lot of contradiction in what he says and what he does,” he continued, exemplifying that his security coordination with Israel is done privately, leading Palestinians to view him as disloyal.
“He does not create public support for his steps because he does not explain that if we, as Palestinians, did not place the Israeli security at the basis of our national strategy, we would not proceed. And we do it not because we are doing them a favor, but we do it because it is the only way to achieve our national interest.”
“You cannot promote the two-state solution and deny the historical rights of Jews in this land,” he asserted.
Abbas has long denied the connection between Jews and Israel, claiming instead that they come from the Khazar Empire and that ancient temples tying the Jewish people to Jerusalem are actually in Yemen.
Behind the corruption, dictatorship, and continued extremist narrative pushed by Abbas is a Western world too willing to accept the Palestinian Authority for what it is as the best-case scenario, said Sinijlawi.
Referencing the European Union’s condemnation of antisemitism in PA textbooks earlier this week, Sinijlawi noted that Western leaders were ignoring the root of extremism.
“Even if you change the textbooks, they are calling the wrong shots. You can change the textbooks. So what? Who can change the discussion in the classroom? Nobody,” he said.
“It’s not only the textbooks. It is the narrative that this leadership is continuing to push and does not have the guts to tell the Palestinian people that we should think differently…
“How can this leader be seen as the savior of the Palestinians by these leaders all over the world that are still doing business with him, betraying Palestinian democracy, betraying my generation, the majority of Palestinians?
“You cannot continue giving this 91-year-old the absolute power to determine our destiny, because he has been doing a very bad job for 21 years,” he asserted.
“It is proven day after day in everything, in all aspects: economy, education, health care, infrastructure, respect and dignity for the Palestinians, freedom of speech, the dynamics of relations with Israel, the dynamics of relations with the Arab countries, and the dynamics of relations with the Americans.”
Sinijlawi said that the Palestinian local elections held last month were a sign that European fears of a repeat of the 2007 Hamas takeover in Gaza were unfounded. He noted that 53% of the Palestinian population voted, and an additional 25% likely chose not to participate as a sign of political apathy, not because they were part of a Hamas or PIJ-backed boycott.
With such promising results in local elections, Sinijlawi said there was no legitimate reason that the Palestinian people couldn’t vote in presidential elections.
“The Palestinian people are fed up with the options, whether it was Hamas that brought upon them destruction or Abbas that brought upon them corruption,” he continued.
“We need to release the Palestinians from being hostages for 21 years over the results of elections that brought Hamas to power, because all the circumstances have changed. Two generations have already passed.”
Offering words of warning, Sinijlawi said political change would come, and if Western powers couldn’t prove they valued the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people over maintaining the political status quo, the future Palestinian leaders would disqualify them from having any say in the region.