In the Biden administration's long string of confounding policies and pronouncements regarding Israel as the Jewish state fights to defeat multiple terrorist threats from Iran-backed extremists, there's more reason to wonder how far down the pit of inanity senior officials will go. On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a call with Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) that supposedly governs the West Bank. Following the call, the Department of State released a readout of the conversation between America's top diplomat and the aging PA leader (emphasis added):
Secretary Blinken reiterated that the United States looks forward to working with the new PA cabinet to promote peace, security, and prosperity and urged the implementation of necessary reforms. Secretary Blinken emphasized that a revitalized PA is essential to delivering results for the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza...The Secretary also underscored the U.S. commitment to the realization of the creation of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel.
In President Biden and his administration's insistence that a "two-state solution" must be reached, officials still have yet to explain which of the cadre of violently anti-Jewish and anti-Israel leaders in the region ought to be handed the keys to an "independent Palestinian state" Biden and Blinken seek to create.
In the Gaza Strip, the fruits of a Palestinian state run by Iran-backed Hamas terrorists following Israel's withdrawal from the enclave were made clear on October 7. On the other side of the country, things in the West Bank are not trending in a better direction under the Palestinian Authority and President Abbas, both of which are exceedingly failing to prove any ability to exert governing control or prevent terrorist attacks on Israel.
In the last month, three terrorist attacks — injuring and killing innocent Israelis — were carried out by current or former members of the Palestinian Authority's "security" forces. The attacks saw PA-tied individuals launch assaults on school buses, civilians fueling their cars, and Israeli soldiers traveling in their country.
Terrorists Connected to Palestinian Security Forces Carry Out Third Attack Within a Month
— FDD (@FDD) March 31, 2024
New @FDD analysis from @EKrivine and @JoeTruzman:https://t.co/qmAgATBipf
Multiple reports in recent years have documented how the Palestinian Authority President Abbas' ruling party refers to its officers terrorists as "martyrs" when they're killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis while "PA security force members moonlight as terrorists, with the PA and Fatah promoting their members’ participation in terrorism against Israel," according to one of the analyses highlighted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in new analysis out this week. "The terror involvement is not presented by the PA and Fatah as unfortunate exceptions, but rather as the heroic norm," the report explains. "The officers involved are not ostracized, but rather are honored and given military funerals."
This same PA is the one Secretary Blinken now "looks forward to working with...to promote peace" while casually alluding to "necessary reforms." He could have called out the PA's failing control and the ruling party's encouragement of terrorist activity against Israel, but Blinken, notably, did not.
"As the legitimacy of the government in Ramallah continues to deteriorate, so has the discipline of the Palestinian security forces," observed Enia Krivine, the senior director of FDD's Israel Program and National Security Network. "Mahmoud Abbas has lost control of pockets of territory of the West Bank, which have devolved into hotbeds of terror, and alarming numbers of his own security forces have turned their weapons on Israelis," she emphasized.
Joe Truzman, senior research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal and an expert who tracks West Bank militancy meticulously, noted that the recent "attacks by Palestinian Authority security forces are not an isolated incident but rather a disturbing trend that has been slowly unfolding since the surge in violence in the West Bank in 2021."
"These incidents not only highlight the escalating turmoil in the region but also underscore the erosion of the Palestinian Authority’s control over both the northern West Bank and its security forces," Truzman added.
In short, the PA cannot be reformed or "revitalized," as Blinken urged to its president on Monday. The governing body is barely holding on to control, supports killing innocent Israelis, and a senior leader in Abbas' party responded to Hamas barbaric October 7 massacre by glowingly calling the terrorist group part of Palestinian "political and social fabric." In addition, the Palestinian Authority has long engaged in "pay-for-slay" in which terrorists' families are given financial rewards when their relatives are imprisoned or "martyred" while carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel.
The PA has proven it is increasingly unable to provide any "security assurances" to Israel and instead showed quite the opposite. Seeking to make the PA — which already required regular Israeli intervention to prevent terrorist attacks originating from the West Bank — a controlling party of an "independent Palestinian state" is a fool's errand — and Israel should not be forced to face such a ludicrous proposal for supposed coexistence with a state run by and filled with individuals hell-bent on its violent destruction.