Palestinian ‘Pragmatist’ Asserts Extremist Goals

A high-ranking Fatah leader, Abbas Zaki, has claimed that the United States is responsible for the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria terror movement. ISIS, also known as ISIL, Islamic State (IS) or Daesh, has overrun large portions of Syria and Iraq, murdering thousands, in the past year.

Zaki told Syrian News TV in a June 2, 2015 interview, “They [the U.S.] created IS, but cannot control it.” Zaki—a close associate of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—also claimed, “the U.S. is destroying itself by its own hand” as a result of its purported creation of the terrorist group. Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) highlighted Zaki’s interview.

Zaki—as CAMERA has noted—was one of 14 new members of the Fatah Central Committee called “more pragmatic than their predecessors” by The New York Times in April, 2009.

The U.S. did not, of course, create ISIS. The terrorist group—an offshoot of Al Qaeda—originated as the group
Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad in 2000, according to Aaron Zellin a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

A history of Zaki’s statements reveal not just conspiratorial, but also violent and antisemitic thinking. According to MEMRI, Zaki has asserted “those Israelis have no religion and no principles. They are nothing but advanced tools for evil. They talk about the Holocaust and so on. So why are they doing this to us? Therefore, in my view, Allah will gather them so that we can kill them. Every killer is bound to be killed. There is no other option. …”

Dispossession if not genocide of the Jews of Israel—though the former without the latter is virtually impossible to imagine—which he has referred to as “the inspiring idea,” long has been part of Zaki’s thinking, as CAMERA has noted. In 2008, Zaki advocated Yasser Arafat’s 1974 “phased plan” to destroy the Jewish state: “Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them [the Jews] out of all of Palestine.”

The Fatah leader’s conception of pragmatism was on full display in a Sept. 23, 2011 Al Jazeera broadcast in which he admonished, “If one says that one wants to wipe Israel out…C’mon, it’s too difficult. It’s not [acceptable] policy to say so. Don’t say these things to the world. Keep it to yourself.”

Zaki the rejectionist here lives up to The New York Times’ definition of a “pragmatic” Palestinian leader: Highly immoderate, he advises expedient discretion in pursuit of extremist goals.–Sean Durns