PA president Abbas says Israel ‘cannot claim self-defense’

Washington credits Abbas and the P.A. for ‘calm’ in Judea and Samaria despite vicious terror attacks in the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem on Thursday alone.

By JNS

Israel is carrying out a “genocide” and “cannot claim the right to self-defense,” Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas claimed in a statement issued on Wednesday, as a Biden administration official credited Ramallah for keeping the “relative calm” in Judea and Samaria.

“The war of genocide carried out by the Israeli occupying war machine is not self-defense. … whoever commits the crime of aggression and occupation of the land of others cannot claim the right to self-defense,” said Abbas, according to the P.A.’s official Wafa news agency.

“We should all know by now, peace and security can never be achieved by stripping Palestinians of their humanity, or by demonizing them, nor by crushing the skulls of infants, or shedding the blood of children,” added the Palestinian leader, echoing antisemitic tropes.

The inflammatory remarks against the Jewish state, which came as the United Nations marked its International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, stood in stark contrast with the praise Abbas received from Washington hours earlier.

On Wednesday morning, an anonymous Biden administration official praised the P.A. for what the White House characterized as a “relative calm” in Judea and Samaria amid the ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to The Times of Israel.

The U.S. official pointed to efforts by Abbas’s security forces to combat terrorism and maintain stability in the disputed territory despite “difficult conditions” aggravated by “rising settler violence,” the report said.

On Thursday afternoon, two Israel Defense Forces reservists were lightly wounded in a car-ramming attack near Moshav Beka’ot in the Jordan Valley in Judea and Samaria. Israeli forces killed the Palestinian terrorist.

During a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv earlier on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged the government in Jerusalem to take “immediate steps to hold settler extremists accountable for violence against Palestinian civilians.”

While the Biden administration has repeatedly denounced Jews in Judea and Samaria for “taking the law into their own hands” during the war against Hamas, official Israel Police statistics point to a drastic decrease in the cases of illegal activity by Israelis beyond the Green Line.