Since becoming prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in 2019, Mohammad Shtayyeh has gone from bad to worse; from a brake on peacemaking efforts to an active saboteur of any cooperation with Israel; from a minor Palestinian propagandist to a major, malicious defamer of Israel.
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Shttayeh is the father figure of the Palestinian "no cooperation with Israel" policy. He tells every international interlocutor that he wants complete Palestinian economic disengagement from Israel. No cooperation and no integration.
For example, this means no PA cooperation with Israel in critical infrastructure matters like water management and sewage disposal. As a result, tens of thousands of tons of Palestinian waste flow freely every month into the streams and valleys of Judea and Samaria, seeping into and polluting the underground mountain aquifers.
And how to explain the PA's continuing dire economic straits, even though Shtayyeh was brought in four years ago (as an economist, former economic development minister, and Islamic Bank governor) to help reform and repair the situation?
Well, Shtayyeh has a pat and ready answer to this: It is Israel's fault. The "occupation" prevents the growth of the Palestinian economy. According to Mohammad Shtayyeh, you see, the PA's dire economic straits have nothing to do with endemic corruption, massive waste, kleptocratic and pigheaded economic policies (such as non-cooperation with Israel), and so forth.
Shtayyeh also alleges that Israel "steals" PA funds. Israel "loots" the Palestinian Authority, he told a recent delegation of students from Harvard University. By stealing and looting Shtayyeh means that Israel "arrogantly" deducts from PA customs duties the amount of money that the PA pays to the families of Palestinian terrorists – payments widely referred to as "pay-for-slay."
In fact, Shtayyeh consistently glorifies and praises Palestinian terrorist attacks and the activities of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. As far as I can tell, Shtayyeh never has condemned terrorist attacks in which Israelis were killed!
He exploits every possible opportunity to stress that despite the PA's economic distress, it will continue giving financial support to the families of Palestinian prisoners and of those killed while carrying out terrorist attacks. (Shtayyeh's pay scale rewards the most heinous acts of terrorism with larger disbursements.)
For example, in April Shtayyeh visited the home of Umm Nasser Abu Hamid. One of her sons murdered an IDF soldier in the al-Am'ari refugee camp in Ramallah by throwing a marble slab on his head from a rooftop. Five of her other sons are serving prison terms in Israel for involvement in terrorist attacks. Shtayyeh called her a role model.
According to a horrifying profile of Shtayyeh published last week by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Shtayyeh's anti-Israeli rhetoric has become ever more malevolent and extreme, year by year.
Shtayyeh's standard and default discourse is now that Israel is an "apartheid country," and a "state that carries out daily war crimes." In many instances, he does not use the word "Israel," but rather the derogatory terms "the occupation" or "Zionist forces."
Another one of Shtayyeh's favorite calumnies is the demand for so-called Palestinian "right of return to all Palestinian towns taken from us in 1948."
"There are 6.4 million refugees waiting for the right of return," he constantly reminds foreign ambassadors and other dignitaries. "We will remain committed and loyal to our principles including the full right of return," Shtayyeh said on "Nakba Day" last week. "We will continue to fight for them until they are all accomplished."
"Fighting," in fact, is one of Shtayyeh's much-loved words. He is out to "fight and defeat" Israel, not to lead his people into a negotiated compromise peace with Israel. Certainly not to join the Abraham Accords bandwagon and advance a discourse of reconciliation and understanding. And certainly not to do anything to improve quality of life for the average Palestinian.
(By average, I mean any Palestinian not connected by privilege to the teats of the crooked Palestinian government that Shtayyeh heads.)
Those of us who pray for maturity and moderation in the Palestinian national movement, and for compassion and compromise in Israeli-Palestinian affairs, must hope that Mohammad Shtayyeh is sidelined, the sooner the better. Naturally, that goes for his octogenarian colleague-in-crime, Mahmoud Abbas, too.
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