In response to the U.S.-led Bahrain Workshop, Abbas’ Fatah Movement is calling for violence against Israel on the exact days the conference is being held.
By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch
As part of their opposition to the U.S.-led conference in Bahrain next week, Palestinian leaders and faction representatives “emphasized that the ‘Bahrain workshop’ will be tantamount to a holocaust for the Arab principles and Palestinian rights,” reported the Al-Quds media outlet.
An event has been planned to oppose the conference, referring to President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century” as “The Holocaust of the Century.”
In response to the Bahrain Conference, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Movement is calling for violence against Israel on the specific days the conference is taking place.
Fatah posted an image of a masked Palestinian about to throw a rock, and text urging Palestinians to “escalate confrontations” as a “sign of opposition to the deal of the century and the workshop in Manama.”
Since the announcement of the U.S.-led conference in Bahrain next week, which is to focus on economic investment in the PA as part of Trump’s Middle East peace plan, the PA has refused to participate and called on Arab states to boycott the conference.
Similarly, Fatah Revolutionary Council Secretary Majed Al-Fatiani said that his organization “is committed to leading the struggle to stop the great plot that is being woven against our people.” He implicitly threatened violence, claiming Palestinians would use “all means” available to confront Israelis, the traditional Palestinian euphemism for terror.
Last week, Al-Fatiani told the Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, “Palestine is not for sale and Jerusalem is not up for negotiation, and our national rights and sacrifice throughout our history are not up for negotiation. The Palestinian people is not too helpless to use its means in order to stop the great plot. The cover given to the occupation from here and there will push our Palestinian people to protect its rights by all means available to it, in order to defeat the occupation and the settlement.”
The Al-Hayat Al-Jadida report continued, “[Al-Fatiani] explained that the Revolutionary Council has a plan to deal with these challenges, and called on ‘the Fatah members and the vital forces on the Palestinian lands to [dedicate] the 24th, 25th, and 26th [of June] to Palestine and Jerusalem, in order to express their rejection of the Bahrain Conference.’”
‘The Holocaust of the Century in Bahrain’?
PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh commented, “On behalf of the martyrs, wounded, prisoners, and their family members, we say that the Manama Conference will be stillborn. I salute all parts of the Palestinian private sector – from Gaza to the West Bank – that have refused to participate in this conspiracy against our people,” reported Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.
Shtayyeh reportedly told German Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Niels Annen, “Our opposition to the Deal of the Century stems from the fact that Trump’s administration transferred the [U.S.] embassy to Jerusalem, closed the PLO offices in Washington, and is waging an economic war that includes drying up the monetary resources of UNRWA – so how it is possible to agree to this deal, while the steps he has implemented on the ground are worse than the expected phrasing of the Deal of the Century?”
Shtayyeh added, “How can the Trump administration, which is waging an economic and political war against the PLO, organize the Manama Conference and claim that it is meant to improve the economic situation of the Palestinians?”
Among others, member of Fatah’s Central Committee Abbas Zaki, and PLO Central Council member Omar Shehadeh participated in a meeting entitled “The Holocaust of the Century in Bahrain: Signs, Consequences, and Ways to Deal With It.”
Palestinian leaders present called the Bahrain Conference “a holocaust for the basic Arab principles and the Palestinians’ rights,” while the director of the meeting dubbed Trump’s “Deal of the Century” “the Zionist-American Holocaust of the century” and alleged that the Bahrain Conference only pretends to seek economic prosperity for Palestinians but in reality is a cover for creating “normalization” with the Arab states.
The PLO also called on everyone invited to the Bahrain Conference to refrain from participating.
