About That Rhetoric of Incitement From The 'Merchants of the Palestinian Issue' - by Khaled Abu Toameh

By offending the Gulf states and depicting their residents as backward illiterates, Abbas and the leaders of the Palestinian factions are convincing yet more Arabs to stay as far away from Palestinians as they can. 

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
11 September '20..

Palestinian leaders are continuing to show contempt for other Arabs, including those who for many years provided them with financial and political aid. Some Palestinian leaders are even indirectly inciting their people to carry out terrorist attacks against Gulf countries that engage in normalization with Israel. 

 On September 3, during a videoconference meeting of leaders of several Palestinian factions, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas poured scorn on the Arabs of the Gulf states by hinting that they are illiterate and uneducated. "There are 13 million Palestinians, and they are all educated," Abbas said in a speech he delivered from his office in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians. "We don't have illiteracy like others."  

Mueen Hamed, a representative of As-Sa'iqa, a pro-Syria Palestinian Ba'athist group, is one of several faction leaders who spoke at the conference from Beirut. Hamed, too, mocked the Gulf Arabs. 

Referring to the recent normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, he said:

 "We blame the United Arab Emirates and the [Arab] countries that support it. As our comrades said, the Palestinian people were responsible for the advancement of all the Gulf states from 1948 and until today. Everyone acknowledges that the Palestinian worker is the most active in the Gulf. [The Palestinians] taught them how to read and write and lead." 

 Hamed pointed out that there are 400,000 Palestinians in the UAE "who are capable of changing the society of the Emiratis." "Why shouldn't these Palestinians play a role? 

Why shouldn't the Palestinian factions be in contact with all these Palestinians so they could play an active role in preventing any country from following suit with the United Arab Emirates? The situation is dangerous." 

 The statements of Abbas, Hamed and other Palestinian faction leaders drew strong condemnations from many Gulf Arabs, who denounced the Palestinians as arrogant liars. Many Gulf citizens described the Palestinian leaders as "merchants of the Palestinian issue" and accused them of financial corruption and the embezzlement of public funds. The Arabs also rejected the Palestinian leaders' claim that it was the Palestinians who contributed to the advancement and development of the Gulf states in the past five decades. 

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