Why the Arabs Are Fed Up With the Palestinians

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning Arab journalist, based in Jerusalem. For years he has been scathingly critical of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders, and now he notes, with grim satisfaction, that the Arab states have stopped their financial support for both Palestinian groups. His report can be found here: “Why Arabs Are Fed up With the Palestinians,” by Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, July 12, 2022. Khaled Abu Toameh writes:

• The Palestinians can only blame themselves for antagonizing their Arab brothers and consequently losing the Arab money. The Palestinians have been spitting in the face of the Arab countries, while at the same time expecting these countries to continue funding them.
• The Arabs are clearly not as naïve as the Americans and Europeans, who are continuing to pour millions of dollars annually on the Palestinians without conditions and without demanding accountability.
• Had the Palestinians welcomed the many peace accords between Israel and the Arab states instead of condemning them and bad-mouthing the Arab leaders, they would have been in a much better situation today. They would have continued to receive financial aid from the Arabs and been able to use this money to build a better future for their children
• The Arab countries have more urgent issues to deal with than the corrupt, thankless Palestinian leaders do. You can start with the welfare of their own people. The Palestinian leadership, by contrast, is happy to fail its people by indoctrinating generation after generation with bloodlust for Jews. When Palestinian society finds itself left in the global dust of progress, it can thank its leaders for bringing them to that sorry pass.

The Palestinians are disappointed: their Arab brothers have stopped providing them with financial aid. The truth is that most of the Arab countries long ago turned their backs on the Palestinians. They can only blame themselves for ruining their relations with the rest of the Arab world.

All the Arab countries, save Algeria, have now ended their financial aid to the Palestinians, aid which once amounted to many hundreds of millions of dollars annually. They have finally had enough of the ingratitude of the Palestinians, who pocketed the other Arabs’ money as if it is was theirs by right, and offered nothing in return – not even a word of gratitude — except to keep asking for more. The Arabs have had enough of the Palestinians betraying their host countries, as they did in Kuwait in 1990, when they welcomed Saddam Hussein’s invading army, or in 1980, when Arafat and his PLO brought destruction and death to Beirut, or today, when the terror group Hamas in Gaza takes aid from, and allies itself with, the archenemy of the Gulf Arabs, Iran.

It is ironic that while the European Union recently announced its decision to resume unconditional financial aid to the Palestinians, the Arab countries continue to completely ignore the Palestinians. It is also ironic that while the Biden administration continues to talk about providing financial aid to the Palestinians, the Arab countries do not seem to care at all about their Palestinian brothers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians receive a lot of lip service from the Arabs, but see hardly any money being channeled to their coffers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Consequently, for the past few decades the Palestinians have become almost entirely dependent on American and European taxpayer money.

Perhaps the Europeans and Americans, who continue to provide the Palestinians with large sums, should instead follow the Arab example and cease to support the Palestinians. The billions of dollars they have provided has not led to any softening of the Palestinian desire to destroy Israel, whether that destruction be brought about by the Slow Jihadists of the PA, who want to first use diplomacy to squeeze Israel back within the 1949 armistice lines, and only once that is accomplished, to go in for the kill, or the Fast Jihadists of Hamas, who want to use only violence – terror attacks – to undermine and destroy the Jewish state.

Nor has that aid money brought about any improvement in the corrupt and despotic rule that make the lives of ordinary Palestinians so wretched both in Gaza and the West Bank.