Palestinians Vote For Terrorists, Then Claim Israelis Are ‘Extremists’

by Bassam Tawil, GATESTONE  •  November 7, 2022

 Pictured: Ismail Haniyeh, a leader of the Hamas terrorist group, casts his vote in the Palestinian Authority legislative election in, on January 25 2006 in Gaza City. 

• The Palestinians, who keep complaining about the rise of the right-wing parties in Israeli elections, are the ones who brought the terrorist Hamas group to power.
• In 2006, a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas, whose charter openly calls for the elimination of Israel.

• The Palestinians who voted for a jihadist terror group would therefore seem to have little justification to complain about the outcome of any Israeli election.
• The statements that Palestinian leaders and officials are making in response to the latest elections are identical to those they issued after previous rounds of voting in Israel.
• After Israel’s 2020 election, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum… urged Palestinians to step up the “resistance” against Israel to thwart then US President Donald J. Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East, titled “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.”
• As far as the Palestinians are concerned, any elected government in Israel that does not submit to 100% of their demands is a bad and dangerous government.
• The second camp, represented by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and several other armed groups, is seeking to replace Israel with an Islamist state. This camp does not believe in Israel’s right to exist….
• The Palestinians… continue to engage in fear-mongering after each Israeli election in efforts to intimidate the Israeli public into complying with their demands. They also have used this tactic for three decades to frighten the international community into pressuring Israel to make dangerous territorial concessions.
• The Palestinian claim that there is no partner for peace in Israel is totally false. In fact, the opposite is true…. The sad fact is that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side.
• The next time the Palestinians wring their hands about Israeli elections, the international community might remind them that it is Palestinian terrorism that drives the Israeli ballot-box results.
• The Palestinians also need to be reminded that it is their own leaders, and not those of Israel, who reject peace.
• Rather than bemoaning the Israeli election results, Palestinian leaders should be granting their own people even a part of what the Israelis wish for them in the Abraham Accords: equal justice under the law, freedom to speak and publish without fear of retribution, freedom to become prosperous, and freedom to live lives that have opportunity apart from the cottage industry of terrorism — lives free from their own leaders’ corrupt, unending suppression.

Even before the final results of the latest Israeli general elections were announced, Palestinian leaders and officials were quoted as expressing deep concern and fear that the outcome of the vote would lead to increased tensions and violence between the Palestinians and Israel.

Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh was quoted as saying that the results of the election “confirms” that the Palestinians have no partner in Israel for peace.”

The Palestinians, who keep complaining about the rise of the right-wing parties in Israeli elections, are the ones who brought the terrorist Hamas group to power.

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