A senior Palestinian Authority official leader expects U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to “destroy Iran,” weakening Hamas in Gaza and strengthening the P.A., he told the New York Post in an interview published on Monday.
“We see that Trump and the ruling government in Israel are planning to destroy Iran,” the Post quoted Mohammad Hamdan, secretary general of the Fatah movement that rules the Palestinian Authority, as saying.
This will weaken Hamas because of “Hamas’s link to regimes outside Palestine,” he said. (Iran has been a supporter and financier of Hamas, among other proxies that it helped set up around Israel and its other regional foes.) “We are confronting Hamas’s ideology,” Hamdan was quoted as adding in the interview, which was conducted on Dec. 19.
Palestinian Authority security forces have cracked down on Hamas in Judea and Samaria in recent weeks after on Dec. 6, Islamists seized two P. A. vehicles and paraded them while displaying Hamas and ISIS flags. At least three people were killed in subsequent raids on Hamas and Islamist cells by the Palestinian Authority since then.
“Hamas rejects international legitimacy, meaning U.N. resolutions,” Hamdan said, according to the Post. “The world cannot accept a situation where a party does not accept international resolutions.”
Hamas won the last Palestinian Authority legislative election in January 2006, and seized power over Gaza in June 2007. The P.A., under its “president,” Mahmoud Abbas, rules parts of Judea and Samaria.
