Palestinian leaders shooting themselves in the foot, again and again and again....

Strategy Page has a nice summary of the growing rift between Palestinian leaders and the rest of the Arab world:

The Palestinian governments in Gaza and the West Bank demanded that the Arab League denounce the recent peace deal between the UAE and Israel. The Arab League refused. At the same time Palestinians admitted that most Arab states had stopped providing financial support for them. Left unmentioned was the reason why the Palestinians have lost the political and financial support of the Arab nations. It’s the corruption, lack of unity, and refusing to accept any peace deal with Israel that did not include the destruction of the state of Israel. The Arabs are tired of this mess and need Israel as an ally to deal with the growing threat from Iran.

While public criticism of Palestinians has been slowly growing in the Gulf for years, it has now exploded with the Israel/UAE deal. Khaled Abu Toameh gives some details:

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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.

"The Palestinian factions have declared war on the Arabs," commented a Saudi social media user called Al-Sagariah. "The merchants of the [Palestinian] issue are offending the Gulf."

Some Gulf Arabs interpreted Hamed's remarks as incitement to carry out terrorist attacks against the Gulf states. "This incitement makes the Gulf states wary of the Palestinians living on their lands," wrote a Saudi social media user who calls himself inthe_shade911.

"[The incitement] authorizes the Gulf states to keep the Palestinians under constant security observation for fear that they might carry out terrorist acts under the direction of the Palestinian leaders. The funny thing is that Mueen Hamed called for armed actions against the Gulf, not Israel."

Echoing the same fear, Saudi political researcher Emad Al-Mudaifer also accused the Palestinian faction leaders of inciting their people to launch terrorist attacks against the Gulf states. Commenting on the anti-Gulf statements of the faction leaders during the virtual conference, Al-Mudaifer warned: "This is an official declaration of the desire to carry out terrorist attacks by Palestinians residing in the Gulf."

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Why are the Palestinian leaders so stupid as to directly insult the people who have given them billions?

The main reason is that they have been treated as spoiled children for so long, they have fully taken on that role.

For decades they have been told by the world that the Palestinian issue is the most important issue in the Middle East, and perhaps the world. They have seen themselves on the covers of news magazines. They have dominated the UN and the Arab League. They have attracted more news reporters per square kilometer than anywhere else on Earth. They have attracted hundreds of NGOs, all willing to take their side in order to maintain funding from European sources who want to expiate their guilt for the Holocaust by claiming that Israel is the new Nazi Germany. They have demanded and received billions from their oil-rich Arab brothers. They have leveraged their seeming control over the Arab world's agenda by saying "no" to every peace agreement, thinking that time was on their side and Israel will eventually offer more.

And they have told themselves that this situation will last indefinitely.

But their Arab "brethren" were really their parents. (Literally - most prominent Palestinian families trace their lineage to the Gulf.)  The billions given to them were not meant to be welfare - they were an investment gone bad. 

Now the parents are telling their spoiled brats that they need to grow up and take some responsibility for their actions. And the Palestinian leaders haven't the foggiest idea of how to act differently. Their whining and threats worked so well in the past that this is all they know.

They tell themselves that they still have support from Syria and Iran, and the Arab street is still behind them (they aren't.) They find obscure anti-Israel rallies in Europe and tell themselves that these are influencing the world. They think that BDS is going to save them. 

In short, they have chosen to embrace their role of spoiled children for the foreseeable future, and if that means screaming at their parents, so be it. 

They don't see that this is only the beginning of anti-Palestinian sentiment in the Arab world. The train is barely out of the station and hasn't even begun to accelerate. 

(h/t MtTB)

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