PA libel: Israel introducing rats to chase Palestinians

• Last week, a PA official accused Israel of having "developed" giant rats that Israeli hi-tech had engineered to "particularly attack children and the sick."
• Today, a Fatah official accused Israel of "deliberately" introducing rats into Gaza

After Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was forced to launch a counteroffensive against Hamas' terror infrastructure, including tunnels, command centers, and bases embedded in and beneath civilian sites such as hospitals. The result was that Hamas caused massive damage to healthcare services and to large parts of Gaza's general infrastructure.

Now, officials from the PA and Fatah have begun to spread an outrageous libel against Israel, that it had "developed" and "introduced" rats to infest parts of Gaza, and those Israeli rats are the cause of disease, not Hamas.

Yesterday, a Fatah official in Gaza accused Israel of deliberately introducing the rats:

Jamal Obeid, Member of the Supreme Leadership Body of Fatah in Gaza: "There are rodents in some areas of the Gaza Strip... that were not known here in the Strip. It seems that the Israeli occupation deliberately acted to introduce these rodents into the Gaza Strip; this is a fact and not just media propaganda. There is a visible fact.

[Fatah-run Awdah TV, Facebook page, April 18, 2026;
Fatah-run Radio Mawtini, Facebook page, April 18, 2026]

This accusation followed, as Palestinian Media Watch reported earlier in the week, a PA official who accused Israel of "developing" especially large and aggressive rats to attack children and the elderly:

Fatah-run Awdah TV host: "Considering the warnings about the spread of epidemics, how do you describe the current health situation in the Gaza Strip?"

Palestine Broadcasting Corporation Director in the Gaza Strip Rafat Al-Qudra: "All indicators point to there being a type of rodent – rats and mice, to be precise... These rodents - mice and rats - are of a special kind, they are large in size, and they particularly attack children and the sick... It is believed that these rodents were developed and experimented on specifically by the Israeli occupation."

[Fatah-run Awdah TV, Facebook page, April 15, 2026;
Fatah-run Radio Mawtini, Facebook page, April 15, 2026]

PMW has been reporting for years that the PA as policy blames the problems it has caused and often unrelated global problems on Israel or on Jews. The libels continue to be disseminated, causing hatred and terror, because the international community never condemns the PA libels, and even worse, it often supports the libels and condemns Israel.