Cal Thomas uses PMW material to show that Abbas isn't so "moderate" as some believe

Among the region’s great fictions is that Abbas is more moderate than Hamas and other militants. He may occasionally talk that way for Western consumption, but his intentions and words to his own people prove otherwise.

Last week in a Facebook posting, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli research institute that studies Palestinian society, Ofir Gendelman the spokesman to the Arab media in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, asked Abbas in Arabic if he saw reconciliation with Hamas as a means to fight Israel. Gendelman's post included a cartoon of Hamas and Fatah fighters smiling, shaking hands and aiming rifles at an Israeli soldier. “To his question about uniting to fight Israel,” writes PMW, “Fatah posted its answer: 'Yes, this is what we want.'” This is consistent with many other statements and also with what is being taught in Palestinian schools and carried by Palestinian media, which is controlled by Fatah, including the “joys” of martyrdom.

Palestinian leaders have no intention of agreeing to the Western “two-state” peace plan. A recent poll commissioned by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy found that 60 percent of Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza have a “five-year national goal” of “reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea.”

Past talk of a “greater Israel” with biblical boundaries from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates River have been denounced as genocidal, not to mention fantastical. But when Palestinian Arabs make “historic” claims to expansive borders for a state of their own, replacing Israel, there is silence.