By Moshe Phillips
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While the international media recently distracted itself with the spectacle of PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas having to appear on video to address the UN General Assembly after America denied his visa, a call to war was hiding in plain sight. When Abbas blames Israel for his decision to postpone elections each time since 2010, in reality it is simply business as usual for a Palestinian Arab leadership terrified of the prospect of its own people voting it out of power while it is simultaneously consumed by corruption. Observers fixated on Abbas’s pre-recorded speech and the again delayed elections, and missed his pledge to wage perpetual war against Israel.
Far too many journalists, pundits, and policymakers in the West thought that Abbas used his UN statement to oppose violence. What Al Jazeera revealed, most likely inadvertently, is what Abbas actually stated: “Abbas said any transitional period must lead to the reunification of the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank under one Palestinian state with a single legitimate armed force.” [September 24, 2026].
“A single legitimate armed force.” There is no ambiguity here. No mistranslation. No context that softens the meaning. Abbas wants an army. This is not the rhetoric of a partner for peace, nor the language of a movement committed to a peaceful future. It is a declaration of intent—one that mirrors, almost perfectly, the forever war pledged by Hamas.
When Abbas spoke via video to the UN in September and demanded a Palestinian army, international commentators missed the gravity of his words. Mainstream outlets obsessively focused on the denied entry into the United States or agonizing over another indefinite delay in democratic accountability due to postponed elections.
Getting lost in these inconsequential things causes the world to miss the actual threat. The demand for an army, and its real world ramifications, is the big story that everyone missed and it has nothing to do with Abbas not being allowed into New York, nor with the fact that he postponed the elections yet again. Rather, the demand for an army is proof that he wants the PLO/Hamas war against Israel to never end until Israel is, heaven forbid, defeated.
Fatah is the dominant faction of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority and all of these enities are under the full control of Abbas. For years, far too many in the international community have clung to the comforting fiction that Hamas and Fatah are fundamentally different: that Hamas is irredeemably extremist while Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, is merely flawed but pragmatic. The words of Abbas expose that illusion. It is really hard to tell what separates Hamas and Fatah.
A clear-eyed examination of history shows that the Palestinian leadership has never abandoned its long-term goal of destroying the Jewish State. For decades, Fatah doctrine has relied on a two-pronged strategy: waging political and diplomatic warfare on the world stage while funding and inciting terror on the ground. Handing formal military capabilities—complete with heavy weaponry, sovereign command structures, and state legitimacy—to an entity historically steeped in terrorism would not lead to stability. Instead, it would institutionalize a permanent belligerent force whose sole purpose is Israel’s elimination.
We know this in part because Fatah has committed to partner with Hamas. In Beijing in July 2024, Hamas and Fatah agreed to form a unity government together after the Israel-Hamas war was over, and together they issued a joint statement about their commitment to future meetings. The unity pact Hamas and Abbas’s people signed in Beijing made their true motives very clear. Abbas has not made any new official statements since Beijing to suggest that he will no longer abide by his July 2024 pledge to work with Hamas.
The PA could have rooted out Hamas long ago if it wanted to. It just doesn’t want to. It regards the Hamas terrorists as its brothers, not its enemies.
What’s more, Article VII of the first Oslo Agreement, which was signed by Israel and the PA in 1993, authorized the PA to establish a 12,000-man “police force.” The PA then proceeded to expand it into a 60,000-man “security force” that has become a de facto army, trained and armed by the CIA.
According to World Atlas, the PA has the sixth-largest per-capita security force in the world. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has described the PA-governed areas as “one of the most heavily policed territories in the world.” So why is Abbas saying he needs a “single legitimate armed force?” He already has an “armed force” for policing and it is an enormous one. What he clearly wants is an army that is funded, accepted, and even more heavily armed by others.
When the head of the Palestinian Authority stands before the General Assembly and demands an army, it is an explicit declaration of hostile intent. It signals that statehood is not viewed as a vehicle to build a functioning, peaceful society, but rather as a launchpad for conventional war. The unwillingness to hold elections proves a total absence of democracy, while the insistence on militarization exposes an unrelenting commitment to armed conflict.
It is well past the time for the international community to wake up to this dangerous reality. Continuing to subsidize, appease, and indulge the corrupt leadership of Abbas and his henchmen as they embrace perpetual warfare only guarantees more instability and bloodshed. True peace will never be achieved by the forever arming of those dedicated to Israel’s end. What is needed is a commitment to confront the relentless hostility of Abbas and Fatah.
Those who want to protect Mahmoud Abbas’s image, in order to keep promoting the goal of Palestinian statehood, will no doubt continue to claim that he condemns terrorism and opposes it. But the truth is otherwise.
Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, AFSI, (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.
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