The Palestinian Authority appeared to condemn Iranian “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for celebrating the Hamas atrocities in Israel on October 7, stating on Monday that Iran was “sacrificing the blood of the Palestinian people for its own interests.”
The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority issued a statement lamenting that Khamenei’s boastful celebration of October 7 – in which Hamas terrorists killed an estimated 1,200 people, abducted about 250, and engaged in wanton acts of gang rape, torture, and infanticide – were unhelpful in establishing a Palestinian state.
The Iranian “revolutionary” government is the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism and has been a longtime financier of Hamas, a Sunni jihadist terror organization that currently controls the Gaza Strip. Iran hosted street parties on October 7 to celebrate the slaughter and has openly declared the day a victory for its jihadist cause. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – and the political party that governs it, the relatively “moderate” Fatah – have long struggled to pursue amicable relations as rivals both seeking to rule a sovereign Palestinian state.
Khamenei spoke on Monday to mark the 35th anniversary of the death of his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and took the opportunity to applaud Hamas for the October 7 massacre, which Hamas and its supporters refer to as the “al-Aqsa flood.”
“Although the US and many Western countries continue to support this regime, they also know that there is no way out for the occupying regime,” Khamenei declared.
“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was exactly what the region needed. Our region needed this operation,” the “supreme leader” continued, according to a translation by the Saudi network al-Arabiya. “This operation was a decisive blow to the Zionist regime [Israel].”
The office of the presidency of the Palestinian Authority issued a statement on Monday in response, condemning the remarks.
“The Palestinian people have been fighting and struggling for a hundred years, and they do not need wars that do not serve their ambitions for freedom and independence and for the preservation of Jerusalem and its Islamic and Christian sanctities,” the Palestinian Authority asserted. It went on to state that Khamenei’s celebration “will not lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.”
Statements attributed to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, similarly affirmed that Khamenei’s remarks do “not serve the Palestinian national goals of liberating Jerusalem.”
Abbas reportedly went further and accused Iran of wanton disregard for the lives of Palestinians.
Khamenei’s remarks, Abbas reportedly said, “clearly announce that their [Iran’s] goal is to sacrifice the blood of Palestinians and thousands of children, women and the elderly, and to destroy Palestinian land.”
An unnamed adviser to Abbas reportedly also said in response, “Tehran is sacrificing the blood of the Palestinian people for its own interests.”
The Palestinian Authority has similarly complained of Iranian influence in recent memory. In April, Fatah issued an irritated statement vowing, “our sacred cause and the blood of our people to be exploited,” accusing Iran of attempting to take control of the anti-Israel cause.
While the Palestinian Authority’s relationship with Hamas has often been strained, the comments this week are not reflective of the initial reaction to the October 7 attacks. On October 8, Abd Al-Rahman Abu Al-Rub, a member of Fatah’s Jenin branch, issued a message that it was “a morning of victory, and morning of joy, a morning of pride.”
“We in the Fatah Movement in the Jenin district convey the message to all our brothers and to all our Palestinian people that they are compelled to take action and participate in this story of heroism with the Palestinian people that is realizing its natural right to fight the occupation and liberate the occupied lands,” Al-Rub reportedly said.
The Palestinian Authority’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, issued a statement later in October declaring, “armed struggle is the only and fastest way to liberate Palestine.”
“We were there from the start of the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ operation out of our dedication to the ideal of fighting to liberate Palestine and holy Jerusalem,” the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade proclaimed.
That statement also condemned the Palestinian Authority for its supposed “flattery and surrender to the Zionist-American government and the murderous West,” suggesting a rift between Abbas’s elderly leadership and the younger militants in the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
Iran has long been sympathetic to Hamas, suspected of investing as much as $100 million a year in Hamas and similar groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). On October 7, a Hamas spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, told the BBC that Hamas “had direct backing from Iran.”
Iran has also reportedly invested significantly in radical movements in the West Bank.
“Iran is already here, in the West Bank,” a anonymous alleged “Palestinian official in Ramallah” told the Jerusalem post in June 2023. “The Iranians want their Palestinian agents to extend their control from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.”
The Jerusalem Post‘s sources said Iran was using PIJ to “buy weapons and loyalty in the West Bank” with Iranian money.
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