Palestinians have an old habit of settling internal scores by diverting their grievances and violence towards Israel. This practice is clear to those who have been monitoring developments in the Palestinian arena for the past decades. It is an integral part of the Palestinian strategy to undermine, isolate, delegitimize and destroy Israel.

Those less familiar with Palestinian culture and tactics, however, have difficulty understanding the Palestinian mindset. Officials in Washington, London, Paris and other Western capitals rarely meet the ordinary Palestinian, the “man on the street” who represents the authentic voice of the Palestinians.

Instead, these officials meet Palestinian politicians and academics from Ramallah — the “experts” who are actually accomplished con artists. Such Palestinians grasp the Western mindset very well, and use their understanding to twist Western officials any which way they want.

The Western reaction to the hunger strike declared on April 17 by Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails is a case in point. The strike was initiated by Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah official who is serving five life terms for his role in terror attacks against Israelis. Barghouti has been in prison for 15 years so far.

Remarkably, despite Barghouti’s long-term imprisonment, this is his first hunger strike, apparently despite the poor incarceration conditions that have supposedly driven him to this move. Or might there be some other factor behind Barghouti’s sudden acute discomfort?

The hunger strike is, in fact, completely unrelated to conditions in Israeli prisons. Rather, Barghouti’s hunger strike is directly linked to a power struggle that has long been raging inside his Fatah faction. More than a move against Israel, the hunger strike is aimed at Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas (who is also chairman of Fatah).

The hunger strike declared by jailed Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti (left) is aimed at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (right). Barghouti’s supporters accuse Abbas and his loyalists of sidelining the jailed Fatah leader and seeking to “bury” him.

Last November, Barghouti emerged as the biggest winner in Fatah’s internal election. His status as a prisoner and his involvement in terrorism continue to be the main reason why he is so popular among Palestinians. Barghouti’s victory in the election meant that he was now number two after Abbas, and many expected the PA president to appoint him as his deputy.

This past February, however, the Fatah Central Council, a body dominated by Abbas loyalists, delivered a deliberate slap in the face to Barghouti, ignoring his landslide victory and appointing someone else (Mahmoud Aloul) as Deputy Fatah Chairman. The appointment of Aloul enraged Barghouti’s supporters, who rushed to accuse Abbas and his loyalists of sidelining the jailed Fatah leader and seeking to “bury” him.

Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, even went as far as accusing Abbas of “succumbing” to threats by Israel. Israeli officials had strongly criticized the result of the Fatah internal election, which the Barghouti won, calling it a vote for terrorism. Fadwa Barghouti said that her husband had won the first slot in the election, “which means he is number two in Fatah. There is no ignoring Marwan Barghouti’s position.”

The charges leveled by Barghouti’s wife against Abbas are not the first. In the past, she has accused Abbas and the PA leadership of imposing a blackout on news concerning her husband. In a letter to Abbas, she expressed “regret and pain” over the failure of Abbas to help her in her campaign to secure the release of her husband. She also complained that neither Fatah nor the PA leadership had provided funds to support the campaign calling for her husband’s release.

It is no secret that Abbas detests competition. He has been waging war against anyone who dares to challenge his rule, especially from within his own Fatah faction. Mohammed Dahlan, for example, a former PA security commander from the Gaza Strip and considered the number one enemy of the PA president, was expelled from Fatah on orders from Abbas. Dahlan, a Fatah parliamentarian, was stripped of his parliamentary immunity by Abbas. Dahlan is currently living in the United Arab Emirates, but is wanted by Abbas for “corruption” and “murder.”

Barghouti, however, presents Abbas with an immediate problem. The Palestinian on the street will not tolerate the defamation, at least not in public, of any Palestinian sitting in Israeli prison. Abbas sees Barghouti as a real threat, particularly in the wake of public opinion polls suggesting that Barghouti could easily win any presidential election. Barghouti at large would be a nightmare for Abbas.

So, no love is lost between Abbas and Barghouti; the two are engaged in a behind-the-scenes power struggle. Barghouti wants to succeed Abbas, while Abbas is working hard to marginalize him. Palestinian sources say that Abbas is not happy with Barghouti’s hunger strike. He believes Barghouti is trying to steal the spotlight from him, especially on the eve of his visit to Washington for talks with President Donald Trump. Abbas, who wants to be in the news all the time, cannot stand that Barghouti is grabbing the headlines and was even invited to write an op-ed in the New York Times.

It is not only Abbas, however, who is in trouble. Barghouti, too, knows better than to air dirty Fatah laundry. What, then, is to be done? The traditional diversionary tactic: Direct the heat towards Israel. Barghouti is suddenly concerned about his prison conditions and is demanding more privileges. Israel, he claims, imprisons Palestinians for their “peaceful resistance.” Barghouti knows it is not popular to come out in public against Abbas. Similarly, Abbas is using the hunger strike to incite against Israel and demand that all Palestinian terrorists, including ones with blood on their hands, be released unconditionally. The hunger strike is a smokescreen for the real problems inside Fatah and has nothing to do with the conditions of prisoners in Israeli jails.

Stripped of its Western trappings, Barghouti’s “hunger strike” is actually a struggle between Abbas and yet another Fatah pretender to the throne. And once again, Israel — the state that supposedly so “mistreats” incarcerated Palestinian terrorists — takes the heat.

Bassam Tawil, an Arab Muslim, is based in the Middle East.

Western donors want to see a list of the names of Palestinians who are on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the PA is not happy about it.

What is driving this demand? Thousands of Palestinian school teachers in the West Bank are striking for better conditions. The Palestinian leadership, in response, has ordered a security crackdown on the strikers.

To justify the crackdown, PA officials have claimed that the strike was organized by Hamas as part of a conspiracy to embarrass and undermine the regime of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

What is really happening is that the teachers are blowing the whistle on PA corruption. They have accused the PA Ministry of Education of wasting donors’ funds and deceiving them by inflating the number of teachers. They claim that the list of employees (about 56,000) ostensibly hired by the ministry contains many fictitious names. These include teachers and administrative workers of the ministry.

The teachers also accuse the PA of lying to the donors about their salaries. The information provided by the PA to donors claimed that the PA pays higher salaries to the teachers than the teachers actually receive.

In other words, the striking teachers are exposing the PA as playing Western donors for suckers.

The PA’s Finance Ministry has yet to publish the general budget for the years 2015 and 2016. The last time the budget appeared on the ministry’s official website was in 2014. The striking teachers and other Palestinians say there is something fishy about the Finance Ministry’s failure to make public the annual budget for 2015 and 2016. They call this a lack of transparency.

According to various sources, the donors’ request took PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah by surprise. He has referred the request to the office of Mahmoud Abbas and is now awaiting the president’s personal intervention in the developing scandal.

One report revealed that the PA leadership has formed a secret legal committee, headed by Palestinian official Karim Shehadeh, to prepare a reply to the donors about the discrepancy in the salaries. The committee has been tasked to avoid scandal and ensure that donors do not get to the bottom of the case.

The donors’ request explains the hysterical response of the PA leadership to the ongoing teachers’ strike in the West Bank. In the past few weeks, PA security forces have rounded up dozens of striking teachers and imposed a reign of intimidation against others. When the teachers planned to hold a protest rally in Ramallah last week, the PA deployed hundreds of policemen and set up checkpoints in various parts of the West Bank in a bid to foil the protest and terrify the teachers.

Left: Striking Palestinian teachers protest in Ramallah last week. Right: Palestinian Authority policemen deploy in the street to intimidate the teachers.

In a typical game of smoke and mirrors, the Palestinian government this week denied that the donor countries demanded to inspect the payroll records. Yet Palestinian sources in Ramallah insisted that the reports were true. According to the sources, this marks a watershed in donors’ demand for accountability from the PA leadership.

Striking teachers is only one of the PA headaches. The donors’ demand for a full report on the names of PA public employees is bad news for Abbas. No one, in fact, knows how many Palestinians are on the PA payroll. Some figures estimate the number of employees at over 160,000, while others have put the figure at 250,000.

According to one study, the Palestinians have one policeman for every 52 people, compared to one teacher for each 72. Since its founding more than two decades ago, the PA has established ten different security services that employ more than 70,000 people.

Some Palestinians have charged that these numbers have been vastly inflated by using names of the deceased, those who live abroad and some who do not even exist. In the main, these salaries are covered by donor governments such as the US and EU, who for years have failed to check the lists of the public employees or verify the sums.

Moreover, donors might not be aware that they are paying over 50,000 employees from the Gaza Strip to not work. This has been the case since 20007, when Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip. In response, the Palestinian Authority ordered all its employees to boycott Hamas and promised to pay them full salaries for sitting at home.

If the donors are indeed demanding the report, it could mark the dawn of a new era — one in which the PA leadership is called on the carpet for its financial shenanigans. Of course, President Abbas and his friends might still find a way to blame Israel. This tactic has worked wonders in the past.

Thus, the jury is still out on whether the donors will show themselves to be the suckers the PA is hoping for, or if the Palestinians will finally begin to be held accountable for their behavior.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

Some 300 members of the Palestinian Fatah faction, headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, have begun receiving “military training” in the Gaza Strip in preparation for war with Israel.

The armed wing of Fatah, Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – The Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Division, announced that its members have been enrolled in a new military academy for training “fighters” in the Gaza Strip. The academy, inaugurated recently in the Gaza Strip, would train the “fighters” on various fighting methods “in the context of a program for preparing for any future battle” with the “Zionist enemy.”

The Nidal Academy was named for Nidal Al-Amoudi, a top Fatah militant killed by the Israel Defense Forces on January 13, 2008, after he carried out a series of armed attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers during the Second Intifada. “The academy has been named after the commander Nidal Al-Amoudi (Abu Hussein) to fulfill his dream of qualifying the fighters militarily, morally, religiously and revolutionarily,” explained a statement released by the Fatah armed group. Noting that some 300 “fighters” have already joined the academy, the group said that they have begun undergoing training in various methods of warfare.

“We have pledged to prepare an army of fighters by devoting our full abilities and energies to consolidate the option of armed struggle as the only means to liberate Palestine,” the group declared.

The Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Division is one of several Fatah-affiliated militias that continue to operate in the Gaza Strip despite Hamas’s violent takeover of the area in the summer of 2007. These groups pose no threat to the Hamas regime, which is why they are allowed to operate freely in different parts of the Gaza Strip. The groups’ explicit policy is to prepare for war with Israel and launch terror attacks against Israelis. Hamas, however, which expelled their leaders from the Gaza Strip and continues to persecute dozens of Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip, is not on their hit list.

The Fatah-affiliated militia inauguration of its own “military” academy in the Gaza Strip is a novel move. In recent years, Fatah armed groups have posted videos of their men undergoing military training orchards and fields, far from the watchful eyes of their rivals in Hamas. Now it seems that Hamas has nothing to fear from the Fatah militants, as Israel is the sole target.

Thus instead of training their men to retake the Gaza Strip and liberate it from the oppressive regime of Hamas, the Fatah “fighters” are busy preparing for war with Israel or fighting among themselves. Indeed, it appears that the Fatah armed groups are actually competing with Hamas for the title of “Most Prepared to Destroy Israel.” Like Hamas, they wish to win the hearts and minds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by showing that they too support the “armed struggle” against Israel and seek to “liberate Palestine.”

Fortunately for Hamas, the Fatah militias are rather preoccupied with internecine struggles. This leaves precious little time to think about ways of improving their people’s lives.

Today, at least five other Fatah armed groups function in the Gaza Strip: The Abu Rish Brigades, the Jihad Jibril Brigades, the Abdel Qader Husseini Brigades, the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Fatah Sukkur (Hawks). Some of these groups have in the past claimed responsibility for firing rockets at Israel. And there is not much harmony or love between these Fatah groups, whose members regard each other as rivals and political foes rather than comrades and colleagues.

Sources in the Gaza Strip point out that many of the members of these groups are former Palestinian Authority policemen who lost their jobs after the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. As such, many of them remain on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority, despite the fact that they are more than willing to lambast Mahmoud Abbas and his policies. In other words, these Fatah gunmen who are preparing for war with Israel are indirectly receiving their salaries from Western donors, including the US and many EU countries, who fund the Palestinian Authority.

The Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Division recently launched a scathing attack on Abbas for attending the funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem. Masked members of the group posted a video on social media in which they strongly condemned Abbas for attending the funeral, saying they are opposed to any form of “normalization” with Israel. They demanded that Abbas apologize to the Palestinians and Fatah, adding that the “armed struggle was the only way to “liberate Palestine.”

Members of Fatah’s Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Division read a statement condemning Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for attending the funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres.

More recently, the same group “welcomed” the shooting attack that was carried out in Jerusalem by Musbah Abu Sbeih and in which two Israelis were killed — a 60-year-old grandmother and a 29-year-old police officer. “This heroic operation is a clear message that the armed struggle is a deeply-rooted doctrine among Palestinians,” the group stated. “The operation is a natural response to the crimes of the occupation.”

Make no mistake. These groups believe that they represent the real Fatah, the one that never recognized Israel’s right to exist and holds on to armed struggle as the only way to “liberate Palestine.” They are not breakaway groups. That is why they continue to operate under the name of Fatah. In their view, they are following the principles of their former leader, Yasser Arafat, who launched Fatah as a “national liberation movement” and never truly abandoned the option of an armed struggle against Israel. It is Abbas and his colleagues in Fatah, they say, who have deviated from Fatah’s doctrine and true goals.

The power play among Fatah militias in the Gaza Strip reflects the wider division among Fatah’s political leaders. According to Palestinian sources, Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip have truly become disassociated from the faction’s leadership in the West Bank. Abbas’s aides blame exiled Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan for the schism, claiming that he provides dissenting Fatah officials with money, in an attempt to undermine the Palestinian president, who is also head of Fatah. Abbas recently summoned Fatah leaders from the Gaza Strip to an emergency meeting in Ramallah to discuss Dahlan’s growing influence in the Gaza Strip and the rifts in Fatah. The move came after thousands of Fatah members who are loyal to Dahlan staged a large demonstration in the Gaza Strip against Abbas. During the protest, they burned and trampled on pictures of Abbas.

Such developments in Fatah are notable for a specific reason: by and large, the international community continues to perceive Fatah as the “moderate” Palestinian party with whom Israel should make peace. Yet Fatah is far from a single united bloc; many groups within the faction, in their own words, continue to seek the “liberation of Palestine” through armed struggle. Moreover, neither Abbas nor any of his senior Fatah loyalists in the West Bank have repudiated the war-set Fatah militias. Crucially, many of these Fatah militiamen continue to receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority.

Fatah is, in fact, a two-faced hydra; one face tells the English-speaking international community what it wants to hear, namely, that it supports a two-state solution and seeks a peaceful settlement to the conflict with Israel, while the other tells the truth: it is committed to an armed struggle and the “liberation of Palestine” and is even preparing for war with Israel. Worth noting as well is that some of these Fatah militias also continue to operate in some parts of those territories controlled by Abbas’s security forces in the West Bank. And like their cohorts in the Gaza Strip, they too receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas has lost the Gaza Strip not only to Hamas, but also to his own erstwhile Fatah supporters, who are marching in a totally different direction from the Fatah leadership in the West Bank. The dispute between Fatah and Hamas, which has effectively split the Palestinians into two entities, one in the West Bank and the other in the Gaza Strip, is one reason Palestinians are farther than ever from achieving an independent Palestinian state. The infighting in Fatah and the gulf separating its leaders is another. Abbas’s claim to sole Fatah leadership is hardly credible to even the most credulous of Abbas backers: thousands of his “fighters” are preparing for war with Israel.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

This week, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and US President Donald Trump will sit down together to talk. This is the first such meeting since the US presidential election, and it comes at a time when the Palestinian scene is characterized by mounting internal tensions, fighting and divisiveness. The disarray among the Palestinians, where everyone seems to be fighting everyone else, casts serious doubt on Abbas’s ability to lead the Palestinians towards a better future. The chaos also raises the question whether Abbas has the authority to speak on behalf of a majority of Palestinians, let alone sign a peace agreement with Israel that would be acceptable to enough of his people.

Abbas, however, seems rather oblivious to the state of bedlam among the Palestinians, and appears determined to forge ahead despite the radical instability he is facing.

He is travelling to Washington to tell Trump that he and his PA leadership seek a “just and comprehensive” peace with Israel through the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

In the meeting, Abbas is likely to repeat his long-standing charges that Israel continues to “sabotage” any prospect for peace with the Palestinians.

Abbas is not likely to mention the mayhem that the PA leadership is facing at home. Nor is the fact that the Palestinians are as far as ever from achieving their goal of statehood likely to be a preeminent subject. Why bother discussing inconvenient truths, such as the deep divisions among the Palestinians and failure to hold presidential and parliamentary elections, when you can point the finger of blame at Israel?

Abbas’s trip to Washington coincides with a peak of tension between his PA and Hamas, the Islamic movement that rules the Gaza Strip. The rivalry between Hamas and Abbas’s PA, which climaxed in 2007 when the Islamic movement violently took over the Gaza Strip from Abbas loyalists, has created a reality where the Palestinians are divided, physically, into two separate entities.

Since 2007, the reality on the ground is that the Palestinians already have two small states: one in the Gaza Strip and another in the West Bank. These two states have since been at war with each other. The joke among Palestinians is that were it not for Israel is sitting smack in the middle, the two warring Palestinian states would be dispatching rockets and suicide bombers at each other.

This war, which is currently a war of venomous words between the PA and Hamas, has left many Palestinians wondering whether their leaders will ever be able to move beyond their personal animosities and bring the people closer to achieving statehood. Many attempts by Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and Yemen, to resolve the dispute between Hamas and the PA have failed. Neither side appears to be willing to make any concessions that would pave the way for national reconciliation in the Palestinian arena.

For the past several weeks, thousands of Palestinians have taken to Gaza’s streets to denounce Abbas as a traitor and Zionist agent. It is worth noting that the protesters are not only supporters of Hamas, but also include many disgruntled PA employees who are protesting Abbas’s decision to slash their salaries by 30%.

Abbas suspects that these employees, who are affiliated with his Fatah faction, have switched their loyalty to his arch-rival, Mohamed Dahlan, the ousted Fatah leader who has been publicly calling for the removal of Abbas from power.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas (left) recently decided to slash by 30% the salaries of PA employees in Gaza. Abbas suspects that these employees, who are affiliated with his Fatah faction, have switched their loyalty to his arch-rival, Mohamed Dahlan (right). (Image sources: U.S. State Dept., M. Dahlan Office)

Hardly a day passes in the Gaza Strip that demonstrators do not burn photos of Abbas and his prime minister, Rami Hamdallah (who is also based in the West Bank).

Yet, it is not only money that is bringing the Palestinian population to the streets. Hamas and many Palestinians hold Abbas responsible for the ongoing electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip, which has left tens of thousands of families without power for up to 20 hours a day.

Last week Abbas’s government told Israel that it will stop paying for electricity that Israel supplies to Gaza. Palestinians say Abbas is planning more punitive measures against the Strip in the near future. His goal is to drive desperate Palestinians there to revolt against Hamas. In the meantime, however, it seems that Abbas’s measures are boomeranging, and Gazans are, for now, hurling their fury at him and the PA government.

Abbas’s plate is quite full in the Gaza Strip. Alongside Hamas, he has thousands of Dahlan loyalists to deal with. Then there are several other Palestinian groups, such as Islamic Jihad, that have long been challenging Abbas and his autocratic rule. Recently, the leaders of these groups stepped up their harsh criticism of Abbas, with some calling for his “execution” in a public square.

“Why does Abbas take the donors’ money that is intended for the Gaza Strip? asked Marwan Abu Ras, a senior Hamas official. In the view of Abu Ras, Abbas has reached the “highest degrees of treason” and must face a popular and legal trial. “He must be hanged in the public square in front of his people because he is the biggest traitor the Palestinian cause has ever had,” the Hamas official declared.

Another top Hamas official, Mahmoud Zahar, said that Abbas has long lost his legitimacy and was no longer the president of the Palestinians. He accused Abbas and his senior aides of laying their hands on Arab and Western funds and using them for their personal interests. “Abbas is committing crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip,” Zahar charged. “Abbas cut off the electricity to the Gaza Strip and salaries to the (PA) employees. He is involved in a conspiracy to liquidate the Palestinian cause.”

How Abbas would fare if he ever returned to Gaza is anyone’s guess. Since 2007, Abbas has not been able to even go back to his private house in Gaza. In light of Hamas’s daily threats to kill him, it is unlikely that the 82-year-old Abbas will ever see the Gaza Strip from the inside again.

Abbas’s senior aides, meanwhile, are not sitting silent in the face of the Hamas threats. One of his top advisors, Mahmoud Habbash, last week called on Palestinians to revolt against Hamas. Habbash also stated that it would be fine to destroy and burn the Gaza Strip in order to get rid of Hamas.

The threats against Abbas are coming not only from Hamas, but also from Dahlan and other senior Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip, who think of themselves as sacrificial victims in the war between Abbas and Hamas. The Gaza Strip, then, hosts not only a Fatah-Hamas war, but also a war within Fatah. And tensions between all these parties are only headed toward escalation.

Adding to his problems stemming from the Gaza Strip, Abbas has his hands full inside PA-controlled territories in the West Bank. A hunger strike organized by jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti is seen as directed not only against Israel, but above all against Abbas and the PA leadership. Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in prison for his role in terrorist attacks, has been imprisoned for 15 years. He and his fellow inmates are convinced that Abbas is not interested in their release, which accounts for why he is not doing much to help their cause. Abbas, it is said, fears Barghouti’s popularity, and prefers him in Israeli prison over having him at large.

The hunger strike has triggered a wave of protests in the West Bank not only against Israel, but also against Abbas and his PA government. Abbas is also facing enmity for cracking down on public freedoms, lack of economic reforms and his continued security coordination with Israel.

Is it any surprise, then, that Abbas prefers to spend his time outside Ramallah and the PA-controlled territories? He rarely visits Jenin, Hebron or Nablus, but Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf states are a second home to him.

Abbas is well aware that the Palestinian house is on fire. Instead of working to extinguish the blaze, however, Abbas spends his time spreading the lie that peace in our time is possible, if only Israel would succumb to his demands.

The story of Gaza — which went straight to Hamas after Israel handed it to Abbas — is not a tale Abbas likes to tell. The same scenario is likely to be repeated in the West Bank if Israel makes a similar move. It remains to be seen whether Trump and the new administration are aware of the extreme anarchy reining among the Palestinians, and act accordingly. Will the world see past Abbas’s lies this time?

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.