by Khaled Abu Toameh
Representatives of the PA and Hamas, as well as their media, have reported extensively on the protests on U.S. campuses, expressing hope that they will force the U.S. administration to adopt a tougher policy against Israel. They see the protests as aimed at eliminating Israel and undermining the United States.
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Image used by the official PA news agency WAFA in coverage of Columbia University protests (@simonerzim/Twitter) |
Institute for Contemporary Affairs
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- Representatives of the PA and Hamas, as well as their media, have reported extensively on the protests on U.S. campuses, expressing hope that they will force the U.S. administration to adopt a tougher policy against Israel. They see the protests as aimed at eliminating Israel and undermining the United States.
- Official PA media have criticized the U.S. authorities for using force to break up the protests. They have been carrying daily reports about the anti-Israel demonstrations with a focus on the dismantlement of the encampments and the arrest of students.
- PA leaders are pleased with the anti-Israel protests at American universities but are unwilling to tolerate similar demonstrations at their own universities, fearing that they could be used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to create instability and insecurity.
- In recent weeks, PA security officers have been removing Hamas flags from electricity poles in villages and towns in the West Bank. PA security forces have also foiled attempts by some students to set up encampments at Palestinian campuses similar to those at U.S. campuses.
- Hamas, which has a long record of targeting political opponents, college students, journalists, and human rights activists, was the first Palestinian party to condemn the U.S. authorities for their actions against anti-Israel protesters, some of whom have publicly declared their support for the Iran-backed terrorist group.
- At the same time, Palestinian columnists have lamented the lack of comparable demonstrations at Arab and Palestinian educational institutions. Palestinian political analyst Rima Kattaneh Nazzal wrote: “Where are Arab universities in this uprising? Where is the Palestinian academic community, especially the student blocs and university professors? Why do they remain silent?”
Representatives of the PA and Hamas, as well as the media, have reported extensively on the protests on campus from the outset, expressing hope that they will force the U.S. administration to adopt a tougher policy against Israel. They see the protests as an extension of the Palestinian struggle against Israel and hope they will spread to the streets of American cities.
While applauding the anti-Israel demonstrations overseas, Palestinian political activists and columnists denounced the “silence” at Palestinian campuses in the West Bank and universities around the Arab world. On Palestinian and Arab social media accounts, the U.S. college campuses are referred to as “The Intifada [uprising] of the Campuses,” “The Student Revolt,” and “The Student Spring” (a reference to the 2011 “Arab Spring”).
Some have argued that the fact that Israel and the PA are harshly targeting local students—particularly those identified as having ties to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—justifies the seeming indifference at Palestinian colleges. Others contend that the reason for the relative silence at the West Bank’s Palestinian universities is that a large number of students are concerned that the conflict in the Gaza Strip would spread to the West Bank.
PA leaders are pleased with the anti-Israel protests at American universities but are unwilling to tolerate similar demonstrations at their own universities, fearing that they could be used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to create instability and insecurity.
PA Security Officers Stifle Hamas Demonstrations
In recent weeks, PA security officers have been removing Hamas flags from electricity poles in villages and towns in the West Bank. PA security forces have also foiled attempts by some students to set up encampments at Palestinian campuses similar to the ones at Columbia University and other campuses in the United States.
Ironically, the PA is applauding the U.S. college protests, although some students there have openly expressed support for Hamas, its rival organization. Students have even been seen chanting slogans against PA President Mahmoud Abbas, dubbing him a “spy” for Israel.
Ridiculously, Hamas, which has a long record of targeting political opponents, college students, journalists, and human rights activists, was the first Palestinian party to condemn the U.S. authorities for their actions against anti-Israel protesters, some of whom have publicly declared their support for the Iran-backed terrorist group.
Referring to the arrest of dozens of students, Hamas accused the U.S. administration of “violating the individual rights of students and their right to freedom of expression.”
Izzat al-Risheq, member of the Hamas political bureau, said the U.S. administration arrested the demonstrators “without the slightest feeling of shame towards the moral value represented by these students and university professors.”
Al-Rishq added: “The Biden administration, which is complicit in the brutal war against our Palestinian people, refuses to acknowledge that it is facing an American public that has discovered the truth.” Al-Risheq warned that “suppressing today’s students who are tomorrow’s leaders will result in significant political costs” to the Biden administration in the upcoming elections.
Buoyed by the events that transpired on American college campuses, the Palestine Information Center, which is associated with Hamas, released an article characterizing the protests as “a cry in the face of Washington’s support for the [Israeli] war of genocide against Gaza.”
As part of a well-coordinated Palestinian campaign to show solidarity with the protestors, Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have emerged on various social media accounts holding posters applauding the anti-Israel students in the United States.
A statement issued by several student groups in the Gaza Strip, including Hamas, PIJ, and the ruling Fatah faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas, read:
We, the students of Gaza, salute the students of Columbia University, Yale University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and dozens of universities across the United States who are rising in solidarity with Gaza and to put an end to the Zionist-American genocide against our people in Gaza. We welcome the show of solidarity offered by students facing arrest, police violence, suspension, eviction, and expulsion to demand that their universities end their complicity in the Zionist-American genocide. From here in Gaza, we see you and salute you. It is clear that a new generation is emerging that will no longer accept Zionism, racism, and genocide and stands with Palestine and its liberation from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea. Your global student solidarity is breaking boundaries, and it is time to smash the U.S. imperialist war machine.
The statement makes it clear that the Palestinian students see the protests of their American counterparts as aimed at eliminating Israel and undermining the United States.
The PA’s official media outlets and officials have also criticized the U.S. authorities for using force to break up the protests on the college campuses. These outlets have been carrying daily reports about the anti-Israel demonstrations with a focus on the dismantlement of the encampments and the arrest of students by U.S. police officers.
Osama al-Qawasmeh, a senior Ramallah-based Fatah and PLO official, praised the students and claimed that the anti-Israel protests were the fruit of tremendous and ongoing efforts by the Palestinian communities in the United States.
Al-Qawasmeh criticized the U.S. authorities for “suppressing” the anti-Israel protests and warned that the move would have “counterproductive consequences.”
Rawhi Fattouh, chairman of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s legislative arm and one of Abbas’s closest associates, also seized the opportunity to lash out at the Biden administration. Fattouh said that the crackdown on the anti-Israel protesters “reveals the falsity and lies of the Biden administration.”
The Biden administration, Fattouh added, “does not want to admit that it is facing an American public opinion that discovered the truth about the occupying state (Israel).”
PA-affiliated columnists have joined the bandwagon by condemning the Biden administration for labeling the protests as antisemitic.
Writing in the PA’s official newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Palestinian columnist Ramzi Odeh said: “The U.S. administration’s response to these protests, whether by dispersing student sit-ins or through accusations of antisemitism, is not considered an ethical or legal act. The United States must change its policy of being completely allied with Israel and listen to the voice of the student movement to stop absolute support for Israel.”
Bassem Barhoum, another PA-affiliated columnist, wrote in the same newspaper about the “influence of Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionism on American universities.”
Barhoum stated: “The protests will continue until they can bring about change. The Zionist lobby is a cunning and capable lobby that has methods through which it can turn events in its favor. There may be a need for the Arab lobby to find a historic opportunity to play a role in the academic dimension as well by looking at the needs of universities and supporting some of the most objective research towards the Middle East and the Palestinian issue.”
Omar al-Ghoul, a veteran political analyst and PA loyalist, sought to promote the claim that “supporters of Israel, Zionist organizations, and pro-Israel lobbies” allegedly tried to spread lies and slander against the anti-Israel students at U.S. campuses.
“The campaigns against the growing anti-war student movement and in support of Palestine aim to defend Israel, silence American voices, invade democracy, and violate the American Constitution to protect the tycoons of financial capital and the deep state in Washington, and legislate the law of the jungle in Uncle Sam’s country,” al-Ghoul argued.
Palestinian columnist Abdel Ghani Salama predicted that the anti-Israel protests would continue and “succeed in bringing about a major positive change” in U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Though Salama expressed the general feelings among Palestinians, he lamented the lack of comparable demonstrations at Arab and Palestinian educational institutions. “When will the Arab and Palestinian universities wake up?” he inquired. “When will students be able to overcome their fear complex?”
Another leading Palestinian columnist, Talal Okal, said he sees the anti-Israel protests at the U.S. college campuses, especially Columbia University, as “a breakthrough that is equal in its dimensions, and even exceeds, what happened on the morning of October 7, 2023, and gives that day strategic dimensions that we do not think were calculated in this way by the Palestinian resistance factions and their allies. What is happening on the campuses of American universities has enormous dimensions.”
Okal, too, expressed hope that the Arabs would seize the anti-Israel protests at the U.S. campuses by working to “equalize the influence of the Zionist lobby and expanding the sphere of [Arab] influence on American administrations.”
Palestinian political analyst Rima Kattaneh Nazzal also asked about the “silence” of Palestinian students and faculty members.
Nazzal wrote:
The uprising at American universities is an important and historical event because it indicates a shift in the state of awareness among the American youth sector and the West in general against the Zionist narrative in America and elsewhere, and it will leave an impact on the policies of the elites, perhaps in the medium and long term, in support of the occupying state (Israel). The question posed in light of the uprising at American universities: Where are Arab universities in this uprising? Where is the Palestinian academic community, especially the student blocs and university professors? Why do they remain silent like the dead, as if the matter does not concern them at all?”
Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning Israeli Arab journalist, lecturer, and documentary
filmmaker specializing in Palestinian affairs. A Senior Distinguished
Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center
for Public Affairs, he has also worked as a senior producer for NBC in
the Middle East and has reported on events in the West Bank and Gaza for
several media outlets.
Source: https://jcpa.org/article/how-do-palestinians-view-the-u-s-campus-intifada/
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