News
Abbas condemns “heinous” Holocaust, Netanyahu says incompatible with Hamas pact
On the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas described the Holocaust as “the most heinous crime” against humanity in the modern era. However, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu questioned Abbas’ sincerity in light of last week’s announcement that a unity government would be formed with Hamas.
The spat comes just days before the nine-month deadline for peace talks between Israel and the PA officially ends, although the announcement of the Fatah-Hamas pact had already prompted Israel to suspend negotiations. In comments made during a meeting with an American rabbi, which were published only yesterday, Abbas said, “What happened to the Jews in the Holocaust is the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era.” He also expressed “sympathy with the families of the victims and many other innocent people who were killed by the Nazis.” It was perhaps the most forthright condemnation of the Holocaust by a Palestinian leader and reflects a dramatically different personal assessment by Abbas, who wrote a 1982 doctoral dissertation titled, “The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism,” which denied the extent of the Holocaust.
Reacting to Abbas’ comments, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu said that such sentiments were incompatible with the fact that Abbas “last week chose to forge a pact with Hamas … a terror organisation that calls for the destruction of Israel and denies the Holocaust.” In 2009, Hamas protested the teaching of Holocaust studies in United Nations’ (UN) schools in Gaza, describing the Holocaust in a letter of protest as “a lie invented by the Zionists.” Netanyahu added that Hamas “attempts to achieve another Holocaust through the destruction of the State of Israel.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with CNN yesterday, Netanyahu said that “we could get back to the peace negotiations” if “Either Hamas disavows the destruction of Israel and embraces peace and denounces terror, or president Abbas renounces Hamas.” He added “the ball is in his [Abbas’] court.”