Abbas’s PLO mourns ‘martyrdom’ of Hamas chief Sinwar, a ‘great national leader’

PA president’s Fatah also offers condolences to terror group; so does Turkish foreign minister as he hosts Hamas representatives

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas leads a prayer in memory of those killed in Gaza at the start of a Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee meeting in Ramallah on October 17, 2024. (Wafa)
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas leads a prayer in memory of those killed in Gaza at the start of a Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee meeting in Ramallah on October 17, 2024. (Wafa)

The Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and seen internationally as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, expressed its condolences Friday on the “martyrdom” of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, calling him a “great national leader” and urging Palestinian national unity.

Some of the PLO’s constituent factions also expressed condolences for the terror chief’s demise, including Abbas’s secularist Fatah party, which said Israel’s “killing and terrorism will not succeed in breaking the will of our people.”

Sinwar was the architect of the October 7, 2023 invasion and slaughter in southern Israel, when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst through the Gaza border and massacred 1,600 people in their homes, communities and at a music festival, and abducted 251 to Gaza where 97 are still held hostage. He was killed by IDF troops in Gaza’s Rafah on Wednesday.

Among the condolences quoted by WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, were messages from the Palestinian National Initiative and the Palestinian Democratic Union, left-wing members of the PLO which, like Fatah, have expressed opposition to armed struggle against Israel.

Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s Gaza chief, speaks during a meeting in Gaza City, on April 30, 2022. (Mahmud Hamas/AFP)

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held talks on Friday with representatives of Hamas and expressed condolences over the death of Sinwar, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

During the meeting, Fidan said that Turkey will “use all diplomatic means to mobilize the international community against the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza,” the ministry said.

Turkey’s relations with Israel have significantly deteriorated under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has repeatedly expressed support for Hamas and hosted its representatives in Turkey since the October 7, 2023 attacks, while comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.

The condolences from the PLO and Turkey came hours after Hamas confirmed Sinwar’s death and vowed not to release the hostages unless Israel withdrew its troops from Gaza and ended the war.

The Islamist Hamas is not a member of the PLO, which is dominated by a host of secularist and socialist parties.

Fatah, which controls the PLO and the PA in the West Bank, has had a tense relationship with Hamas since the latter violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 and removed Fatah officials from power in the coastal enclave, after Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005 from the entire Strip.

Abbas has criticized Hamas for giving Israel “even more excuses and reasons to attack in the Gaza Strip” with the October 7, 2023 massacres, which Sinwar orchestrated. But he has shied away from strongly condemning Hamas’s atrocities, with the terror group enjoying broad support in the Palestinian street.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the UN General Assembly in New York, September 26, 2024. (Screenshot, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Israel has long accused Abbas and the PA of backing terror by lionizing terrorists as “martyrs” and paying stipends to jailed terror operatives and families of slain terrorists.

It also accuses the PA of inciting to hatred of Israel in its education system. Fatah regularly lauds the actions of Palestinian terrorists and senior Fatah officials have at times expressed support for Hamas and its deadly attacks on Israelis.

Abbas has indicated that the PA is willing to take control over the Gaza Strip after Hamas is removed from power there — on condition of the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

World leaders including the US have pushed for a “reformed” Palestinian Authority taking control in Gaza.

But Israel has rejected such notions, saying a body that backs terrorism will not rule the Strip.

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