Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 01, 2021

01/01 Links Pt1: 2021: What will the Middle East look like in the new year?; US, Israel Vote Against 2021 United Nations Budget, Citing ‘Hate, Antisemitism, and Anti-Israel Bias’

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: 2021: What will the Middle East look like in the new year?

THE SECOND side of the triangle in the Middle East is Turkey and its allies. Ankara’s ruling party is rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. It backs Hamas in Gaza and twice hosted senior Hamas terrorists this year. Reports indicate that Hamas plans attacks from Turkey, receives passports and support and uses Turkey as a cyber base for threats to Israel. While Turkey ended 2020 claiming it wants reconciliation with Israel after years of comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany, Ankara has consistently supported extremists and terrorists.

Turkey has other Islamist friends it recruited in Syria and in Libya. Turkey co-opted the Syrian rebellion and channeled it into a series of extremist groups it has sought to mobilize to fight Kurds and Armenians. In 2018 Turkey ethnically cleansed Afrin, a historically Kurdish area of Syria, then attacked Kurds in Serekaniye in October 2019. US officials worked with Turkey, hoping to undermine their own Pentagon’s policies in Syria.

We know from recent interviews that US envoys admired Turkey’s thuggish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and sought to outsource US policy to him. This caused Turkey to think it had a blank check to attack everyone in the region. It threatened Greece with a “flood” of refugees in February and March. It clashed with Syria and Russia in the Syrian city of Idlib. It sent extremist militias recruited from poor Syrian refugees to attack Kurds and Christians in the northeast Syrian towns of Ain Issa and Tel Tamr near the Turkish border. It sent Syrians to fight in Libya. It also threatened Greece using the excuse that it was seeking natural gas in the Mediterranean. Turkey wanted to thwart a planned Israel-Cyprus-Greece pipeline deal. In July and then in September Turkey prodded Azerbaijan to attack Armenians in Nagorna-Karabakh.

THE THIRD side of the Middle East alliance systems is the emerging Israel-UAE-Egypt-Jordan-Bahrain-Greece-Cyprus system of friendships. Israel made peace with Bahrain and the UAE in August and September in the momentous new Abraham Accords. With Saudi Arabia’s approval, Morocco followed. Sudan also agreed to normalize ties with Israel.

In each case the US was key in supporting the new agreements: weapons deals for the UAE, an end of sanctions for Sudan, as well as recognition of Morocco’s claims in Western Sahara came from Washington. The Trump administration poured efforts in its last year in office into this brave new world in the Middle East.

The burgeoning relationships offer massive economic potential for Israel and the Gulf. Seventy-thousand Israelis went to Dubai toward the end of the year. They were able to escape the COVID restrictions briefly, although by the end of December the lockdowns were back and Israelis were back home. A few stayed on in Dubai, awaiting the New Year’s parties. They might have been able to look back to February when Turkey first found COVID among flights coming from Iran and recall just how much has changed since then.

Much has also stayed the same, in terms of Iran’s and Turkey’s policies seeking to exploit the lack of US leadership and drawdown of US forces – to fight over the scraps of what was once US hegemony in the Middle East.

The Abraham Accords domino effect will lead to more peace deals

With 2020 behind us and 2021 beginning, there is discussion of even more dominoes falling, and even more countries joining the Abraham Accords. Trump administration officials have said they’re working to even make it happen in the next three weeks, before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

Mauritania, Oman and Indonesia are the names on Israeli and American officials’ tongues these days, which makes sense, because Israel has or has had some level of ties with all of them.

Mauritania declared war on Israel in 1967, but the countries established diplomatic relations in 1999, which were suspended in the wake of Operation Cast Lead in 2009.

Former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin visited Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, and thousands of Israeli and Indonesian tourists visit each other’s countries each year.

Netanyahu visited Oman in 2018, and Israel and Oman are part of the anti-Iran axis in the Middle East.

But the big hope is for Saudi Arabia. This is where Biden comes into play. Biden and his foreign policy advisers have spoken positively about the Abraham Accords, without commenting on the strings attached. At the same time, they have been very critical of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. If the Trump administration doesn’t find a way to quickly make it worth Riyadh’s while in the next few weeks, which seems unlikely, MBS and King Salman will probably wait to see what benefit they can exact from the Biden administration to go with peace with Israel. After all, the thought is, why shouldn’t they get something out of the deal, as the UAE, Sudan and Morocco did?

At the same time, a very senior official told The Jerusalem Post that Riyadh is expected to get on board in 2021. Netanyahu and MBS met in the Saudi city of Neom weeks ago. Salman is still reticent on the matter, holding on to the Arab Peace Initiative, also known as the Saudi Initiative, which requires peace with the Palestinians before normalization with the Arab League.

Looking ahead at the unfolding new year, it seems likely that the Abraham Accords domino rally will continue, and it seems almost inevitable that it will feature the biggest coup of all, Saudi-Israel peace.

But if there’s anything we learned from 2020, it is that January can be drastically different from December in ways we never expected.

Boycott israel (with a big asterisk)

A poster I made this week....

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PrimeTimeZone reports on a new interview that Suha Arafat, Yasir Arafat's widow, gave to Yediot Aharonot:

In surprising and shocking statements, the widow of the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Suha, acquitted Israel of responsibility for poisoning her husband and causing his death.

And she considered in a lengthy interview with the Hebrew newspaper “Yediot Aharonot” that her husband went on the path of terrorism and committed a big mistake by igniting the Al-Aqsa Intifada that broke out in 2000 after former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Suha told the newspaper that Yasser Arafat was definitely poisoned, but not by Israel but by a Palestinian.

She added: "Everyone believed that Israel was guilty, but I am not accusing it. I’ve always said that it’s too easy to say Israel, but I don’t think the Israelis killed Arafat. ...What evidence do you have that Israel is responsible?"

Suha believes that Arafat should not have returned to the path of terror, adding: “There are others who were more murderers than Arafat, and Yasser really mourned and deeply grieved for the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Except that he was obsessed with hatred for Sharon ”.

According to the Hebrew newspaper, “Suha Arafat is trying to convince the Israelis that even though her husband Yasser’s hands are stained with the blood of thousands of Israelis, he really wanted peace.”

It sounds like she wants to rewrite Arafat's murderous legacy and at the same time to distance him from other Palestinian leaders who she has criticized in the past.

Esmail Ghaani is the brigadier general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who succeeded Qassem Soleimani as commander of Iran's Quds Force.

Today he threatened terror attacks within the US as revenge for Soleimani's assassination a year ago.

At a ceremony marking the first anniversary of Soleimani's death, Ghaani said that someone already in the US might take revenge on the perpetrators. "Our path is still the same, rest assured, there may even be people inside your house who will respond to your crime," he warned the US.

Yesterday, in a closed door session of the Iranian parliament, Ghaani explcitly threatened to assassinate US officials in revenge. He reportedly specified Donald Trump, the head of the CIA Gina Haspel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Secretary of Defense, presumably Mark Esper who held that position a year ago.

Referring to the writer that the Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa death sentence against in 1989, Ghaani said that these targets should learn from Salman Rushdie how to survive in hiding if they want to live.

Will these explicit threats of terror attacks be condemned in the UN or by "human rights" organizations? I expect there will be little reaction.

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Al Khaleej Online reported this week about a social media campaign to boycott tourism to Dubai - because Jews were visiting there.

The site didn't even pretend it was talking about Israelis.

In light of the influx of Jews to the Emirates and their establishment of religious rituals and provocative rituals in front of Arabs and Muslims in the most prominent tourist places in this Gulf country, voices appeared from within the GCC countries calling for a boycott of tourism in Dubai, which was a reception station for Jews during the recent period.

The most provocative scenes for the Gulf and Arab peoples were the circulation of a video clip (Wednesday, December 9), showing Israeli tourists performing a Jewish prayer at the top of Burj Khalifa in the Emirate of Dubai.

This tweet showed a video of a concert of a religious Jewish singer in front of the Burj Khalif skyscraper, with the text "After watching and repeating these shameful scenes, it must become a duty to boycott Dubai tourism. We are not even used to watching these pigs."

This one showed Jews praying in the skyscraper and says, "By God, after the Zionists desecrated it, Dubai will not return to its previous glory, and nothing will come from Zionism but ruin."

The article cites an "expert" about how Arab boycotts of Dubai could hurt the UAE economy.

The thing is, the hashtag started in December 13 and ran out of steam a couple of days later, with another flurry about a week ago.

No one is boycotting Dubai tourism. It is just a hashtag to make some people feel like they are "activists" and to tell others what to do.

There is a lot in common between the far Left in the West who want to boycott the Jewish state and the antisemitic bigots who want to boycott Dubai because Jews are visiting.

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12/31 Links Pt2: A Jewish prisoner's longing for Zion; 5 reasons why mainstream Jews should drop the Palestinian cause in 2021; How Wikipedia is breeding armies of antisemites

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: A Jewish prisoner's longing for Zion

Pollard paid for that fateful decision with 30 years in prison and another five years of conditional release during which he was barred from moving to Israel.

I asked him back then to describe his life in prison.

"I don't want to go into detail," he responded with a brief, sad sigh. "I will give you an impressionistic description of my life. Life here involves constant noise, endless noise that is impossible to imagine, all the time; constant violence; profanity every conceivable type of profanity. There is no place to be quiet or to find quiet to read. You really have to be disciplined not to be provoked. You need to be disciplined to see when a situation is getting out of hand and to get away as quickly as possible. I have to be ready if my door opens at 2 in the morning."

I asked Pollard what he thought about when he was sitting in his room.

"My dream is to be with my wife, at home in Israel. I am worried about my wife. She is a cancer survivor. But she refused to have chemotherapy because it would have destroyed any chance of having children. Do you have any idea of what it feels like for a husband to have to hear over the phone that his wife has cancer?" he asked in an expression of unending distress and barely disguised desperation.

"I want to come home so that I can be with my wife, my people and my land. That is all I want. I love my nation."

Thirty-five years after his initial arrest, 15 years after I met with him, early on Wednesday morning, Jonathan Pollard finally realized his dream, the dream of a Jewish prisoner longing for Zion.

5 reasons why mainstream Jews should drop the Palestinian cause in 2021

As we close the chapter of an unprecedented year filled with enormous loss and begin a new year with unparalleled opportunity, I believe now is the time to ask bold questions with answers that may be uncomfortable for the mainstream Jewish community in North America. As we made, and now pursue, resolutions for our personal and professional selves, our families and our communities, let us also have the courage to ask the more uncomfortable, more durable – and frankly, more honest questions that we only have the courage to ask in the light of this most challenging year.

How do we engage with Israel? What core policy objectives do we as a community and our organizations seek to achieve? Which organizational policy objectives, written long ago in boardrooms far far away, are still relevant? Which objectives are not relevant? What is achievable? What is not? What is the “needle” – and in what direction do we push it? Which causes embrace all of our identities? And which causes force us as Jews, as Americans, and as Zionists to leave our identities at the door?

I have a resolution.

In 2021, and in the years and decades beyond, the organized Jewish community should abandon its paralyzing, archaic, immoral and dangerous objective of establishing a Palestinian state.

Our world has changed. The Middle East has changed. Israel has changed. The American Jewish community, and its objectives, must too. Suppress your anger, lay down your talking points and hear me out.

1. The Abraham Accords

2. John Kerry’s Middle East is gone – if it ever existed after all

3. No Jewish Organization was actively involved in the Abraham Accords – and likely won’t even be involved in any other breakthrough

4. The Palestinians, and any future potential Palestinian state, would be an organized society and nation whose values and lack of rule of law would be completely antithetical to the Western world

5. The PLO, our alleged partners in peace, incentivize and pay terrorists to kill Jews

Cartoon of the Day: BDS Silver Lining

Continuing my series of re-captioning cartoons....

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There was a kerfuffle recently when the International Committee of the Red Cross decided to make a Twitter thread about the violations of international law depicted in the fictional, excellent Israeli TV series Fauda.

Of course, people made fun of the ICRC for pretending that a fictional story is real.

But even more idiotic was Mondoweiss' take. The site outdid itself in its article about the incident in its sheer ignorance about, really, everything.

The writer, Jonathan Ofir, freely admits that he never saw the show. He then goes on to create a conspiracy theory that the people who responded to the ICRC tweet are a group of professional Israeli hasbarists who are part of a shadowy group:

The Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry under Gilad Erdan (who is now Israel’s UN Ambassador)– which has been the headquarters for the anti-BDS campaign, which included secret ‘black ops’ operations– has established an army of social media propagandists.

He's talking about Digitell, which is a very loose group of already-existing bloggers and pro-Israel activists who have met in person twice. I should know - I'm in the group. And while the ministry would love for us to have a unified strategy and messaging, we all still do whatever we want to, while sometimes consulting with others. (Ofir even proves that there was an inconsistency in messaging between the Zionist responses to the ICRC tweet, which undermines his entire argument.)

But Ofir really shows how little he knows when he adds his own non-expertise in international law to the discussion of why Fauda is so evil:

The central theme of Fauda is what is know in international law as Perfidy. ICRC provides the definition of Perfidy from standard International Humanitarian Law:

Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with the intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy.

In other words, it is about conducting a military operation under the guise of being a civilian, or impersonating an individual who is supposed to be offered special humanitarian protection. This act is dangerous also because it puts civilians and humanitarian workers at risk, as it creates a suspicion that they may be involved in the hostilities.

Such perfidy is standard operating procedure for Israel.

For some reason, the ICRC didn't mention perfidy in its list of Fauda's violations of international law, but Ofir thinks he knows better.

Ofir has no clue.

When characters in Fauda go undercover, they are not acting as soldiers. They are acting as spies. And espionage is not against international law.

As the ICRC quotes US practice in its documentation on perfidy:

Customary international law does not … prohibit belligerents from using saboteurs, secret agents or other irregular forces feigning civilian status to attack legitimate military targets. Wear of civilian clothing during an attack, or during a spying or sabotage mission behind enemy lines, may subject combatants to punishment if captured by the enemy.

Spies do not have the protection of international law given to soldiers. Their risk is much greater, and if they are caught they can be executed if that is the law of the capturers.

How much ignorance can Mondoweiss fit in one article?

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Progressives Torn As Bus Under Which To Throw Jews Fails Emissions Test (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

hippie van Sacramento, December 31 - Stalwarts of forward-leaning politics voiced consternation today at a new dilemma that may force them to choose as never before between the values of ecological sensitivity and steamrolling Jewish concerns in pursuit of those values.

Progressive figures across California expressed dismay Thursday after the 48-seater vehicle, under which they had intended to throw Jews while pursuing the progressive agenda, could not meet the state's air pollution limitations, the toughest such thresholds in the nation. As never before activists observed, they must decide whether to proceed in their endeavors to implement a progressive agenda if in that pursuit they do not end up harming Jewish interests.

"It's not a problem we gave much thought to," admitted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D-NY). "All of us just kind of assumed that throwing Jews under the bus was an automatic consequence of pursuing our vision for the twenty-first century in ecology, economics, race relations, everything. But it turns out sometimes you have to go out of your way to make harming Jewish interests, or at the very least disregarding the expressed concerns of the vast majority of the American Jewish community, an outcome. We need to have some serious conversations about how far out of our way to go to ensure that outcome, and what the other costs might be to such a direction."

Previous conflicts between Jewish concerns and the progressive agenda have tended to make Jewish concerns secondary or irrelevant to the desired outcome, as when prominent progressives have declared support for Jewish sovereignty and security in the ancestral Jewish homeland to be at odds with progressive values. "It's not Israel-Palestine per se that's the issue," explained activist and Women's March founder Linda Sarsour. "My buddies in the Nation of Islam probably couldn't care less whether Israel exists, or who rules the Palestinians, just as the Arabs in Palestine couldn't care less when they were under foreign rule for many centuries. It's the Jews of America that bother Brother Farrakhan, not the Jews of Tel Aviv, although licking the latter in the teeth might also be good. No, it's about maintaining the Jew as an enemy, and as time passes, our sensibilities have increasingly painted the Jew as the source of our community's problems, because it's more convenient to blame someone else than to fix your own problems, and hey, look, the Jews are right here, always available as scapegoats."

"But this time it's a little different," she acknowledged, "because now we have to determine whether harming Jews is simply a positive side-effect of our efforts, or a goal in itself, and if the latter, then does it outweigh other progressive goals? I think we all know what the decision will be in the end, but it looks good to have a 'conversation' about it that really only involves people who want Jews to just go away with their irritating insistence that people treat them with the same humanity and respect we demand for everyone else."

12/31 Links Pt1:Does UNRWA Violate International Law?; Israel’s 2 top int’l law officials take on ICC: Is Gaza ‘occupied’?; Senate Investigation Finds Obama Admin Knowingly Funded al-Qaeda Affiliate

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: Does UNRWA Violate International Law?

UNRWA’s definition of refugee technically violates international law, as it contradicts the 1951 UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Article 1 of the Convention defines a refugee as: …a person who is outside his/her country of nationality or habitual residence; has a well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion; and is unable or unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution.

Under Article I(c)(3), a person is no longer a refugee if, for example, he or she has “acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality.”

UNRWA’s definition of a Palestinian refugee, which is not anchored in any treaty and thus does not carry the weight of international law, includes no such provision. In fact, UNRWA defines “Palestinian refugees” to include all offspring of male Palestinian refugees from 1948, including legally adopted children, regardless of whether they have been granted citizenship elsewhere.

The United Nations claims on its website that UNRWA’s unusual practice does not violate international law and norms, by pointing out that there are other conflicts in the world where refugee status has continued for successive generations (eg. Afghanistan and Somalia).

However, the United Nations’ claim is not only misleading but objectively wrong. Under the 1951 Convention (1967 Protocol, Article IV Section B), successive generations have refugee status only if it is necessary to maintain what is called “family unity.” For example, imagine that a couple escaped Afghanistan, became refugees in Pakistan, and then had a child. Even though that child never lived in Afghanistan, he or she would nevertheless be granted refugee status in order to keep the family unit from being broken apart by potential developments.

However, under UNRWA’s rules, there is no “family unity” limitation. To the contrary, unlimited future generations may inherit refugee status even when there is no living family connection to pre-1948 British-ruled Palestine and, consequently, there is no danger of tearing apart any family unit. This is no subtle distinction: UNRWA has, knowingly or not, created a financial incentive for host countries to deny Palestinians citizenship, so that the nations in question can benefit from the international aid that comes with hosting people who maintain refugee status in perpetuity.

According to a 2012 report by the United States Senate, under the terms of the 1951 Convention, which applies to all other people in the world, the number of real Palestinian refugees living today is only about 30,000. Yet, according to UNRWA, the number of “refugees” is over 5 million, making Palestinians the only group in the world whose refugee population has increased — and dramatically — over time.

Israel’s 2 top int’l law officials take on ICC: Is Gaza ‘occupied’?

Two of Israel’s top international law officials have published a rare public article to challenge the International Criminal Court prosecution and others who say that Israel still illegally occupies Gaza.

The article, published in the journal Iyunei Mishpat (Legal Studies) recently but being reported now for the first time in English, is important both regarding addressing cases of alleged Israeli war crimes in ongoing fighting with Hamas, as well as regarding what humanitarian obligations Jerusalem has to Gaza, during coronavirus and other periods.

These issues ultimately have major long-term implications at the national security and diplomatic levels, including whether Israel’s naval blockade and other periodic closures of Gaza are legal.

Just as important are the authors: Deputy Attorney-General (International Law) Roy Schondorf and IDF International Law Division chief Col. Eran Shamir-Borer, two officials who have led much of Israel’s handling of ICC issues and humanitarian dilemmas with Gaza.

Schondorf rarely writes publicly or appears in public with the exception of specific conferences or at the Knesset, and Shamir-Borer appears even less often.

It seems that the impetus for their article was to address prior statements by ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda as well as a current article by prominent Israeli prof. Eyal Gross in the same journal, declaring that Israel still legally occupies Gaza, despite having withdrawn in 2005.

Senate Investigation Finds Obama Admin Knowingly Funded al-Qaeda Affiliate

Non-profit humanitarian agency World Vision United States improperly transacted with the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA) in 2014 with approval from the Obama administration, sending government funds to an organization that had been sanctioned over its ties to terrorism, according to a new report.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) recently released a report detailing the findings of an investigation his staff began in February 2019 into the relationship between World Vision and ISRA.

The probe found that World Vision was not aware that ISRA had been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2004 after funneling roughly $5 million to Maktab al-Khidamat, the predecessor to Al-Qaeda controlled by Osama Bid Laden.

However, that ignorance was born from insufficient vetting practices, the report said.

“World Vision works to help people in need across the world, and that work is admirable,” Grassley said in a statement. “Though it may not have known that ISRA was on the sanctions list or that it was listed because of its affiliation with terrorism, it should have. Ignorance can’t suffice as an excuse. World Vision’s changes in vetting practices are a good first step, and I look forward to its continued progress.”

The investigation was sparked by a July 2018 National Review article in which Sam Westrop, the director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch, detailed MEF’s findings that the Obama administration had approved a “$200,000 grant of taxpayer money to ISRA.”

Government officials specifically authorized the release of “at least $115,000” of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization, Westrop wrote. (h/t MtTB)

From 2009 Tom Getman of World Vision talking to Stephen Sizer (antisemetic priest) about the incoming Obama administration.

A few days ago, Hamas started plastering billboards all over Gaza with pictures of the Iranian Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, ahead of the first anniversary of his being assassinated by the US.

The billboards quoted Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh who called him a "Martyr of Jerusalem" at his eulogy.

The Sunni Arab world reacted harshly.

Saudi journalist Muhammad Al Sheikh tweeted, "Pictures of the criminal Iranian serial killer Qassem Soleimani greet you from every direction in Gaza. The reason is because the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood Hamas is just the arm of a Persian conspirator ... and you want to liberate Palestine, traitors? "

Even within Gaza people were upset. One man ripped down one of the posters to the cheers of a crowd and the video went viral.

Hamas is still more popular in Gaza than Fatah by far, but Gazans seem to have little interest in becoming an Iranian proxy like Hezbollah or the Houthis.

Update: Hamas arrested the person who tore down the poster. (h/t Tomer)

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Hamas has its own foreign ministry

When Hamas and Fatah split in 2007, both of them claimed to be the legitimate government of the Palestinian Authority.

Most of the world recognized Fatah's claims that they formed a new government for the PA, even though its creation violated the Palestinian constitution.

But Hamas maintained its own claim to be the legitimate government, and it has never relinquished that claim, even though it too is not the government under the Palestinian constitution. Which means that Hamas duplicated all of the governmental ministries of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, at least on paper.

Including a Foreign Ministry.

The Hamas Foreign Ministry page doesn't mention Hamas - it claims to be the Palestinian Foreign Ministry.

It is a strange site. It occasionally issues statements, such as the most recent one from October 27 condemning cartoons that hurt Muslim feelings. It held a Zoom session on mediation techniques in early October.

But nowhere does it say who the actual Hamas foreign minister is, or the names of anyone who works at the ministry, or even its address. Press releases are simply signed "Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gaza, Palestine."

Even Iran doesn't recognizes this ministry as having any legitimacy, as the Palestinian "embassy" in Tehran is run by the PLO (at least as of 2016.)

Between the PA and Hamas, the Palestinians have two illegitimate governments.

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