“The battle in the 1967 occupied lands is open in all means… but not at the expense of the Palestinian Authority,” said Jibril Rajoub, former head of the PA’s preventive security forces and current president of the Palestinian Football Association.
Rajoub spoke last week, at a time when the PA is in a tight corner between the Israeli government and rising popular support for Hamas in the West Bank.
His interview took place on the official PA TV channel on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the series of violent campaigns and terror attacks led by Fatah, which he dubbed the “Contemporary Palestinian Revolution.”
During the interview, as reported by the organization Regavim, Rajoub was quoted as calling on Palestinian militant factions to coordinate their efforts with Fatah and not to undermine the PA.
“From the first moment, what we need is a meeting of [Palestinian] factions to affirm the conformity of the Authority, the conformity and legitimacy of weapons, and also the legitimacy of the resistance,” Rajoub said in the interview.
“The PA and its security mechanisms are not the ones meant to shoot at the Israelis – that’s not their mission. The [factions] are welcome to come and discuss [this issue] with us in Fatah; we’re willing and we’re open to this.”
‘The battle in the 1967 occupied lands is open in all means’
“The [Palestinian] policeman represents our people’s pride and greatness,” he continued, “but it’s not his job to open fire [at Israelis]. Us, as factions, we’re ready to discuss [this issue]; we’re open. We say: the battle in the 1967 occupied lands is open in all means. So, they’re welcome, but not at the expense of there being one authority, one weapon, and one law.”
Rajoub also gave hinted criticism of rival faction Hamas, claiming that instances of great military force may have been used as part of the armed struggle against Israel, but that they failed to achieve the “common grounding” that he claimed Fatah did achieve.
“We don’t forget what happened in 2006,” he added, referring to the armed coup against Fatah forces in Gaza following that year’s elections, the last time there were elections in the enclave.
Perhaps in the same context, Rajoub also stressed: “We will not have ‘national unity’ with any faction that serves in fact as a continuation of a foreign actor or country… What does Iran have to do with us, with all due respect? No Iran and no watermelon,” he added, evoking a popular colloquial phrase.
The interview came against the backdrop of the PA’s ongoing operation against armed militants affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Jenin, which was met with much criticism from Fatah opposers.
Rajoub spoke lengthily about Fatah’s leading role in the Palestinian national endeavors. “For 60 years, Fatah remains the national decision-maker of this great nation… and is at the forefront of the national struggle,” Rajoub said.
“We didn’t manage to obtain independence, but we achieved this amazing steadfastness and wide international legitimacy for an independent state.”
Israeli activists: Time we start listening to Fatah
Naomi Linder Kahn, Director of the International Division of Regavim, who called public attention to Rajoub’s remarks about the need to coordinate violent actions with Fatah, spoke with The Jerusalem Post.
“This statement is not at all a new one – what is new is the public, transparent declaration of principles from one of the highest-ranking Palestinian Authority figures. Since October 7, PA officials have not only applauded Hamas’s massacre of Israelis but have even boasted about the participation of PA militants in the atrocities.”
She continued, “The PA has repeated, ad nauseam, that it will not cease to fund terrorists nor stop encouraging the murder of Israelis. In this context, Rajoub has laid things out clearly: the internal conflicts are not about whether or not Jews should be killed – but who gets the credit for the act of killing them. The struggle is for power, and power has only one purpose: to enable the murder of even more Jews.
“This is not new for Rajoub. As head of the “Palestinian Preventive Security Force,” as Secretary General of the Fatah Central Committee, and even as head of the Palestinian Football League – the fact that he is now saying the same things in front of the cameras that he has been saying off-camera for years only means that he does not feel he needs to hide his intentions anymore.
“He’s learned that Israeli and world governments continue to pretend that they don’t hear these murderous statements. If there’s anything to be learned from October 7, it is this: They mean what they say, they say what they mean – and it’s time we start listening,” she concluded.
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