“Anyone who opposes or protests [Hamas] should be treated not as a political rival, but as a traitor,” Saeed Ziyad, a political analyst who appears regularly on Al Jazeera wrote on his X/Twitter account on Wednesday.
Such individuals must “be dealt with under the Palestinian revolutionary law,” he added.
To avoid any confusion as for the implications of the law, Ziyad referred to Hamas’s 2007 coup in Gaza, which saw dozens of Palestinian Authority personnel slaughtered by Hamas terrorists on their way to remain the sole ruler in the Gaza Strip.
Ziyad’s current post, which resonated in a troubling manner amongst many Palestinian voices, rejected the “chaos and incitement to civil war taking place in the Gaza Strip,” echoing some of the expressions made by Hamas leaders during these past couple of weeks, which attempted to paint any rejection of Hamas as a treason of the Palestinian cause and identity altogether.
Ziyad continued, claiming that “those who, along with the unprecedented societal division surrounding the effectiveness of armed resistance, are laying the foundations for a period that bears striking resemblance to 2007, a year of chaos that ended in a swift military resolution within days.”
However, Ziyad deemed that some major differences exist between the two periods, such as the fact that no other Palestinian military force exists in the Gaza Strip today, in what he dubbed “a huge power gap in favor of the resistance (i.e., Hamas).”
In Ziyad’s eyes, the current ‘incitement’ is not based on a political dispute, but rather on the very topic of the ‘weapon of resistance,’ meaning Hamas’s armed rule in Gaza. For this reason, he argued, “This grants the resistance greater societal legitimacy for decisive action, which imposes on the resistance the duty to deal with every instigator and participant on the basis of treason, not political disagreement, in accordance with Palestinian revolutionary law.”
The analyst also accused Fatah of carrying out the “central nucleus of the incitement,” claiming that Fatah was not targeted back in 2007, but only “positions of the Authority and its militias.”
Ziyad claimed that, for many years, Hamas granted Fatah “freedom of organizational, public, and student activity in Gaza,” and now he warned that these protests will lead to the organization’s “uprooting from the Gaza Strip altogether.” Ziyad ended his analysis by warning that Hamas is losing its patience, claiming that the terror group will resort to making “swift and decisive decisions.”
Condemnation – and doubling down
Ziyad, who was apparently born in Gaza and resides in Doha, caused an uproar last week as he said during one of his appearances on Al Jazeera that the Palestinians face only the choice of remaining steadfast and fighting with the “body parts and flesh of their children.” His troubling remarks were even paraphrased during one of the anti-Hamas protests in Gaza last week, as one sign said, “Don’t bring up our children’s flesh – speak about your own children’s flesh, Saeed Ziyad!”
Despite receiving thousands of likes on his current post, many were critical of Ziyad’s words, viewing them as a direct call to kill Fatah loyalists in Gaza. One commenter named Amjad wrote: “Do you understand what you are writing and saying? You are inciting the killing of hundreds of thousands of people!” accusing Ziyad of being “despicable” and “a criminal psychopath.”
One Fatah member named Mohammad taunted Ziyad, adding: “Uprooting the Fatah organization from its roots? Ok, try touching just one of the organization’s members.” One commenter from Ramallah also teased the analyst, commenting: “Are your Qatari masters happy with this statement? Are you satisfied now? […] You are a fool and a reckless Muslim Brotherhood member. Your words reflect a clear ignorance of the shifts in the balance of power in the Gaza Strip because Hamas has been weakened by its own stupidity, recklessness, and foolishness and is no longer able to do what it dreams of and what it tries to frighten the masses with. Those days are over.”
However, Ziyad doubled down on his comments, opining in a subsequent post that Fatah members should be, in fact, thanking him for the advice he offered. “The Fatah group are weird! You write to them, warning them and advising them of the consequences of the civil war they are calling for and fanning the flames of… (that) it is a strategic sin that will make them enemies of the entire Palestinian people… (but) they do not accept the warning, nor do they accept the advice!”
Al Jazeera, the Qatari state-owned TV station, has been put under scrutiny in different countries in the Middle East for varying periods, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority, some citing the channel’s espousing of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood ideologies and rhetoric.
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