PA instructs its officials not to attack Arab leaders, countries

The PA has repeatedly accused the UAE and Bahrain of backstabbing the Palestinians and betraying the Palestinian issue by signing the peace accords with Israel.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
A PALESTINIAN leadership genuinely committed to the welfare of their people, unlike PA President Mahmoud Abbas, could take the proposals in ‘Vision for Peace’ as a starting point for negotiations. (photo credit: FLASH90)
A PALESTINIAN leadership genuinely committed to the welfare of their people, unlike PA President Mahmoud Abbas, could take the proposals in ‘Vision for Peace’ as a starting point for negotiations.
(photo credit: FLASH90)
The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday instructed its official spokesmen and representatives around the world not to attack Arab heads of state and Arab countries in the aftermath of the normalization agreements signed between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The instruction came after the PA ambassador to France, Salman el-Herfi, launched a scathing attack on Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, dubbing him a “little dictator who wants to make himself known.”
The PA has repeatedly accused the UAE and Bahrain of stabbing the Palestinians in the back and betraying the Palestinian cause by signing the normalization accords with Israel.
Herfi, in an interview with the French magazine Le Point, said that the Palestinians will go to the United Nations and “challenge Mohammed bin Zayed to declare Jerusalem occupied territory. He [bin Zayed] surrendered to Israel without a battle.”
The PA ambassador also said that the UAE was “never on the side of the Palestinians.” The UAE and Bahrain, he added, “have become more Israeli than the Israelis.
In response, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash wrote on his Twitter account: “I was not surprised by the statements of the Palestinian ambassador to Paris and his ungrateful dealings with the Emirates.” The Palestinians, he said, “deny everything that the UAE has presented to the Palestinian cause... but the UAE has its message, a message of peace. The masks of the traffickers in the Palestinian cause have fallen.”
A PA official told The Jerusalem Post that the Palestinian ambassador’s remarks against bin Zayed and the UAE do not reflect the views of the Palestinian leadership.
“These are the ambassador’s personal views,” the official said, noting that the PA leadership has instructed its representatives to refrain from making derogatory statements against Arab countries and their leaders.
The PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement published on Wednesday, pointed out that PA President Mahmoud Abbas has “stressed the need to respect the persons and symbols of these countries and not to attack them in any way.”
Referring to the PA ambassador’s attack on the UAE, the ministry clarified that his remarks were “in violation of Abbas’s instructions and the official Palestinian position.”