US President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20 will bring about the end of the Iranian regime and Hamas, according to Mohammad Hamdan, secretary general of the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah faction, the New York Post reported Monday.
“We see that Trump and the ruling government in Israel are planning to destroy Iran, so Hamas [followers] will have no other choice than to become Palestinian [i.e., fall in line with the PA],” he told the Post on December 19.
Trump was evaluating the possibility of preemptive strikes on Iran to stop its growing nuclear program, The Wall Street Journal reported in early December.
The destruction of Iran would lead to Hamas’s demise, Hamdan told the Post from Nablus.
“Hamas rejects international legitimacy, meaning UN resolutions,” he said. “The world cannot accept a situation where a party does not accept international resolutions.”
Last week, Hamas called for mobilization against the PA and what it called an “unprecedented” level of “aggression” against it and other terrorist groups in the West Bank.
Israel's existence
The Fatah leaders interviewed by the Post acknowledged Israel’s right to exist but condemned the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.
Hamdan said he was skeptical about US policy in the Middle East and blamed rising Islamism on American foreign policy, the report said.
“Look what happened in Syria,” he said. “First, the US declared the rebels to be al-Qaeda, and then an American delegation visited Syria. And the one before that, when the Americans struck deals with the Taliban in Afghanistan.”
“We as Palestinians believe that most of these extremist Islamic groups are produced by America by its effort to create a new Middle East,” Hamdan said.
A senior Israeli official told the Post the PA’s opposition to Hamas could enable opportunities for peace talks.“There could be a historically unprecedented opportunity for the PA to strengthen its grasp on the Palestinian territories,” the official said.