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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a Soviet spy in Damascus in the 1980s, Israel’s Channel 1 television reported Wednesday, citing information it said was included in an archive smuggled out of the USSR. According to Channel 1’s foreign news editor Oren Nahari, the famed Mitrokhin archive, kept by KGB defector Vasily Mitrokhin, revealed that Abbas was a Soviet mole in Damascus in 1983. The documents — obtained by Israeli researchers Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez — purportedly show that Abbas, code-named Krotov (mole), was involved with the Soviets while Mikhail Bogdanov, today Vladimir Putin’s envoy to the Middle East....

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a KGB agent in 1983, according to Soviet-era documents examined by Israel’s Channel 1. The Abbas revelation stems from documents in the archive of Vasili Mitrokhin, Channel 1’s Oren Nahari tweeted. Mitrokhin, a former Soviet intelligence archivist, defected to Britain after the fall of the Soviet Union. He brought with him a treasure trove of valuable info. Mitrokhin’s edited notes were released in 2014, but the unedited material remains classified by MI5, The Times of Israel, reported. Mitrokhin died in 2004. The Abbas news comes just a month before the first Palestinian elections in...

16 years after the failed Camp David summit, the fiction of the two-state solution is about to be shattered once and for all. The only relevant question today, is what does Israel intend to do next? Like it or not, the day is fast approaching when the Palestinian Authority we have known for the past 22 years will cease to exist. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas's US-trained Palestinian security forces have lost control over the Palestinians cities in Judea and Samaria. His EU- and US-funded bureaucracies are about to lose control over the local governments to Hamas. And his Fatah militias...

Like it or not, the day is fast approaching when the Palestinian Authority we have known for the past 22 years will cease to exist. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s US-trained Palestinian security forces have lost control over the Palestinians cities in Judea and Samaria. His EU- and US-funded bureaucracies are about to lose control over the local governments to Hamas. And his Fatah militias have turned against him. . Palestinian affairs experts Pinchas Inbari of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Khaled Abu Toameh of the Gatestone Institute have in recent weeks reported in detail about the insurrection of...

Hours after his security officers lynched a detainee, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged Palestinian businessmen living abroad to support the Palestinian economy by investing in the Palestinian territories. The Palestinian Authority (PA), he asserted, was "working to provide security and safety to encourage investment." According to Abbas, "The Palestinian territories are living in a state of security stability, which we are working to provide for residents and investors alike by enforcing the rule of law and enhancing transparency and accountability." *snip* The Palestinian Authority is now paying the price for harboring, funding and inciting gang members and militiamen who...

A veteran leader of the Peace Now movement is apparently calling on Israel to overthrow the Palestinian Authority. It may seem hard to believe, but that's the plain meaning of an op-ed in the July 29 edition of the New York Jewish Week by Martin I. Bresler, a former Chairman--and current board member--of Americans for Peace Now. ..... Peace Now has long functioned almost as a defense attorney for the Palestinian Authority- Peace Now has long functioned almost as a defense attorney for the Palestinian Authority--vigorously demanding Israeli concessions to the PA, while refraining from criticizing the PA's sponsorship of...

PA President Mahmoud Abbas' speech, delivered at the Arab League Summit in Nouakchott, Mauritania, on June 25, called for the Arab League's help in preparing a lawsuit against the British government for issuing and implementing the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The speech was read at the summit by PA Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki, following the death of Abbas' brother. The speech aired on Al-Jazeera network.

Taysir Kubaa, deputy head of the Palestinian National Council, on Thursday called on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to abandon the path of negotiations with Israel which, he said, does not lead to success for the Palestinians. Speaking in an interview with Hamas's Palestine newspaper, Kubaa said that the Palestinian reliance on false negotiations is wrong, since negotiations are “worthless”, as he put it, and “the only option we face is a return to national unity and enlisting our people to the forces of the struggle.” Referring to the French peace initiative which calls for an international conference to renew peace...

The international community's failure to distinguish good from evil -- and the victims it produces. We have reached the point where moral equivalence has become a moral atrocity. The smart set in the West has insisted for over a generation that Israel and the Palestinians are morally equal. There are extremists, on both sides, they say. Both sides are responsible for the absence of peace. The first serious outcry against this lie came immediately after the Palestinians began their terrorist war against Israel in September 2000. That war, incited, directed, funded, commanded and celebrated by Yassir Arafat and his henchmen,...

Speaking at the European Parliament on June 23, PA President Mahmoud Abbas alleged that only a week before, some Israeli rabbis had demanded "that their government poison the water in order to kill the Palestinians," saying that this was incitement to mass murder. The address aired on the Palestinian Authority's official TV channel. Two days later, his office issued a retraction, which, according to The New York Times, read in part: "After it has become evident that the alleged statements by a rabbi on poisoning Palestinian wells, which were reported by various media outlets, are baseless, President Mahmoud Abbas has...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas attempted to walk back controversial statements made during a recent address to the European Union parliament in Brussels, claiming on Saturday that he opposed "any attack on any religion", after having accused Israel of “poisoning Palestinian wells”. "Palestine is the cradle of the three monotheistic faiths. We stand strongly against any attack on any religion," Abbas said in a statement. The tacit acknowledgement of Judaism's roots in the Land of Israel, comes in stark contrast to Palestinian Authority propaganda which has for decades attempted to diminish the Jewish people's ancient history in Israel. In apparently...

How long is the EU going to keep shelling out large sums of money -- only to see the implementation of its noble objectives being continually subverted? The European Union (EU) possesses the financial levers to end 10 years of exploitative rule by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in not holding any elections in the West Bank during that period. 95% of the West Bank Arab population live in Areas “A” and “B” under the total administrative control of the PLO. That population has been subjugated into silence by the PLO and given no opportunity to freely express their support...

israel Beytenu chairperson Avigdor Liberman's imminent entry to the coalition government has been evoking numerous responses in Israel, but the Palestinian Authority (PA) also saw fit to comment on the developments Thursday morning. ..... That initiative is based on the 2002 Saudi initiative, by which Israel would make massive concessions in return for paper agreements from its Arab neighbors not to attack - Israel has flatly rejected the French push. According to the PA, Yisrael Beytenu's entry "sends a strong message to the world that Israel prefers radicalism..." .....

A rare meeting took place on Sunday between a member of the Saudi royal family and Israeli officials, reports NRG/Maariv. The meeting took place at the World Policy Conference in Monaco, where Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former head of the Saudi secret services and formerly his country’s ambassador to the United States, met MK Meir Sheetrit (Hatnua) and Itamar Rabinovich, formerly Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. According to NRG/Maariv, the Saudi prince publicly shook hands with Rabinovich and held a discussion with MK Sheetrit. The report said that Sheetrit invited the Saudi prince to address the Knesset, to which the prince...

Last month, UNESCO’s director general Irina Bokova issued a statement congratulating Russian- backed Syrian forces for liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State (ISIS). Bokova said Palmyra “carries the memory of the Syrian people, and the values of cultural diversity, tolerance and openness that have made this region a cradle of civilization.” Bokova added, “The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime, and UNESCO will do everything in its power to document the damage so that these crimes do not go unpunished. I wish to remind all parties present of the absolute necessity to preserve this unique...

Even as Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas continues to attack Israel and incite terrorism, his brother Abu Luay chose to receive treatment at none other than an Israeli hospital. Abbas’ brother was hospitalized at Assuta Medical Center in northern Tel Aviv, as Yedioth Aharonoth exposed on Wednesday morning. Abu Luay, who lives in Qatar, came down with cancer. He decided specifically to come to the Tel Aviv hospital for treatment, where other family members of Abbas have been treated in the past. …

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that he still sees Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a partner for peace. Speaking to journalist Ilana Dayan on Channel 2’s “Uvda” program, Abbas also claimed that the PA’s security forces fight terrorism and go as far as to search backpacks of Palestinian children for knives that can be used for stabbing attacks. “I would have to be crazy to tell my son that [carrying a knife] is the right thing. Or that these knife attacks are the right thing to do,” he said, adding, “You know, we, our security services, go...

Fatah joins official PA TV and Hamas in celebrating recent deadly terror attacks, while encouraging further murders. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction has heaped praise upon the Arab terrorists behind the string of attacks over the past 24 hours in Israel, which have claimed the life of an American tourist and injured scores of Israeli and foreign citizens. Unusually, given the reticence by many world leaders to condemn Palestinian incitement outright, the degree to which official PA factions have celebrated the attacks even drew condemnation earlier Wednesday from visiting US Vice President Joe Biden. As Arutz Sheva reported,...

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is boasting over the “achievements” of the current terror wave, which Palestinian Arab terrorist groups have named the “Al-Quds Intifada”. The Gaza-based Al-Quds Center on Thursday published statistics regarding the wave of terrorism against Israel for the month of February 2016. According to the Arab organization, during the month of February there were 30 stabbing attacks (and attempted attacks), 13 shooting attacks, five car attacks (and attempted attacks), over 11 firebomb attacks and 10 attacks involving explosives. The Center further listed the following “achievements” of the “intifada”: The torching of a synagogue in Gush Etzion, the...

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday reiterated his opposition to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, and also referred to the current terror wave as a “legitimate peaceful protest”. He made the comments at the start of a meeting of the Revolutionary Council of his Fatah organization, attended by members of the Fatah Central Committee. In his speech at the meeting, Abbas once again expressed his support for the French political initiative which seeks to convene an international peace conference. France, which announced the peace conference initiative in January, has threatened to unilaterally recognize the “State of Palestine”...