French Government Mightily Impressed with Mahmoud Abbas’ Promises

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Promises, promises. The Palestinian Authority wants very much for Emmanuel Macron, President of France, to recognize a “Palestinian” state with the Palestinian Authority in charge. He needs no convincing, for Macron is fearful of the Muslim millions in his country, and is determined to appease them by abandoning the Jewish state to those baying for its disappearance, and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state.

Now the Palestinian Authority has sent the French a letter full of solemn promises to reform itself once it assumes control over a new “state of Palestine.” The French believe, or at least pretend to believe — I don’t know which is worse — that these promises from the Palestinian Authority will be kept, a new day has dawned, reform is here to stay, the bad practices of the past will be replaced with the “best practices” of the future. More on this ridiculous letter, and its absurd reception, can be found here: “France says Palestinian Authority makes ‘unprecedented commitments’ to reform ahead of conference on statehood,” by Saskya Vandoorne, Joseph Ataman and Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN, June 11, 2025:

France said it has received a letter from the Palestinian Authority that contains “concrete and unprecedented commitments” to reform as Paris prepares to co-chair a conference on Palestinian statehood in New York.

The letter, which France said was signed by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, includes condemnation of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, a call on Hamas to immediately release all hostages, and pledges to hold elections and reform the authority, according to excerpts shared with CNN.

Now the PA condemns Hamas, but why did it not do so on October 7? And why, as the war in Gaza went on, did the Palestinian Authority continue to praise the attacks carried out that day, and continued to support Hamas’ “resistance” in Gaza? It is only recently that the PA has decided to “condemn” Hamas’ attacks that started the war, not because Abbas and his retinue have moral objections to massacring Israeli civilians, but because they regard Hamas as a dangerous rival that has been fighting the regime based in Ramallah ever since the terror group booted the PA’s military faction, Fatah, out of Gaza in 2007, killing hundreds of them in the process.

And the French are also apparently willing to believe Abbas’ promise that the Palestine Authority will in this state of “Palestine” “hold elections.” How likely is it that free and fair elections could be held in a new state of Palestine, given the PA’s long record of being riddled with corruption? Should the French trust Mahmoud Abbas’ assurances about holding elections? True, he did take part in an election once, back in 2005, when he was elected to a four-year-term, and he enjoyed it so much that he now promises he might even do it again.

Hamas will no longer rule Gaza and must hand over its weapons and military capabilities to the Palestinian Security Forces, which will oversee their removal outside the occupied Palestinian territory, with Arab and international support,” the Élysée Palace cited Abbas as writing.

Why wouldn’t Abbas want his deadly enemy, Hamas, to be completely disarmed? But he has nothing to say about disarming the Fatah fighters, nothing that addresses Israel’s quite sensible demand that any Palestinian entity be armed with nothing more lethal than rifles for a police force.

Nor does the letter contain a promise that Mahmoud Abbas, or a possible successor, will put a stop right now, or indeed ever, to the “Pay-for-Slay” program. That is the program by which the PA provides generous monthly subsidies to imprisoned terrorists or to the families of terrorists killed while engaged in their attack. “Pay-For-Slay” then, both rewards past, and incentivizes future, acts of terrorism. Abbas has in the past said that no matter what, he would support “Pay-For-Slay” (that, of course, is not the name he gives it) with “my last penny.” Will Macron bring up that matter, so that the letter can be emended to include a promise to end “Pay-For-Slay”? Or in his eagerness to curry Muslim favor, will the French president simply pretend not to notice?

France said Abbas pledged to organize presidential and general elections within a year in order to “rejuvenate the Palestinian governance.”…

Abbas has had two decades to “organize presidential and general elections,” and has not managed to hold even one presidential election as head of the Palestinian Authority. Yet all of a sudden, the despots in Ramallah promise that they know how to organize free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections. If Saddam Hussein, or Idi Amin, or Vladimir Putin, had promised the West to hold “free and fair” elections if only the Western world would trust them, would anyone have believed it?