Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas should have stayed silent on the 60th anniversary of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) launching its resistance against the Israeli occupation. Anniversaries, however, are too compelling for Abbas. Palestinians, therefore, were regaled with a speech that exploited the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, while the Palestinian Authority’s security services continued their raids in the occupied West Bank, detaining and killing Palestinians for doing precisely what Abbas was glorifying the PLO for.

Recalling a past that no longer serves the PA is a downward spiral of its own. While Abbas recalled the early days of the PLO’s anti-colonial resistance, he failed to bring to attention the times that he has ridiculed Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, particularly in Gaza. And at a time when Israeli ministers are calling for the occupied West Bank to face the same genocide as Gaza, Abbas is accelerating a possible implementation by using the........

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