The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), ostensibly the internationally “legitimate” representative of the Palestinian people, eulogized slain Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar as a “martyr” and “great national leader.”
“The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) expresses its condolences to the Palestinian people and all national factions on the martyrdom of the great national leader Yahya Sinwar, head of the political bureau of Hamas,” the PLO said.
The statement accused Israel of perpetrating “massacres and genocide” against the Palestinians.
The PLO called for every Palestinian faction to unite after the death of Sinwar for “the full reclaiming of our rights, including the right of return, the end of the occupation, and the establishment of our Palestinian state on all our occupied territories based on the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its eternal capital.”
The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, convened the PLO Executive Committee for an emergency meeting on Thursday to pay their respects to Sinwar and pray for him:
The PLO often presents itself as one of the relatively “moderate” organizations Israel is expected to negotiate with.
Mahmoud Abbas is the semi-respectable leader of the Palestinians in the West Bank. He has lately been agitating for the international community to stop supplying weapons to Israel, pushing a 12-point “peace plan,” and advocating for his Palestinian Authority to govern postwar Gaza.