Mahmoud Abbas said last Thursday that although he is opposed to an armed resistance against Israel at the present time, he has not ruled out the possibility of violent conflict in the future.

In an interview with the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustur, the Palestinian president blatantly stated the reason he was opposed to an armed conflict at the moment is that the Palestinian Authority is “unable” right now. However, he said, “in … future stages things may be different.”

Abbas, a so-called moderate, also used the interview to highlight his seminal role in Palestinian terrorism, boasting that he had fired the first shot of “resistance” back in 1965. He also lauded the Palestinian Liberation Organization for having taught “how to resist, when resistance is most effective and when it is not.”

“I was honored to be the one to shoot the first bullet in 1965, and having taught resistance to many in this area and around the world, defining it and when it is beneficial and when it is not. … We had the honor of leading the resistance. We taught everyone what resistance is, including the Hezbollah, who were trained in our camps,” Abbas said.

This is the man the United States and Europe trust as the viable alternative to Hamas. As the Trumpet has reported, the West has injected hundreds of millions of dollars into Fatah so it can strengthen its position among Palestinians.

But can Israel and the rest of the world really trust Fatah when Abbas openly supports terrorism when speaking to the Arab world? Such provocative rhetoric can hardly be considered moderate. Abbas could quickly switch from negotiating back to terrorizing.

These questions should come into even sharper focus after Israel’s recent operations in the Gaza Strip. In response to the Israel Defense Forces’ recent retaliation to rocket attacks from Gaza, Abbas said it was “worse than the Holocaust” and that the response was too severe and unacceptable.

Abbas said that Israel’s defending itself after a series of terrorist attacks and killing 80 Palestinians, most of them terrorists, was worse than the inhuman extermination of 6 million Jews.

When it comes to choosing sides between Israel defending itself against terrorist attacks and supporting Hamas, Abbas quickly sides with his terrorist political rivals.

Of course, it should not surprise anyone that Abbas would condemn Israel’s efforts to stem terrorism in the south when he told a Jordanian newspaper just last week that he does not demand that Hamas acknowledge Israel.

Abbas’s latest remarks provide Israel and the West with yet another glimpse of Fatah’s true intentions. The question is, will they acknowledge it, or continue to pretend as though Fatah and its leader are a viable partner with whom to make peace?