Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas recently claimed that Israel is a “colonial project” that would be defeated if Washington withdrew its support, Kan News reported on Sunday, quoting Russian state media.
The Kan News report cited an interview that aired on Russia-1 with Russia Today chief editor Margarita Simonyan, who met Abbas on the sidelines of last week’s BRICS summit, held in Kazan in central Russia.
According to Simonyan, the Palestinian leader told her over coffee, “We have an issue with the United States. They are the ones perpetrating everything. Who brought Zionism to this country? The colonizers.”
The Russian propagandist added, “He kept repeating this the whole time and explained that it’s America—if not for America, none of this [Israel] would exist. If America would stop supporting it, it would disappear.”
Simonyan said she told Abbas that “all journalists” working at Russia Today “have relatives who have died and continue to die in Palestine.”
When the RT reporter thanked Abbas for Ramallah’s support for Moscow amid its war with Ukraine, he was said to have responded, “What do you mean, ‘thank you’? It is our duty to support Russia.”
Though the P.A. is not a member of the BRICS alliance— which was founded in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India and China—Abbas attended the three-day summit at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In his speech, Abbas described the war launched by Israel in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist massacre as “the greatest catastrophe that the Palestinian people experienced after the Nakba [“catastrophe” of Israel’s establishment] in 1948.
“This is part of a plan to empty the territory of its people, especially now in northern Gaza where the occupation forces are resorting to starving the population there,” the P.A. leader claimed.
The P.A. has been a staunch supporter of Russia over the years. Earlier this year, Moscow hosted negotiations to establish a Palestinian “unity government” comprised of Abbas’s Fatah party and Hamas terrorists.