Mahmoud Abbas is not the peacemaker Trump's looking for

President Trump welcomed Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas to the White House Wednesday afternoon for a series of discussions revolving around the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The president really wants a deal, and is hoping that Abbas will be the man to soon get it done.

"I want to see peace with Israel and the Palestinians," Trump told Reuters last week. "There is no reason there's not peace between Israel and the Palestinians — none whatsoever."

However optimistic the president is about the possibility for peace between the two sides, there’s no getting around the fact that Mahmoud Abbas is part of the problem, not the solution. If the president fails to recognize who the Palestinian Authority leader really is, then Trump is simply wasting his time.

Abbas and his Fatah party are hardly the “moderates” that many in America’s establishment media present them as. The man who is now serving the 12th year of a four-year term as the Palestinian leader is just as radical as the worst Middle East despots.

The truth is that the Palestinian strongman has promoted extremist views and terrorist activities since his college days.

While studying for his doctorate at the Peoples’ Friendship University in the former Soviet Union, Abbas showed himself to be a Holocaust denier, with his dissertation claiming there was a supposed “secret relationship” between the Zionists and Nazis.

Abbas would allegedly later go on to become the chief financier of the brutal 1972 Black September massacre of 11 Israeli Olympians in Munich. Last year, his Fatah party described the deadly terror attack as a “heroic operation” that showcased the “courage and power” of the Palestinian people.

Abbas' ruling Fatah party was founded as a terrorist organization — and continues to operate like one. Over the past few decades, Fatah has carried out thousands of terrorists attacks, and continues to incite its followers to violence and terrorism.

The Palestinian leader continues to dedicate up to 10 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s annual budget toward paying terrorists and “martyred” terrorists’ families annual salaries.

Today, the 82-year-old Abbas is less hands-on and sticks to incitement and administrative duties of terrorism. Known for his proficient use of anti-Semitic tropes, Abbas presides over the most anti-Semitic people in the world.

The Palestinian leader knows how to motivate his people to attack Israeli Jews. In 2015, he falsely claimed that the Jews of Israel were waging a “desecrating” campaign against the Al-Aksa mosque in Jerusalem.

“Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it’s for the sake of Allah. Every shahid [martyr] will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded, by Allah’s will,” Abbas shouted in calling for his people to defend Islam from the (nonexistent) Jewish attacks on Jerusalem’s holy sites.

Mahmoud Abbas has rejected countless offers to negotiate toward peace with Israel. Throughout his life, Abbas has chosen death, chaos, and destruction over peace. It’s hard to see what has changed that would lead Trump to conclude that now is finally a serious chance for peace.