From Claiming to Support Palestine to Serving the Enemy: A Documentary Exposes the Betrayal of Ali Affash and His Subservience to the United States and Saudi Arabia

At a critical moment in the confrontation with the Zionist–American project, Al-Masirah TV unveils, through a high-level investigative documentary, the extent of collusion and betrayal committed by the regime of the traitor Ali Abdullah Saleh (Affash) against the Palestinian cause, and its direct involvement in serving American and Saudi agendas at the expense of the blood of Gaza’s people and the steadfastness of its resistance.

The documentary, aired on the evening of Monday, December 15, 2025, does not merely revisit the past; it opens a dark archive of audio recordings and official documents, lifting the veil on a regime that long traded in slogans of Arabism and Palestine, while in practice worked to break the isolation of the Zionist enemy entity and carried out external dictates without hesitation.

Before the September 21 Revolution: A Functional Regime Serving Normalization

For the first time, Al-Masirah broadcasts audio recordings and official correspondence dating back to before the September 21, 2014 revolution, documenting the transformation of the Affash regime into a compliant tool in the hands of the Americans and Saudis. These materials strip away the mask of a “president” who fabricated an image of himself as a defender of Palestine, while in reality coordinating policies that served the Israeli enemy.

The investigation dissects a sensitive period between 2005 and 2009, which witnessed some of the most brutal Zionist crimes against the Gaza Strip—most notably the 2008 aggression aimed at breaking the will of the resistance and halting Palestinian rocket fire. At a time when the Arab position was at its weakest, the shock lies in the fact that betrayal was not limited to silence, but extended to active complicity.

The Call of Shame: How Affash Betrayed the Palestinian Resistance

The film reveals a shocking recording of a phone call between the traitor Ali Affash and the then head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, the martyred leader Khaled Mashal, shortly before the Doha Arab Summit in January 2009.

Mashal, who contacted Sana’a following Affash’s call for the summit, presented the resistance’s demands to halt the Zionist aggression and lift the siege on Gaza, believing—based on prevailing media narratives—that Affash might adopt an honorable stance.

The reality, however, was entirely different.

In the call, Affash revealed his true face, attacking the resistance’s rockets, describing them as “harmful to the Palestinian people,” and downplaying their impact on the Zionist enemy. He even went so far as to accuse Hamas of launching rockets to justify the bombing of Gaza. He did not stop there; he demanded that the resistance cease rocket fire and relinquish its weapons—an موقف that mirrored, word for word, the American and Zionist position, exposing the depth of submission and dependency.

Mashal’s attempts to explain the logic of resistance and defend the Palestinian people’s right to respond were met with tension, reproach, and provocation. The call ended with a profound shock for the resistance, which at that time tasted the bitterness of blatant official Arab betrayal—this time emanating from Sana’a.

Alignment with Washington: Disarming the Resistance as an American Condition

The documentary demonstrates that Affash’s stance was not a personal judgment, but a direct reflection of declared American pressures and positions at the time, which conditioned the cessation of aggression and the lifting of the siege on the disarmament of the Palestinian resistance.

This position served only the Israeli enemy, encouraging it to persist in massacres against civilians within a policy of blackmail, starvation, and systematic siege.

Thus, Affash appears not as a mere bystander, but as an indirect partner in the aggression—applying political pressure on the resistance instead of the enemy.

The Second Shock: Deliberate Absence from the Doha Summit

If the call of shame constituted the first shock for Hamas, the second came with Affash’s absence from the Doha Summit, despite being among the first to call for it.

The documentary dismantles all the justifications Affash offered at the time, confirming that his absence was the result of direct Saudi pressure, coupled with financial inducements and American instructions.

The film presents a recording of a phone call between Affash and his adviser Abdulkarim Al-Iryani, made after Saleh’s return from a brief visit to Riyadh, in which he explicitly admits receiving 300 million Saudi riyals in exchange for not attending the summit. He also relays the Saudi king’s description of the conference as “Iranian rather than Arab.”

Money for a Position: How Riyadh Seized Sana’a’s Decision

The call exposes the depth of political and