A senior official in Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party has labeled the United States as "the number one enemy of the Palestinian people."

Fatah Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen made the comments in a recent interview with official PA TV, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), during which he also espoused the anti-Semitic canard that Jews control America.

"The American people in the US are under Jewish-Zionist occupation," he said, citing as proof the fact that all but one US presidential candidate spoke at the recent AIPAC Policy Conference.

Muhaisen then accused the US government of attempting to "partition" the Middle East "so that Israel will control the region," and blamed the Arab regimes for losing site of their battle against the Jewish state. The rise of ISIS and particularly the emboldenment of Iran following the nuclear deal with western powers, has indeed led many Sunni Arab states to ally with Israel to confront such mutual threats.

But according to Muhaisen, those events are merely part of a wider Israeli-American conspiracy.

"The Arabs do not understand that their main battle is with Israel, which is implementing a certain plan in the region," Muhaisen lamented.

"This has been agreed in advance with the US," he added, while blaming "all parties in the region" for allowing other developments to "distract" them from the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"I reiterate: the number one enemy of the Palestinian people, and of the Arab and Islamic nation, remains the US," he said.