Senior Palestinian Authority and Fatah officials have claimed that Israel has deliberately introduced and even “developed” specially trained or genetically engineered rodents to target vulnerable Palestinians, particularly children and the sick, in the Gaza Strip.

The bizarre allegations, which surfaced in mid-April 2026 on media affiliated with the Fatah party, are the latest in a long line of unsubstantiated animal-related conspiracy theories directed against the Jewish state.

In an interview broadcast on 15 April on Awdah TV, a Fatah-run channel, Rafat Al-Qudra, director of the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation in Gaza, claimed: “All indicators point to there being a type of rodent – rats and mice, to be precise… These rodents – mice and rats – are of a special kind, they are large in size, and they particularly attack children and the sick… It is believed that these rodents were developed and experimented on specifically by the Israeli occupation.”

Three days later, on 18 April, Jamal Obeid, a member of the Supreme Leadership Body of Fatah in Gaza, told the same outlet: “There are rodents in some areas of the Gaza Strip… that were not known here in the Strip. It seems that the Israeli occupation deliberately acted to introduce these rodents into the Gaza Strip; this is a fact and not just media propaganda.”⁠

The statements come amid reports of increased rodent infestations across Gaza in the year since the end of major hostilities between Israel and Hamas. The World Health Organisation has documented thousands of cases linked to rodents, alongside widespread skin infections such as scabies and lice in displacement sites. Palestinian officials have previously attributed the problem to war damage and poor sanitation rather than Israeli action. However, now they have decided to blame Israel for the infestations.

The Israel Defence Forces have not commented on the claims.

Such accusations fit a pattern of animal-related conspiracy theories that have circulated in parts of the Arab and Muslim world for years. Past examples include claims that Israel used Mossad-trained sharks to attack tourists in Egypt in 2010 and camera-equipped dolphins to spy on Hamas in 2015.⁠

The allegations have been widely dismissed by Israeli sources as propaganda intended to deflect responsibility for Gaza’s humanitarian challenges onto Israel.

What is Fatah

Fatah, officially known as the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini), is a Palestinian nationalist and social democratic political party. Founded in the late 1950s by Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian activists in the diaspora, it emerged as the dominant faction within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Initially focused on armed struggle to liberate Palestine through guerrilla warfare, Fatah later shifted towards diplomatic efforts, playing a central role in the Oslo peace process in the 1990s that led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which it has since governed in the West Bank.

Today, under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah remains one of the largest Palestinian political movements, advocating for a two-state solution while competing with rivals such as Hamas for influence. The name “Fatah” is a reverse acronym of its full Arabic title and also means “conquest” or “opening” in Arabic.