Palestine's Pinochet hails Egypt's Pinochet

In all the tumult I hadn't noticed that Mahmud Abbas had hailed the overthrow of the elected government of Egypt by the Egyptian army.  I first noticed this tweet from the UK Israel lobby group, BICOM:

Abbas welcomes removal of Morsi from power in Egypt, http://t.co/G8d7U052ph #Egypt
— BICOM (@BritainIsrael) July 5, 2013

I read the article and checked elsewhere and sure enough, Abbas said:

 “In the name of the Palestinian people and its leaders, I am honoured to congratulate you on assuming the leadership of the Arab Republic of Egypt in this transitory phase in its history.” Abbas went on to praise “the role played by the Egyptian armed forces… in preserving the security of Egypt and stopping it from sliding towards an unknown fate.”

 It didn't surprise me that Abbas supported the coup but it did surprise me that he could so brazenly speak "In the name of the Palestinian people and its leaders".

The whole thing reminded me of an article in al Ahram by Joseph Massad titled, Pinochet in Palestine:

Before the United States government subcontracted the Chilean military to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973, it carried out a number of important missions in the country in preparation for the coup of 11 September. These included major strikes, especially by truck owners, which crippled the economy, massive demonstrations that included middle-class housewives and children carrying pots and pans demanding food, purging the Chilean military of officers who would oppose the suspension of democracy and the introduction of US-supported fascist rule, and a major media campaign against the regime with the CIA planting stories in newspapers like El Mercurio and others. This was in a context where also the Communist Party and the Leftist Revolutionary Movement (MIR) criticised and sometimes attacked the Allende regime from varying leftist positions.

Plus ça change huh?