Despite ongoing security coordination between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli occupation, the PA has scaled back its security operations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who resist the occupation, leading many to believe that the split between Fatah and Hamas has come to an end.
But in recent months, the PA has intensified its campaigns against Palestinians who are resisting Israeli occupation. It has resumed its policy of political detentions, which singles out Palestinians who are resisting Israeli occupation regardless of their political allegiances.
“The Palestinian Authority insists on reinforcing the political division through a detention campaign,” said Osama Abu Eida, a member of the Committee for Prisoners’ Families in the West Bank. “These days, when the soil of our country is stained by martyrs’ blood, and amidst an atmosphere of national unity.”.
The committee claims that over the course of the previous week, the PA summoned and detained 142 Palestinians for their anti-Israeli occupation views. Simultaneously, homes were raided, women were imprisoned, and a number of prisoners had their detention periods extended.
500 political detentions by the PA’s security services since the beginning of 2022 have been documented by Lawyers for Justice on the basis of political affinities and positions against Israeli occupation. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights has also urged the PA to stop holding people in detention because they participated in resistance activities in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights stated, “We condemn the political detention campaign carried out by the PA in the occupied West Bank. The PA’s prisons in the occupied West Bank house political detainees who are tortured, including being beaten with batons or receiving electrical shocks, according to the rights center, which declared that the file on political detentions “must be closed forever.”.
Following his recent release from PA prisons, Ahmad Hrish told Quds News Network that he intended to end his life in order to avoid being tortured there. He claimed that PA interrogators asked him about his anti-occupation activity.
The Karama family home in Hebron was raided by PA security forces, who then imprisoned seven members of the same family after severely beating them. According to Quds News Network, two of them had to be hospitalized as a result of the abuse they experienced.
This is not your responsibility, we are telling the PA,” Abu Eida said.
The new resistance movement The Lions’ Den has been detained by the PA in the meantime.
Fatah against Hamas
The secular Fatah movement, which leads the PA leadership, has made it clear that they want to continue working together with Israel’s military authorities on security matters. Along with the regular conferences between senior officials from both sides, the PA leadership has stated that it is concerned about the possibility that Gaza-based Palestinian factions are in charge of anti-occupation activities in the occupied West Bank.
It is boasting about its actions against the Palestinian resistance and against any Palestinian who discloses the results of its security coordination with the Israeli occupation, as occurred with activist Nizar Banat, who was beaten to death by the PA security services during a raid on his home in June 2021.
