[News] Documents reveal PA-Israel collaboration to target resistance

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Documents reveal PA-Israel collaboration to target resistance

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11752.shtml
Report, The Electronic Intifada, 26 January 2011

Details on the growing security cooperation between the 
Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, the United States and the 
United Kingdom were revealed yesterday, the third day of Al Jazeera 
network's release of more than 1,600 internal documents and secret 
correspondence from the last decade of negotiations between the 
Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority and the United States.

Al Jazeera also confirmed that the Palestinian Authority was behind 
-- or assisted Israel in -- extra-judicial executions of high-level 
political opposition leaders and resistance fighters in the occupied 
Gaza Strip.

Notes between then Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and 
Palestinian Authority Interior Minister Nasser Yousef outline a plan 
in 2005 to kill Gaza-based al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade leader Hassan 
al-Madhoun 
("<http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/201112512109241314.html>The 
al-Madhoun assassination," David Poort, 25 January 2011).

Mofaz wrote: "Hassan Madhoun, we know his address and Rasheed Abu 
Shabak [chief of the Preventative Security Organization in Gaza] 
knows that. Why don't you kill him? Hamas fired [Qassam rockets] 
because of the elections and this is a challenge to you and a warning 
to Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president]."

Youssef replied: "We gave instructions to Rasheed [Abu Shabak] and will see."

Additional documents flesh out the collaboration between the PA and 
their Israeli counterparts. "Saeb Erekat, the PA's chief negotiator, 
acknowledged the cost of gaining US approval and Israeli trust, in a 
meeting on 17 September 2009 with David Hale, the deputy US Middle 
East envoy," Al Jazeera reported.

Al Jazeera obtained transcriptions of the meeting between Erekat and 
Hale. Here, Erekat said: "We have had to kill Palestinians to 
establish one authority, one gun and the rule of law. We continue to 
perform our obligations. We have invested time and effort and killed 
our own people to maintain order and the rule of law."

David Poort analyzes for Al Jazeera: "It is not clear as to which 
killings Erekat is referring to but the discussion about the plan to 
kill al-Madhoun is just one example of how, since the death of Yasser 
Arafat, Fatah's policy of resistance to Israel has become one of 
collaboration."

US knew PA forces tortured dissidents

Additionally, more has been revealed in the details of the US's 
involvement with training, arming and organizing the PA's security forces.

As The Electronic Intifada has 
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10494.shtml>previously 
reported, in 2005, US Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton began training security 
forces loyal to the PA in Jordan. Reporting directly to the US 
Secretary of State, Dayton's mission was to train Palestinian forces 
that would cooperate with Israel.

In subsequent years, PA security forces were exposed as brutally 
repressive arms of the PA, whose main aim was to quash dissent 
("<http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/12/2009121311331278355.html>A 
prescription for civil war," Jon Elmer, 8 February 2010).

The Electronic Intifada has reported extensively on the 
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11530.shtml>repressive 
actions of the PA security forces, trained under Dayton.

Al Jazeera's document leak reveals that Dayton had acknowledged 
systematic torture of Palestinian dissidents by the PA forces he was 
tasked to train 
("<http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011125145732219555.html>Dayton's 
mission: A readers guide," Mark Perry, 25 January 2011).

In a meeting between Dayton and Erekat in Ramallah in June 2009, 
Dayton said that "the intelligence guys [from the General 
Intelligence Service] are good."

Dayton added: "The Israelis like them. They say they are giving as 
much as they are taking from them -- but they are causing some 
problems for international donors because they are torturing people."

In his analysis for Al Jazeera, Mark Perry said that Dayton therefore 
confirms that torture was being used as a tactic by the PA forces, 
continuing a long-standing "counter-terrorism" training structure 
previously developed by the CIA.

PA forces linked to MI6

The network also exposed documents on Tuesday linking the Palestinian 
Authority's security forces to the UK's intelligence agency, MI6, as 
the British agency provided funding for the PA's security forces 
("<http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011125123356396297.html>MI6 
offered to detain Hamas figures," 25 January 2011).

Al Jazeera reports that "the UK's MI6 intelligence service proposed 
detaining members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an 
extraordinary -- and illegal -- scheme in which the European Union 
would have paid for their detention."

The Electronic Intifada co-founder and executive director Ali 
Abunimah has been given special access to the Palestine Papers. He 
wrote an analysis of the PA's willingness to collude with the Israeli 
government and military in destabilizing the Gaza Strip and 
collectively punishing Palestinians there.

Abunimah has been given special access to the documents and writes 
from Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

Senior PA officials deliberately suppressed Palestinian popular 
resistance in Gaza, and even called for Israel to once again "occupy" 
the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt after the border wall was 
blown up by Hamas activists in January 2008, Abunimah writes 
("<http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011125144345427365.html>Cutting 
off a vital connection," 25 January 2011).

"In the following days tens of thousands -- some estimates say 
hundreds of thousands -- of Palestinians poured into Egypt to buy 
food, fuel, medications and other goods that had become scarce or 
unaffordable in Gaza, or to meet friends and family stranded on the 
Egyptian side," Abunimah reports.

He adds that Ahmed Qureia, a senior official in the PA and Abbas' 
Fatah faction, "appealed to Israel to step in and reseal [the wall] 
in February 2008."

Then Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni asked Qureia if the wall 
breach appeared "to be a victory for Hamas."

When Qureia responded yes, Abunimah reports, he also told Livni, 
"You've re-occupied the West Bank, and you can occupy the crossing if 
you want."

The final cache of secret documents will be made public by Al Jazeera 
on Wednesday.

The entire Palestine Papers archive is being made available online on 
the Al Jazeera English website: 
<http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/>http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/. 




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