[News] From Nabulsi to Shtayyeh: Which Side is the PA On?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

counterpunch.org
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/30/from-nabulsi-to-shtayyeh-which-side-is-the-pa-on/>
>From Nabulsi to Shtayyeh: Which Side is the PA On?
Ramzy Baroud - September 30, 2022
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Image by Ömer Yıldız.

The arrest of a prominent Palestinian activist, Musab Shtayyeh, and another
Palestinian activist, by Palestinian Authority police on September 20 was
not the first time that the notorious PA’s Preventive Security Service
(PSS) has arrested a Palestinian who is wanted by Israel.

PSS is largely linked to the routine arrests and torture of anti-Israeli
occupation activists. Several Palestinians have died in the past as a
result of PSS violence, the latest being Nizar Banat
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/31/nizar-banats-death-highlights-brutality-of-palestinian-authority>
who was tortured to death on June 24, 2021. The killing of Banat ignited a
popular revolt against the PA throughout Palestine.

For years, various Palestinian and international human rights groups have
criticized the PA’s violent practices against dissenting Palestinian
voices, quite often within the same human rights reports critical of the
Israeli military occupation of Palestine. The Hamas government in Gaza,
too, has its fair share of blame.

In its January 2022 World Report, Human Rights Watch said
<https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/israel/palestine>
that “the Palestinian Authority (PA) manages affairs in parts of the West
Bank, where it systematically arrests arbitrarily and tortures dissidents.”
This was neither the first nor the last time that a human rights group made
such an accusation.

The link between Israeli and Palestinian violence targeting political
dissidents and activists is equally clear to most Palestinians.

Some Palestinians may have believed, at one point, that the PA’s role is to
serve as a transition between their national liberation project and full
independence and sovereignty on the ground. Nearly thirty years after the
formation of the PA, such a notion has proved to be wishful thinking. Not
only did the PA fail at achieving the coveted Palestinian State, but it has
morphed into a massively corrupt apparatus
<https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/corruption-in-palestine/> whose existence
largely serves a small class of Palestinian politicians and business people
– and, in the case of Palestine, it is always the same group.

PA corruption and subsequent violence aside, what continues to irk most
Palestinians is that the PA, with time, became another manifestation of the
Israeli occupation, curtailing Palestinian freedom of expression and
carrying out arrests on behalf of the Israeli army. Sadly, many of those
arrested by the Israeli military in the West Bank have experienced arrest
by PA goons, too.

Scenes of violent riots <https://english.almanar.com.lb/1694321> in the
city of Nablus following Shtayyeh’s arrest were reminiscent of the riots
against Israeli occupation forces in the northern West Bank city or
elsewhere in occupied Palestine. Unlike previous confrontations between
Palestinians and PA police – for example, following the killing of Banat –
this time, the violence was widespread, and involved protesters from all
Palestinian political groups, including the ruling Fatah faction.

Perhaps unaware of the massive collective psychological shift that took
place in Palestine in recent years, the PA government was desperate to
contain the violence.

Subsequently, a committee that represents united Palestinian factions in
Nablus declared on September 21 that it has reached a ‘truce’ with PA
security forces in the city. The committee, which includes prominent
Palestinian figures, told <https://english.almanar.com.lb/1694321> the
Associated Press and other media that the agreement restricts any future
arrests of Palestinians in Nablus to the condition that the individual must
be implicated in breaking Palestinian, not Israeli, law. That provision
alone implies a tacit admission by the PA that the arrest of Shtayyeh and
Ameed Tbaileh was motivated by an Israeli, not a Palestinian agenda.

But why would the PA quickly concede to pressure coming from the
Palestinian street?

The answer lies in the changing political mood in Palestine.

First, it must be stated that resentment of the PA has been brewing for
years. One opinion poll after another has indicated
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestinians-oppose-coordination-with-israel-poll/2054802>
the low regard that most Palestinians have of their leadership, of PA
President Mahmoud Abbas and particularly of the ‘security coordination’
with Israel.

Second, the torture and death of political dissident Banat, last year, has
erased whatever patience Palestinians had towards their leadership,
demonstrating to them that the PA is not an ally but a threat.

Third, the Unity Intifada of May 2021 has emboldened many segments of
Palestinian society throughout occupied Palestine. For the first time in
years, Palestinians have felt united around a single slogan and are no
longer hostage to the geography of politics and factions. A new generation
of young Palestinians has advanced the conversation beyond Abbas, the PA
and their endless and ineffectual political rhetoric.

Fourth, armed struggle in the West Bank has been growing so rapidly that
the Israeli army Chief of Staff, Aviv Kochavi, claimed
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220906-idf-chief-of-staff-says-1500-palestinians-have-been-arrested/>
on September 6 that, since March, around 1,500 Palestinians have been
arrested in the West Bank and that, allegedly, hundreds of attacks against
the Israeli military have been thwarted.

In fact, evidence of an armed Intifada is growing in the Jenin and Nablus
regions. What is particularly interesting, and alarming, from the Israeli
and PA viewpoint, about the nature of the budding armed struggle
phenomenon, is that it is largely led by the military wing of the ruling
Fatah party, in direct cooperation with Hamas and other Islamic and
national military wings.

For example, on August 9, the Israeli army assassinated
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/iof-assassinate-resistance-leader-ibrahim-al-nabulsi-2-other>
Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, a prominent Fatah military commander, along with two
others. Not only, did the PA do little to stop the Israeli military machine
from conducting more such assassinations, six weeks later, it arrested
Shtayyeh, a close comrade of Nabulsi.

Interestingly, Shtayyeh is not a member of Fatah, but a commander
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/20/palestinian-man-killed-in-ongoing-clashes-with-pa-in-nablus>
within the Hamas military wing, Al-Qassam. Though Fatah and Hamas are meant
to be intense political rivals, their political tussle seems to be of no
relevance to military groups in the West Bank.

Unfortunately, more violence is likely to follow, for several reasons:
Israel’s determination to crush any armed Intifada in the West Bank before
it is widespread across the occupied territories, the looming leadership
transition within the PA due to Abbas’s old age, and the growing unity
among Palestinians around the issue of resistance.

While the Israeli response to all of this can easily be gleaned from its
legacy of violence, the PA’s future course of action will likely determine
its relationship with Israel and its western supporters, on the one hand,
and with the Palestinian people, on the other. Which side will the PA
choose?

*Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He
is the author of five books. His latest is “**These Chains Will Be Broken*
<https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092>*:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity
Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the
Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU).
His website is **www.ramzybaroud.net* <http://www.ramzybaroud.net/>
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