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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/30/from-nabulsi-to-shtayyeh-which-side-is-the-pa-on/">counterpunch.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">From Nabulsi to Shtayyeh: Which Side is the PA On?</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ramzy Baroud - September 30, 2022<br></div>
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<div id="gmail-attachment_256431" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-256431" src="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/omer-yildiz-IHFSvlzf9fI-unsplash-1-680x453.jpg" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="393" height="262"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-256431" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><font size="1">Image by Ömer Yıldız.</font></p></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/31/nizar-banats-death-highlights-brutality-of-palestinian-authority">Nizar Banat</a> who was tortured to death on June 24, 2021. The killing of Banat ignited a popular revolt against the PA throughout Palestine.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In its January 2022 World Report, Human Rights Watch <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/israel/palestine">said</a>
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.</p>
<p>The link between Israeli and Palestinian violence targeting political
dissidents and activists is equally clear to most Palestinians.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/corruption-in-palestine/">corrupt apparatus</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Scenes of violent <a href="https://english.almanar.com.lb/1694321">riots</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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, <a href="https://english.almanar.com.lb/1694321">told</a>
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.</p>
<p>But why would the PA quickly concede to pressure coming from the Palestinian street?</p>
<p>The answer lies in the changing political mood in Palestine.</p>
<p>First, it must be stated that resentment of the PA has been brewing for years. One opinion poll after another has <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestinians-oppose-coordination-with-israel-poll/2054802">indicated</a>
the low regard that most Palestinians have of their leadership, of PA
President Mahmoud Abbas and particularly of the ‘security coordination’
with Israel.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Fourth, armed struggle in the West Bank has been growing so rapidly that the Israeli army Chief of Staff, Aviv Kochavi, <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220906-idf-chief-of-staff-says-1500-palestinians-have-been-arrested/">claimed</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>For example, on August 9, the Israeli army <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/iof-assassinate-resistance-leader-ibrahim-al-nabulsi-2-other">assassinated</a>
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.</p>
<p>Interestingly, Shtayyeh is not a member of Fatah, but a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/20/palestinian-man-killed-in-ongoing-clashes-with-pa-in-nablus">commander</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
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<em>Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “</em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092"><em>These Chains Will Be Broken</em></a><em>:
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 </em><a href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><em>www.ramzybaroud.net</em></a>
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