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MIDEAST: Palestinian Authority Going the Israeli Way
By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, Jun 3, 2009 (IPS) - A surge in confidence, following unprecedented U.S. political support, led to
the Palestinian Authority's bloody crackdown on a Hamas cell in the northern
West Bank on Sunday which left six Palestinians dead.
However, reports of questionable Palestinian Authority (PA) tactics, including
the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, has brought the operation
into question and left many Palestinians angry.
In the early hours of Sunday morning PA intelligence officers and security
forces cornered a group of Hamas gunmen in a building in the northern West
Bank city Qalqilia.
Following a long and drawn-out gun battle, two Hamas gunmen, three PA
officers and one civilian lost their lives.
Eyewitness reports suggest that in addition to the PA cooperating with Israel
on an intelligence level, it also resorted to using some of Israel's arrest
techniques.
One of Al-Jazeera's correspondents in the area was placed under arrest and
taken for interrogation by PA intelligence officers after the network aired
controversial footage.
The sequence of events, and who initiated the fight, have been contested by
PA and Hamas spokesmen.
According to the PA version of events, the Hamas gunmen shot at them first,
and two civilians, including a woman, threw hand grenades at them. Only
then did they return fire.
But witnesses allege that the owner of the building and his wife, both elderly
cancer patients, were used as human shields by the PA men, leading to the
death of the man and serious injury to the woman.
They further accuse PA forces of obstructing an ambulance trying to
evacuate the wounded.
The woman remains in hospital with her hand amputated. She is surrounded
by PA security men who have refused to allow her family or friends to visit
her.
Israeli soldiers have been videoed and documented regularly using
Palestinian civilians as human shields and holding up ambulances trying to
evacuate and help the wounded.
The Israeli High Court of Justice outlawed the use of civilians as human
shields after a local rights group petitioned the court.
Strong U.S. support for the PA underlined during PA President Mahmoud
Abbas's recent meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington,
practically coincided with the timing of the bloody gun battle in the north.
While U.S. pressure has to some degree forced Abbas to take a tough line
with Hamas, Israeli threats to go into PA territory and take out Hamas cells
themselves forced Abbas's hand.
Hamas responded to the bloodiest clash between the two mainstream
Palestinian political factions since the Gaza coup of 2007 by ordering its
people to fight against the PA's security forces as if they were part of the
Israeli occupation.
This has led analysts to believe that Hamas might once again resort to
suicide bombing against Israeli as well as PA targets. PA intelligence has long
feared that the Islamic group will try to assassinate its leaders.
The PA warned in response to Hamas's statement that anybody who harmed
Palestinian security forces would get the death penalty.
Some reports have alleged that the PA has warned the families of wanted
Hamas activists that unless they gave themselves up, the PA would hunt the
men down and kill them, something the Israelis have done on a regular basis
when pursuing wanted fugitives.
Up until now Hamas has laid low, not wanting to fight the PA in the West
Bank, and instead focusing on consolidating its military and political wings
there.
This situation changed dramatically last Thursday when Israel assassinated
Abed Al-Majid Dudin, 45, the head of Hamas's military wing in Hebron.
Hamas accused the PA of helping supply the Israelis with intelligence, and
told its followers that they were now free to take any retaliatory action.
The bigger picture suggests that an escalating and bloodier Palestinian
showdown might just be what a cornered Israeli government needs to take
the heat off it.
The U.S. appears to be serious about laying down the law with Israel in
regard to a two-state solution and the freezing of settlement building and
expansion.
Israel has tried to argue that it is unreasonable not to take "natural" settler
growth into consideration when addressing the illegal settlement issue in the
West Bank. But Israel, it would appear, is deliberately obfuscating the facts.
Colonel Shaul Arieli who served as deputy military secretary to defence
minister and former prime minister Ehud Barak in the late 1990s, says a
third of Israelis living in the occupied territories (excluding East Jerusalem)
settled there during the years of the 1994 Oslo peace accords, according to a
report in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Another third settled in the West Bank after the peace process was
suspended. Forty-five percent of Israelis living illegally in East Jerusalem
settled there between 2001-2009.
Even a record 3.4 percent annual growth rate (twice the rate in Israel proper)
cannot explain the 100 percent increase in the settler population during
these years.
This supports the theory that the Israeli government has deliberately
accelerated the settlements in order to establish facts on the ground, making
it harder for Palestinians to establish a contiguous state.
The West Bank is practically divided into three cantons resembling an
apartheid Bantustan for the convenience of settlers.
Obama has laid out a long-term visionary goal and set himself a two-year
period during which to try and resolve the protracted Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
He is moving cautiously with full Congress support by committing himself to
Israel's security while simultaneously prepared to challenge Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recalcitrance.
But the danger remains. Unless Obama can force some kind of breakthrough
in the near future, the unpopular and marginalised Abbas could see his
fractured, western-backed government collapse completely.
Israel and the U.S. would then be left to deal with a strengthened and
reinvigorated Hamas, which at the moment shows no signs of backing down.
(END)
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