PA rounds up four Hamas men in West Bank, summons dozens

[ 03/05/2011 - 12:18 PM ]

WEST BANK, (PIC)-- Palestinian Authority security forces rounded up four Hamas men and summoned dozens for questioning including women as Fatah and Hamas politicians near the signing of a national reconciliation deal in Cairo.

PA security chiefs have openly rejected the agreement between parties ruling Palestine and vowed to continue targeting Hamas in the West Bank, as it sees the group as a security threat to the Israelis.

Locals reported Tuesday that preventive security nabbed three of those men in the Askar refugee camp. All of the men have been previously held in the custody of the PA security forces.

The fourth man was taken while responding to a call for questioning by intelligence in the West Bank city of Al-Khalil.

The same day, dozens of Hamas supporters were summoned, including several women, among them the mother of a man detained in Tulkarem.

In a related development, security agencies in Nablus have brought 19 men in Al-Juneid prison to a military tribunal where it was ruled that their trials would be postponed until June 12.

Some of those men have been held prisoner for over five months after a long period of interrogation and torture, according to statements by their relatives.

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PA must not give in to Israeli blackmail following Nablus incident

[ 25/04/2011 - 09:38 PM ]

News analysis by Khalid Amayreh

The fatal shooting of a fanatical Jewish settler near Nablus on Sunday, ostensibly at the hands of a Palestinian policeman, is being taken advantage of rather excessively by the Zionist regime.

The settlers themselves, who always portray themselves as perpetual victims, went on a rampage of violence and terror against innocent Palestinian civilians in several localities in the West Bank . A Number of Palestinians are reported to have been injured, some seriously.

Other settlers in other parts of the West Bank have vowed to carry out acts of terror against innocent but unprotected Palestinian villagers and travelers.

Israeli government officials from the prime minister to the lowest ranking cabinet minister have lost their composure, claiming that whoever shot the fanatical settler must have been a terrorist dressed in a military uniform. The Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu urged the Palestinian Authority (PA) that it ought to take "harsh steps" against whoever fired at the settler.

Speaking in a threatening tone, and apparently seeking to placate genocidal settlers, Netanyahu demanded that the PA take serious and swift steps against "the terrorists who committed this criminal act."

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the certified war criminal who carries on his hands tons of innocent Palestinian blood, also spoke in threatening tones, ignoring the fact that thousands of Palestinians have been killed by the Zionist killing machine.

The weak PA regime is apparently caving in to Zionist pressure. The PA governor of Nablus Jebril Bakri said a thorough investigation into the incident would be carried out soon. He stopped short of saying that the police officer accused of shooting the settler would be prosecuted.

It is hoped that the PA will not succumb to Zionist pressure and blackmail. After all, it was the settler and his fellow terrorists and fanatics who stormed an area that is supposed to be under full PA security control. The fanatical and genocidal terrorists did so in violation of even outstanding instructions by the Israeli occupation army which bars settlers' entry into Nablus without prior coordination with the PA and without government escort.

Hence, one could argue convincingly and logically that the Palestinian police officers in the area behaved in accordance with instructions under existing circumstances.

Indeed, how else a Palestinian police officer should have behaved, watching a group of armed and fanatical settlers about to storm a heavily-populated Palestinian neighborhood? Should he have allowed the settler to proceed, perhaps to carry out acts of terror and murder against innocent women, men and children as the arch-terrorist Baruch Goldstein did at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994?

More to the point, it is well known that the settlers are really para-military terrorists awaiting an opportune time to murder Palestinians, steal their land, and vandalize their property.

Indeed, even without having a dead settler at hand, the settlers would still attack Palestinians with or without a reason. It is well known, for example, that the settlers have torched several Mosques in various parts of the West Bank as part of the so-called "price tag policy" whereby Palestinians and their property would be attacked every time the Israeli occupation army moved to dismantle a settler outpost.

Interestingly, the Israeli occupation army has consistently failed to provide the unprotected Palestinians with protection against settler violence, terror, and savagery.

In the final analysis, a snake wouldn't bite its own tail and the settlers themselves wouldn't wage their organized terror against the legitimate people of the land without a certain level of coordination or connivance with the army.

The settlers, whether we like or not and regardless of Israeli propaganda, are the Judeo Nazis of our time, as they have been labeled by some Jewish intellectuals. Imagine how these supremacist thugs relate to Palestinians and you will realize that decent Jews wouldn't want to live with them, not only in the same neighborhood, but in the same town.

It is well known that the settlers, these inherently racist Judeo Nazis, are indoctrinated in a hateful ideology they say is based on teachings of the Talmud and Torah. This virulent doctrine, which is rejected by many decent Jews but adopted rather blindly and zealously by a majority of Israeli Jews, gives non-Jews in occupied Palestine the choice between enslavement to Jews, as symbolized by the Biblical terms water carriers and wood hewers, and violent deportation or expulsion. If these two alternatives didn’t work, then the third alternative would be genocide.

Unfortunately, these thugs are not a small minority in Israel . One can argue rather candidly that they now represent the mainstream in Israel as the Israeli Jewish society continues to drift to a kind of Jewish fascism and jingoism that is reminiscent to Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

More to the point, it is crystal clear that the settlers and their supporters are the main and central obstacle to any prospective dignified peace deal between Jews and Arabs in occupied Palestine.

Hence, one exaggerates very little by saying that unless the government of Israel seriously reins in these thugs, there will be more and more bloodshed and violence and terror, because the Palestinian people will not allow themselves to be intimidated or terrorized by the settlers.

Once again, we hope the PA won't budge to Zionist arrogance and insolence. After all, settler blood is not more precious than Palestinian blood which has been spilt superfluously in Gaza recently.

Succumbing to Zionist dictates, God forbid would only underscore PA subservience to the will of the Israeli occupation.

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Prof. Qassem criticizes Israeli-PA probe into Nablus shooting Sunday

[ 24/04/2011 - 11:05 AM ]

NABLUS, (PIC)-- Dr. Abdul-Sattar Qassem, political sciences professor at Al-Najah University in Nablus, has strongly criticized investigations carried out jointly between Israeli security forces and those of the Palestinian Authority after a Nablus shooting where Palestinians were suspected of killing a Jewish settler and injuring three more.

“The Fatah authority is tied with the Israeli occupier. It has no choice but to form such a committee immediately. If it doesn't, it won't operate, and won't eat, and won't receive funds,” Qassem said in statements to the PIC.

The political analyst condemned resistance forces over their shortcomings in carrying out duties in the West Bank.

“Our first duty is to confront the [Israeli occupier] in order to achieve freedom to establish a real Palestinian state and restore the national rights, most prominently, the right of return,” he said.

Qassem said operations like the one that occurred in Nablus Sunday morning place Israeli settlers in real trouble, forcing large numbers of them to leave the occupied West Bank.

He emphasized that there is no security calm in the West Bank but only “subservience and humiliation”.

“This is not a calm nor peace. There is an occupation. Those who suffer from occupation do not discuss a security calm but think instead about how to remove the occupation. The PA's arguments [for security coordination with Israel] are desperate and outside the logic of human history. They always seek for justification to implement degrading agreements with the Zionist entity.”

Qassem called on the PA security agencies to terminate security agreements with Israel that force the Palestinians to coordinate with Israeli security apparatuses.

Settler killed, three injured in Nablus shooting, Fatah opens probe



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Insider: The Shin Bet chooses all PA security trainees

[ 23/04/2011 - 02:25 PM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- An insider of the de facto interior ministry in Ramallah city said the Shin Bet interferes in choosing the Palestinian trainees to be given training in the security or military field at home and abroad.

The source told the Palestinian information center (PIC) on condition of anonymity that the selection of participants in any security and military training courses requires that the Palestinian Authority (PA) send a list of their names to the US military envoy who checks it along with the Israeli side before making a new list approved by the Shin Bet.

This is not confined to the training courses provided by the CIA, but it includes all kinds of training which the PA police and security members receive in Arab and Islamic countries, the source added.

"Even those who are assigned training courses in Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Tunisia, and Algeria and other countries are subject to this Israeli security check through the American side," he affirmed.

He noted that the Israeli criteria in this context are clear that the trainees should not have directly or indirectly any kind of links to resistance activities against Israel or related to resistance fighters.

In a separate incident, the PA security militias kidnapped an ex-detainee called Mohsen Shareem from Qalqiliya city after releasing him from their jails.

Shareem suffers from diabetes and hypertension and was released by a court order due to his deteriorating medical condition.

• Palestinian man arrested in Al-Khalil Saturday morning
• Palestinian prisoners suffer amid medical neglect

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MP Attoun calls for internationalizing issue of Palestinian prisoners

[ 19/04/2011 - 01:59 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Palestinian lawmaker Ahmed Attoun stressed the importance of internationalizing the issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and recruiting a galaxy of jurists to take every legal action against Israel for its ongoing violations against them.

Attoun, one of three officials taking refuge at the Red Cross headquarters in occupied Jerusalem, stated on Tuesday that many Palestinian prisoners have spent long years of their life in prison and could be considered the world's oldest prisoners who serve such long terms behind bars.

The MP criticized the Palestinian authority and its negotiators for ignoring the issue of Palestinian prisoners, saying the PA officials committed a crime against the prisoners when they overlooked their issue and did not give it priority.

He pointed out that some sort of Arab and international moves in support of Palestinian prisoners, albeit belated, started to come to the surface lately, but unfortunately they are not yet as strong as the moves in solidarity with the captive Israeli soldier.

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Abbas’s militia kidnap six Hamas supporters in Nablus and al-Khalil, raid the house of a Hamas leader just released from jail

Abbas’s militia kidnap six Hamas supporters in Nablus and al-Khalil

[ 15/04/2011 - 09:36 PM ]

WEST BANK, (PIC)-- Militias loyal to de facto Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas continued with their campaign against Hamas supports in the West Bank arresting six of them on Friday, according to local sources.

In Nablus the militia kidnapped Haj Darwish Abu Samra (70) from his work place in the city of Nablus, just one day after kidnapping his son Abdul-Samad, who in turn was previously kidnapped and tortured.

The same militia kidnapped Saed Atari from the town of Deir Sharaf, in the Nablus district, after calling him for questioning, and only released him after midnight.

In al-Khalil the militia kidnapped Abdel-Karim Halyqa (58) who is an imam of a mosque at the Shayoukh town, just two weeks after his release from their jails where he spent 8 months in addition to spending 7 months at the General Intelligence HQ in al-Khalil and Jericho.

Mahmoud al-Mashni, a secondary school student and Muhammad al-Warasneh, a former prisoner at occupation jails, were also kidnapped a few days ago.

Abbas’s Militia raid the house of a Hamas leader just released from jail

[ 15/04/2011 - 09:02 PM ]

JENIN, (PIC)-- Elements affiliated with Abbas’s militia on Thursday evening raided the home of Ibrahim Jaber, a Hamas leader from the Jenin refugee camp who has just been released from Israeli occupation jails, and confiscated the green flags that decorated the house in celebration of his release.

Local sources told PIC that three vehicles carrying the PA militia stopped outside the house just before his arrival home and asked the family to remove the green flags which they decorated the house with to celebrate his release after spending three years in Israeli occupation jails.

They also told the family that they were “breaking the law” by raising the green flag which bears the words “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God”, they ordered them to remove those banners and they confiscated them.

Ibarahim Jaber is a Hamas leader who has been detained in Israeli jails more than 13 times and spent in total 12 years in occupation jails, his eldest son Musa’ab was killed in 2002 during the invasion of Jenin refugee camp by the IOF.

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PA prisoners' families call for their release

[ 13/04/2011 - 04:01 PM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- With Palestinian Prisoner Day coming next Sunday, the families of Palestinians held by the Palestinian Authority security agencies in the West Bank have renewed calls for the freedom of their relatives and to turn the pages of the past.

The PA currently holds more than 500 of such men in its prisons as the de facto PA chief Mahmoud Abbas has made fresh calls for a unity government with Hamas.

"Prisoner Day calls for us to turn the pages of the past and open a new page of brotherly ties and to pave the way for reconciliation and an end to the split by releasing those who have been abducted and held as political prisoners," said Mohammed Natshe, whose brother from Al-Khalil is currently held by the PA.

”It is irrational that Prisoner Day events are held and that the day gets special mention in West Bank schools without mentioning the suffering of more than 500 prisoners in the PA who are held on the same charges as the more than 6,000 male and 40 female prisoners in the Israeli prisons,” he said.

Separately, a Palestinian youth movement to end the Palestinian political split has condemned the PA security agencies after they destroyed a sit-in tent the movement set up in the West Bank city of Salfit. The militia men also summoned the activists to conduct investigations.

According to a statement released by the youth movement, the militia men engaged in a number of actions that clearly displayed ”tyranny and suppression of freedoms”. The PA intelligence service also summoned some of those activists for questioning.

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