On June 24, the anti-corruption activist Nizar Banat died in the custody of Palestinian Authority (PA) police, apparently as a result of severe beatings he received at their hands. Since then, Palestinians in the West Bank have taken to the streets in protest. Khaled Abu Toameh sees these demonstrations as the culmination of an “unprecedented crackdown” that followed the PA president Mahmoud Abbas’s decision on April 29 to cancel elections.
Since Abbas’s decision to call off the elections, dozens of Palestinians have been rounded up by the Palestinian Authority security forces. The crackdown was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the West—until Banat’s death. It was ignored because the perpetrators were not Israeli policemen or soldiers. It was ignored because the media could not find a way to blame Israel for the fact that the Palestinian government was harassing, intimidating, and torturing Palestinians.
Had the foreign media and international human-rights organizations paid attention to the practices of the Palestinian government against its people, Banat might still be alive. Had they paid attention to the daily arrests of political activists, Palestinian journalists and political activists protesting the death of Banat on the streets of Ramallah might not have been beaten.
The current uprising against Abbas and the Palestinian Authority is not out of love for the activist who was reportedly dragged out of his bed by 27 Palestinian security officers and bludgeoned to death with iron bars and clubs. Instead, the spontaneous protests reflect the Palestinians’ growing frustration and disillusionment with their corrupt and repressive leaders. The protests, in addition, are mainly directed to the Biden administration, whose representatives have recently been courting and searching for ways to cozy up to Abbas and his Fatah cohorts. The message they are sending to the Biden administration: stop empowering our corrupt leaders.
Read more on Gatestone: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17515/palestinian-police-state