Hasan Abu Nimah: An impossible reconciliation

Palestinians in Gaza wearing masks of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh call for unity between the feuding groups. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

One major stumbling block has been hundreds of Hamas political detainees held in Palestinian Authority and Fatah-controlled prisons in the West Bank. (The Palestinian Authority routinely denied such arrests, although Abbas announced that 200 Hamas prisoners would be freed on the occasion of the start of Ramadan.) Hamas also demands that Fatah security forces supplied, trained and supervised by US General Keith Dayton halt their crackdown on resistance fighters from Hamas as part of the American-backed plan for crushing any form of resistance to Israeli occupation.

This really is the heart of the matter. Hamas is in effect asking its Fatah/Palestinian Authority (PA) opponent to abandon its primary role undertaken as part of its “peace strategy” and its commitments to the so-called “international community,” the Quartet roadmap, as well as the Dayton plan. Fatah and the PA apparatus it controls adheres to this US-sponsored anti-resistance strategy as the primary condition for the continuation of international financing for the PA.

For full article, visit http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10742.shtml

What Actually Happened in Fatah’s Elections?

In his WINEP speech Dayton acknowledged this crackdown when he said, “I don’t know how many of you are aware, but over the last year-and-a-half, the Palestinians have engaged upon a series of what they call security offensives throughout the West Bank, surprisingly well coordinated with the Israeli army.” He further admitted that during the 22-day Gaza war last winter, U.S.-trained Palestinian security forces prevented Palestinians in the West Bank from organizing mass protests against the Israeli army, which ironically allowed for the reduction of the Israeli military presence in the West Bank in order to redeploy those troops to Gaza. Dayton added, “As a matter of fact, a good portion of the Israeli army went off to Gaza from the West Bank— think about that for a minute, and the (Israeli military) commander (of the West Bank) was absent for eight straight days.”

For full article, visit http://www.counterpunch.org/amin08142009.html

Israel’s Visa Rule: If You Visit Palestine, Stay There

Ismail had fallen afoul of an Israeli border policy, quietly begun in June, that bars foreigners who say they are visiting the Palestinian Authority from entering Israel. Israel says the visa helps to exclude visitors who threaten security. According to Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad, the procedure is based on an unpublished 2006 decision by the Israeli interior and defense ministers that “any foreign national who wants to enter the Palestinian Authority must have a permit issued by the army, and entry is permitted only into PA territory.”

For full article, visit http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1917917,00.html

True or False: Shin Bet guards top Palestinian leaders in parts of West Bank?

The security Israel provides for Abbas and Fayyad is meant to prevent either of two possible scenarios. One is an assassination attempt by Palestinian extremists, such as the Hamas cell that was recently arrested for allegedly planning an attack on Abbas. The other is an assassination attempt by right-wing Israeli extremists.

For full article, visit http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108777.html

“This news is not true,” Ad-Dameri said over the phone, “the Israeli media says so to misrepresent and to harm the status of the Palestinian Authority.” He assured Israel has “nothing to do with the security of the Palestinian President.”

For full article, visit http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=220414

Amira Hass: Fatah’s gauntlet

If the results have been so disastrous, why are they not discussed openly? It is hard to hold a debate on the weapons fantasy when thousands of families have lost loved ones because of it. It is hard to hold such a debate when thousands of Palestinians have paid with their freedom, including many who never held a gun. It is hard to hold such a debate when people who participated in this fantasy have been elected to Fatah’s central committee. Moreover, such a debate might have addressed the way senior Fatah members used the “armed struggle” to divert public criticism of the PA and its failures, and salvage Fatah’s prestige as a liberation movement.

For full article, visit http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108571.html

Gaza forces detain men suspected of ‘collaboration’ with PA

he de facto government’s Interior Ministry in the Gaza Strip said on Saturday it detained suspects accused of collecting information about Hamas’ leadership for the Palestinian Authority and the Ramallah-based Palestinian caretaker government.

A statement from the Interior Ministry said, “Endeavoring to maintain security and order, and to protect citizens and their property, and since ‘criminal’ groups continue to disturb peace before and during Israel’s war against Gaza, security services have doubled their investigations and seized several suspects.”

Initial investigations, the statement added, revealed these “criminal” groups were plotting new crimes against political leaders and resistance fighters.

Source: http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=38361

PFLP chief, in message from prison, chides PA for jailing fighters

The imprisoned Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmad Sa’dat, leveled criticism at the Palestinian Authority on Thursday for jailing members of armed resistance groups.

“It is impossible to demand freeing the detainees [from Israeli prisons] while the Palestinian prisons are full of prisoners jailed for resistance background or internal disputes,” he said in a message smuggled from his cell in Israel’s Ashkelon prison.

For full article, visit http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=37328

PA officials scandalized at disclosure by Abbas’s son of vast personal fortune

Yasser Abbas

Yasser Abbas, the son of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, revealed this week that he’s a self-made millionaire who started his own business shortly after the signing of the Oslo Accords.

In an interview with the Dubai-based Al-Aswak.net economic magazine, Abbas’s son, who was named after former PA leader Yasser Arafat, also declared that “a majority of Palestinians,” including himself, “collaborate with Israel.”

For full article, visit http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710711339&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Ziyaad Lunat: The rhetoric of “peace”

Netanyahu’s “economic peace” proposal should not only be seen in this context but crucially too as the beginning of a new stage of colonization. Israel has been successful in dividing the Palestinians into different groups, separated politically and geographically. Israel has also been successful in creating a collaborating political class. Israel failed however to squash their desire for freedom and their right to resist aggression. In other words, Israel was successful in the physical colonization of the land, de facto controlling the whole of historic Palestine, but failed to colonize Palestinian minds, for the most part, at least. This new stage will target the latter.

A sample of what is to come can already be seen within the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority’s bureaucracy. Employing roughly 300,000, it is the biggest employer in the occupied territories. These employees and their families are dependent on the bureaucracy to sustain their livelihoods, raising incentives for compliance and creating costs for dissent, namely loss of income and political reprisals. Netanyahu’s “economic peace” will mean that further to the existing political stratification of the Palestinian society, a capitalist class will be co-opted to subordinate the Palestinian working class to the requirements of the market. It is expected that the Palestinians will become too comfortable with the newly bestowed economic freedoms and relegate political rights to a secondary concern. The plan strives for the creation of a homo economicus, an individualist, self-interested man, a slave to the capitalist structures of inequality. Dependence on this neo-liberal structure-in-formation is aimed at removing individual and collective agency. The resulting false consciousness — under the framework of hegemonic capitalism — betrays the true relation of forces between the occupier and the occupied.

For full article, visit http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10466.shtml

PA uncovers Hamas arms cache in Qalqilya

According to the official, the house, in which at least eight explosive devices were found, is located 500 meters (about 1,640 feet) from the West Bank security barrier constructed by Israel.

Some of the equipment inside was labeled “Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades” – Hamas’ armed wing.

For full article, visit http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3702122,00.html

Israeli explosive efforts are aiding Palestinian policemen who discovered a bomb-making lab inside a deserted Qalqiliya home on Wednesday, security sources said on Thursday.

Sources added that Israeli bomb sappers were waiting near the area’s District Coordination Office in Qalqiliya late on Thursday afternoon as Palestinian Authority officials worked to remove the explosives from the home, which they identified as being in west Qalqiliya.

For full article, visit http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=37161