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Netanyahu’s ‘No-Palestinian-State’ Vow Raises Questions About Security Coordination

Netanyahu’s ‘No-Palestinian-State’ Vow Raises Questions About Security Coordination

By Daniella Cheslow, McClatchy Foreign Staff (TNS)

JAMAIN, West Bank — Khawla Zeitawi is pregnant with twins, and her husband, Jasser Abu Omar, is not at her side.

He is in an Israeli prison, accused of being part of a terrorist cell that made explosives in a Nablus apartment. Zeitawi asserts that her husband is innocent, jailed on bad information from Palestinian law enforcement provided under security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

“Security coordination is treason,” Zeitawi said in her home in Jamain, a village near Nablus in the West Bank. “The Palestinian Authority is giving Israel a service for free.”

Since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, its security organizations have worked closely with Israel to share intelligence, arrest suspected militants, and limit demonstrations in the West Bank. That cooperation was suspended during a Palestinian uprising known as the second intifada, but has been a part of life in the West Bank since 2007. It has been a lightning rod for complaints among the Palestinian public for almost as long.

The Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council voted in March to suspend security coordination. That vote was to protest Israel’s withholding of tax revenue, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered this year to punish the Palestinians for applying for membership in the International Criminal Court.

On Friday, Netanyahu ordered the release of the tax money, which Israel collects on the Palestinian Authority’s behalf at a rate of $127 million a month. But that’s unlikely to silence Palestinian doubts about the security agreement, especially after Netanyahu won re-election in part by vowing never to allow a Palestinian state while he’s prime minister.

“Netanyahu’s recent actions and policies have caused the Palestinian Authority to review the last 20 years of negotiations with the Israelis,” said Akram Rajoub, the Nablus governor and former head of security in Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is headquartered. “Is it worth it to continue with security coordination if we do not arrive at a state?”

Sixty percent of Palestinians say the answer is no, according to a poll published last week by Khalil Shikaki of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. Yet nearly the same number doubt that their leadership would drop the agreement, even though the PLO vote authorized Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to do so.

Retired Major Shaul Bartal, who participated in security coordination for the Israeli army in the late 1990s and remains involved, said shared work has already eroded. In December, Palestinian Settlement Minister Ziad Abu Ein died while protesting settlement encroachment on the land of a West Bank village. The Palestinians say Israeli soldiers caused his death; Israelis say he had a heart attack. Bartal said Abu Ein’s death was a watershed.

“The regular meetings stopped,” he said. “Before Abu Ein it was every week or twice a month in every big city.”

But Bartal said he can’t foresee the Palestinian Authority, run by the moderate Fatah faction, ending the agreement. The Palestinian Authority depends on security coordination to stifle the Islamist Hamas movement. He said the memory remains fresh of the Hamas election victory in 2006 and its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip the next year.

“The reason (for Palestinian security coordination) is not because they love Israel, but because they are afraid of themselves,” Bartal said. “Fatah knows if they stop coordination, then maybe eventually Hamas will make another takeover and it will be the end of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.”

In 2014, Bartal said, Israel arrested about 2,500 Palestinian security prisoners, mostly members of Hamas; the Palestinian Authority arrested 1,000 prisoners, also mostly Hamas.

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner doubted the Palestinians would follow through on ending security coordination, but if they did, the army could manage security in the West Bank without Palestinian assistance.

“We depend for security on ourselves,” Lerner said.

Before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, Israel directly ruled and patrolled the Palestinians. Lerner ruled out reoccupying Palestinian cities, although he said an end to coordination would probably result in using more force on the ground.

Others were slower to doubt the Palestinian threats. Retired Colonel Jonathan Fighel, who used to run Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Jenin, and Tulkarem, said access granted to Israel via security coordination is crucial.

He said the relative quiet of the past eight years owes far more to security coordination than to the separation barrier Israel built roughly on its border with the West Bank. Figel recalled that Palestinian Authority forces helped retrieve the bodies of three Israeli teenagers who were kidnaped and murdered by Hamas militants in June.

Nathan Thrall, a Jerusalem-based senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, said he believes suspending security coordination is unlikely, even as Abbas has irritated Israel by seeking diplomatic recognition at the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

“It’s very difficult to imagine a PA that exists in the absence of security coordination,” Thrall said.

Without security coordination, he said, the donations on which the Palestinians depend would dry up from the United States and Europe. More likely than ending the coordination, he said, would be a reduction in cooperation, such as refusing to arrest suspects wanted by Israel, or skipping meetings with Israeli commanders.

Public trust in Abbas’ tenure at the head of the Palestinian Authority is eroding. Abbas was elected to a five-year term and has missed multiple deadlines for holding new elections. He turned 80 on Thursday and has not cultivated a successor. Shikaki’s poll found that 77 percent of Palestinians believe the Palestinian Authority institutions are corrupt.

Last week, Randa Saqa, a nurse from Nablus, wheeled her son in a stroller along the main road of Balata refugee camp. She wove between burned bits of garbage and fist-size rocks, evidence of a protest against a Palestinian Authority crackdown on drug dealing and weapons trafficking.

Saqa said the Palestinian Authority used tear gas and live fire to conduct its arrests. “I never expected this to come from the PA,” she said. She lamented the protocol enshrined by security coordination, under which Palestinian forces stay away from Israeli raids in West Bank cities. “When we (Palestinians) are together, we attack each other. But when the Israelis come, the Palestinians disappear.”

Hosam Mostafa, 50, a cleaner from Nablus, said he is keeping his seven children at home for fear of them getting hurt in clashes with the government.

Rajoub, the Nablus governor, insisted that the crackdown was necessary to consolidate the power of the Palestinian Authority.

“For the Palestinian Authority…to consolidate its power, we have to stop all kinds of chaos,” he said. However, he added, now the Palestinian Authority “will give nothing for free. We will not be the service people for the Israelis.”

Photo: blhphotography via Flickr

What Happens To Hamas-Fatah Reconciliation After Gaza Conflict?

What Happens To Hamas-Fatah Reconciliation After Gaza Conflict?

By Daniella Cheslow, McClatchy Foreign Staff

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Nabil Shaath, an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas who’s considered the architect of the April agreement that reunited Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah movement in a unity Palestinian government, paused as he contemplated his groundbreaking deal in the wake of Israel’s crushing campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Then he acknowledged that the situation might be different had Hamas not taken the course it did.

“Why the hell spend all this money and effort just showing off?” Shaath asked during an interview with McClatchy. “Hamas did not want this war. . . . They just needed a promise that at the end of the cease-fire there would be a normal life for Gazans. But by not throwing rockets, maybe they could have avoided giving excuses to the Israelis.”

Shaath’s comments, made Sunday as the Palestinian death toll passed 1,000, underscore the deep differences that remain between the freshly reconciled Palestinian factions, even as Israel and Hamas fight. Fatah and Hamas split violently seven years ago when Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah in fierce fighting. The movements remained bitter rivals until they signed the reconciliation pact in late April.

During the years they were split, Fatah and Hamas viewed each other with acrimony. Under Abbas, Fatah pledged “nonviolent resistance,” meaning diplomatic pressure on Israel. Hamas, on the other hand, is the flag bearer of forceful resistance, including firing rockets at Israel, mostly without effect, and burrowing tunnels under the Gaza-Israel border to enable attacks.

The current operation in Gaza is challenging the Fatah strategy, according to Alaa Rimawi, an expert on Islamic politics.

“The message of Hamas was always that Israel will never give you a state, and it seems the Hamas prediction was right,” Rimawi said. “Fatah is in crisis. . . . Fatah and Hamas are now presently on the same track.”

Shaath is intimately familiar with the tensions between Hamas and Fatah. During the long hostility between Hamas and Fatah, he was instrumental in shuttling from the West Bank to Gaza to hammer out an agreement. Under the unity deal signed in April, the two sides were to form an interim government within five weeks and hold parliamentary elections six months later. So far the interim government hasn’t been formed because of the campaign.

Shaath said some Fatah members still harbored bad feelings toward Hamas. “Yes, there are some of us who still think of the fraternal enemy more than they think of the real enemy,” he said. However, many of these Fatah members have been galvanized against Israel by the spiraling death toll in Gaza, he said.

A turning point came last week, when Abbas adopted the Hamas demands for a cease-fire with Israel, including opening border crossings with Israel and Egypt and building an airport and seaport.

Shaath didn’t endorse violence against Israel. In fact, he said, Palestinian police continue to check for weapons at rallies and to keep a tight lid on what could escalate into violent protest and lead to a third “intifada,” the term used to describe previous prolonged periods of anti-Israel violence.

However, he noted that “the word intifada does not mean violence. An intifada is an uprising, its people saying ‘no’ to the occupation. . . . If Israelis continue in Gaza, there will be an intifada, and my duty will be to steer that in a nonviolent direction.”

In Ramallah, Fatah seemed rejuvenated by its clearer line against Israel. Shaath squeezed in the interview after meeting with Russian diplomats and British dignitaries. His office director was one of the planners of a large protest at Qalandiya last week in which thousands took part.

Others in Ramallah were less sure. Abu Samaha, a worker in a sandwich shop, marched in last week’s demonstration that began in his neighborhood, the al Amari refugee camp.

“May God give power to Ismail Haniyeh and Gaza,” he said, speaking of the Hamas leader. “Abbas is a mayor, not a president. His decision-making is not in his hands.”

Cheslow is a McClatchy special correspondent.

AFP Photo/Jack Guez

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Israeli Leader Says Cross-Border Tunnels Must Be Destroyed

Israeli Leader Says Cross-Border Tunnels Must Be Destroyed

By Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times

JERUSALEM — Amid mounting international concern over civilian casualties and demands for an immediate cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed Thursday that he would accept no truce that would prevent Israel from demolishing the cross-border tunnels that have become the focus of the ongoing fighting.

Speaking at the start of a cabinet meeting held in a rocket-proof room at the defense ministry in Tel-Aviv, Netanyahu said Israel was “determined to complete this mission, with our without a cease-fire.”

International efforts to secure a truce — which would afford time for indirect negotiations for a more permanent arrangement — have so far failed.

Netanyahu’s televised comments shared headlines with news of a fresh round of rockets and mortars launched from Gaza on Thursday morning and an Israeli airstrike targeting what the army said was a group of five militants. Palestinians reported that heavy shelling resumed in Gaza before noon, and that military ground forces had pushed deeper into the coastal strip overnight.

As fighting in Gaza enters its 24th day, the war becomes the longest fought between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and possibly the deadliest for both. At least 1,360 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza medical officials. Israel’s military deaths have reached 56, the highest in nearly a decade.

International organizations warn of an impending large-scale humanitarian disaster in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. UNWRA spokesman Chris Gunness tweeted that the organization was overwhelmed and has “reached breaking point,” with shelters overflowing and staff being killed.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared Gaza a “humanitarian disaster zone” Wednesday. A Palestinian statement slammed Israel for “severe violations of international humanitarian law” and urged the international community to hold Israel accountable.

Israel’s military was set to call up 16,000 more army reserves Thursday, boosting reserve forces to 86,000 troops — U.S. defense officials confirmed to CNN that they had approved an Israeli request for resupply of munitions from American stockpiles kept in Israel.

In a phone conversation with his Israeli counterpart Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself alongside concern for the rising numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties, and called for an immediate cease-fire followed by a permanent resolution. Hagel said any process to resolve the crisis “in a lasting and meaningful” way must lead to the disarmament of Hamas.

The stated objective of the military offensive Israel launched three weeks ago was curbing rocket fire into Israel and restoring calm to its residents. An extensive network of underground tunnels used to funnel armed militants into Israel has since become the main focus of the operation, alongside exacting a heavy price from Hamas.

Israel has inflicted “unprecedented damage” on Hamas, defense minister Moshe Yaalon said Thursday, adding that the organization was concealing the scope of its losses.

Military officials say it will take several days longer to destroy dozens of uncovered tunnels. In the meantime Netanyahu is balancing pressure from political hardliners calling for a more aggressive approach in Gaza with increasingly sterner international demands for an immediate cessation of fire.

Photo: Downing Street via Flickr

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Possible Revenge Killing Of Palestinian Teen Sparks Jerusalem Clashes

Possible Revenge Killing Of Palestinian Teen Sparks Jerusalem Clashes

By Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times

JERUSALEM — Tensions mounted in Jerusalem as a local Palestinian teenager was found dead early Wednesday in what some fear may have been a reprisal attack for the killing of three Jewish Israeli teenagers abducted in the West Bank.

The burned body of the victim, identified by family members and police as 17-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir from the Palestinian neighborhood of Shuafat in north Jerusalem, was found in a forested area west of the city.

Police began searching for the teen after his family reported him missing when he hadn’t come home early Wednesday morning, Israeli media reported. Separately, police received a call from friends who said that the teen was forcefully shoved into a car.

A relative of Khdeir, who identified himself only as Mahmoud, told Israel Radio that the teen was sitting on a fence outside his house among other friends around 3:45 a.m. on Wednesday, waiting for early morning prayers and a pre-dawn meal at a nearby mosque before starting the daily fast of Ramadan.

He said Khdeir’s friends saw a car make a U-turn near the mosque, when someone called the teen over and then forced him into the car. Friends reported seeing two or three people in the car at the time. They chased the vehicle, he said, but it managed to drive away. His friends called the police immediately, Mahmoud said.

“The police know who did this,” he told Israel Radio, adding that a description of the car, pictures, and a license plate number were available to police.

Additional details are currently under a court-imposed gag order barring Israeli media from reporting them.

Jerusalem Police Chief Yosi Parienti said the investigation of the case was ongoing and that all motives were being explored. He urged residents to act with restraint and to refrain from jumping to conclusions.

Large numbers of police were deployed around Palestinian neighborhoods in the area in an attempt to maintain order.

A few hours into the investigation, the motive for the boy’s killing remained unknown. However, politicians and residents quickly mobilized in response to the killing.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas demanded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly condemn the killing of the Palestinian teen as he had the kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli teens. Abbas drew fierce criticism from Palestinians for his strongly worded statement decrying the abductions of the three Israeli teens.

Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh was more confrontational, telling the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, that Israel is fully responsible for the killing and must arrest the perpetrators.

Netanyahu ordered a swift investigation to find “who is behind the reprehensible murder and what the motive was.” In a statement, he urged all sides not to take the law into their own hands.

The details of the boy’s death grimly echo the killings of Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, whose funerals Tuesday were attended by tens of thousands gripped by their dramatic story and tragic end.

As news of the Palestinian teen’s death spread, clashes continued Wednesday afternoon as residents threw stones, burned dumpsters and tires and fought with security forces who arrived on the scene in northern Jerusalem and in Shuafat.

The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem on Wednesday issued a security warning for U.S. citizens, calling for “situational awareness” and for people to avoid demonstrations. The consulate general was “monitoring the situation closely,” the message said.

Tensions were already boiling over in Jerusalem on Tuesday night, as mobs of young extremists seeking revenge for the Jewish teenagers’ deaths attacked Palestinians during protests that turned into violent riots in downtown Jerusalem.

Police extricated the Palestinians and arrested 48 people.

AFP Photo / Ahmad Gharabli

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