T. Belman. The good news is that this fits in beautifully with the rise of Mudar Zahran as the Palestinian leader. The majority of Palestinians want what Mudar wants. He represents an alternative to Fatah and Hamas. He aspires to peace and cooperation and not conflict and resistance.
Following the violent death on Thursday of Nizar Banat, an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority, angry Palestinians call for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to step down.
Shahar Klaiman and News Agencies
Angry demonstrators carry pictures of Nizar Banat, an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority, and chant anti-PA slogans during a rally protesting his death, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Thursday, June 24, 2021. Banat who was a candidate in parliamentary elections called off earlier this year died after Palestinian security forces arrested him and beat him with batons on Thursday, his family said. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
The death on Thursday of an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority, who was a candidate in parliamentary elections called off earlier this year, has sparked popular unrest in Judea and Samaria against PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his governing body.
Nizar Banat died after Palestinian security forces arrested him and beat him with batons on Thursday, his family said.
Following an autopsy, a Palestinian rights group said his wounds indicated “an unnatural death.”
Banat had called on Western nations to cut off aid to the PA because of its authoritarianism and human rights violations. Earlier this week, another prominent activist was detained by the PA and held overnight after criticizing it on Facebook.
Hundreds took to the streets in Ramallah, where the PA parliament is located, in protest after word spread of Banat’s death.
“Abbas, you are not one of us, take your dogs and leave,” they chanted. Some called the PA a president a “spy,” while others said, “The people want the regime to fall.”
The crackdown on dissent comes as the internationally-backed PA faces a growing backlash from Palestinians who view it as corrupt and increasingly autocratic.
Abbas, 85, was elected to a four-year term in 2005.
Mohammed Banat, a cousin who witnessed the arrest, said a group of men, some wearing masks, burst into the house where Nizar was staying and sprayed everyone with pepper spray.
“They beat Nizar with batons on his head and body,” he told The Associated Press. “They did not identify themselves and we did not recognize them. They arrested Nizar and disappeared.”
In a brief statement, the Hebron governorate said Nizar’s “health deteriorated” when Palestinian forces went to arrest him early Thursday. It said he was taken to a hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
The United States, the European Union and the United Nations called for an investigation, and PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announced the formation of an investigative committee.
Dr. Samir Abu Zaarour, a forensic pathologist for the Independent Commission for Human Rights who attended the autopsy, said the death was “unnatural” and ruled out a heart attack or stroke. He said the final results will only be available after further testing. Pictures of the body released by the family appear to show bruising on his head and legs.
Palestinian security forces fired tear gas at the marchers and beat people with wooden batons.
Tahani Mustafa, an analyst at the Crisis Group, an international think tank, said there’s been “increasing repression” since the PA was sidelined and widely derided during the recent violence between Israel and Gaza-based terrorist groups, chief among them Hamas. “At this point, the PA can’t really afford any level of criticism,” she said.
She added that the international community, which has trained and equipped Palestinian security forces, “needs to take some responsibility” and push for accountability and change.
In early May, gunmen fired bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at Nizar Banat’s home near the city of Hebron, in Judea and Samaria, where his wife was inside with their children. He blamed the attack on Abbas’ Fatah party, which dominates the security forces.
“The Europeans need to know that they are indirectly funding this organization,” he told The Associated Press in May in an interview at a house where he was hiding out. “They fire their guns into the air at Fatah celebrations, they fire their guns in the air when Fatah leaders fight each other and they fire their guns at people who oppose Fatah.”
The EU delegation to the Palestinians tweeted that it was “shocked and saddened” by Banat’s death and called for a “full, independent, and transparent investigation.” The UN’s Mideast envoy, Tor Wennesland, said the “perpetrators must be brought to justice.”
The US State Department echoed those calls. In a statement, it expressed “serious concerns about Palestinian Authority restrictions on the exercise of freedom of expression by Palestinians and harassment of civil society activists and organizations.”
Earlier this week, Palestinian security forces detained a prominent activist and held him overnight after he took to Facebook to criticize the PA’s arrest of another individual. Issa Amro is an outspoken critic of both Israel and the PA, and has been detained by both in the past.
“I feel that my life is in danger like Nizar Banat. I don’t feel there is anyone who can protect me from attacks by outlaws affiliated with some security authorities,” Amro said. “Unfortunately, there’s a state of security chaos since the cancellation of the elections.”
A recent poll showed plummeting support for Abbas, who canceled the first elections in 15 years in April when it looked like his fractured Fatah party would suffer another humiliating defeat to Hamas, which seized Gaza from Abbas’ forces in 2007 following deadly clashes.
The European Union has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in direct aid to the PA over the years. Earlier this week, it signed an agreement to provide $425 million in loans to the PA and Palestinian banks.
Mustafa, of the Crisis Group, said such initiatives will be “incredibly ineffective” unless the US presses for political renewal that allows the Palestinians to choose their own leaders.
“Any pursuit toward the peace process will not be accepted by the majority of Palestinians if it’s being done on behalf of a small cluster of people that they do not see as being representative or acting in their own interest, which is what we are seeing now,” she said.
!!!The UN should start focusing on the Jordan-Israel two-state solution!!!
Very exciting to see this in Arutz Sheva!
Now that we are talking about it openly in the media, if Jordan only had the sort of leader who could help create the proper groundwork to make such a thing possible….
I wonder if there is any way that Zahran can built an underground base of support in the PA and Gaza, even before taking power in Jordan, and despite the inevitable repression.
PA and Hamas equally evil.
@Peloni
Well said.
This article suggests Hamas is waiting in the wings rather than Zahran. https://www.timesofisrael.com/thousands-attend-3rd-day-of-protests-over-activists-death-in-pa-custody/
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This is the basis for the international parties not suffering but celebrating the undemocratic maintenance of Abbas while consistently demonizing the democratic state of Israel. But the people under the PA are quite disenchanted with Abbas’ non-efforts on their behalf as he and his ministers are greatly rewarded to play out this role for the internationalist interests.
The growing support of Hamas at the expense of Fatah is quite concerning, as it was a nice aspect of the impasse to have the two parties occupied as much with eachother as with Israel. But, what if there was a third choice. Many things could be possible should a third choice be designed to offset the support for either of these groups who each are responsible for the lack of both safety and livelihoods(beyond international handouts) that the Pals and their families live in day after day.
And if this third choice could create reforms enhancing the economy for Pals, it might appear as a better choice. And if this third choice could introduce partnerships with the Israelis to improve local needs such as energy supply and water production, it might appear as a better choice. And if this third choice could instill an acceptance Israel as a strong neighbor who would support and assist the Pals as permanent members of the region, it might appear as a better choice.
And if this third choice could create judicial reforms, where the Pals could expect fair treatment under the law, it might appear as a better choice. And if this third choice could bring the Pal people a path towards an honest living with secure rights and the ability for a prosperous life, it might appear as a better choice.
Taken all together, these opportunities would provide a better choice – a powerful alternative to the well practiced butchery of their neighbors with the benefit of only a financial stipend while crashing rockets and crumbling buildings could bring an end to their families at any moment.
And if this third choice should actually be in Jordan rather than Ramallah with the ability to move towards their cousins and enjoy the benefits of the homeland promised 100 years ago under the wise rule of a gov’t intent upon securing and maintaining a peace between these two people, this, too, might appear as a better choice for the Pals to pursue.
It could be that the Pals would be foolish enough to deny themselves this great opportunity, while maintaining their position as tools of elites bent towards the murder of their neighbors. In truth the history of the Pals is littered with bad choices. But in fairness most of these choices were made between a pair of bad choices – like tossing a two headed coin, some choices are designed to mask dictates as the product of chance.
Should Mudar be successful in creating this third choice for his people to consider, many things, that were previously impossible could become probable. Water only runs downhill, so should Mudar be successful in his goals, we will see if the Pals will defy gravity and choose to remain in support and bondage to the great impasse under Hamas, or they could be swayed to make a third choice their first choice.
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In any election, the public likes to hold to the perception that they have a choice of candidates, even should the choice be a matter of a new edition of the same book. No doubt, after cancelling the election, the perceived victors would look upon Abbas as being even more illegitimate than they had prior to this latest decree that he was not stepping down.
The moves to silence the opposition is ipso facto evidence of a failed state, but no less so than the fact that Abbas has foregone any election since his term ended in 2009, instead granting himself an indefinite extension of his term – described differently, he is now serving in his 17th year of a four year term.
The international community has not suffered his impetuous contempt for calls of new elections, but rather, they have supported him in such an undertaking. It all falls back to the notion that it is much better to do nothing about this thing called peace rather than doing something because every time someone does something ‘ensuring’ peace, widespread murder ensues.
This is not sometimes, nor most times, but every time. And so it would seem a great impasse was reached and should not be challenged or changed because of the terrible cost in lives, almost entirely innocent Israelis. This is a quick glance backward at how this love of inertia about peace between the Israelis and the Pals came to be.
It might be suggested that given the history of things this is certainly the best that could be obtained given the nature and relations of the parties involved. Only this is all a lie. There has never been a true attempt of obtaining a peace. The Pals have been the great abusers of every peace negotiation to which they have participated, and they have walked away from every settlement offered to them with a resulting rise in violence on each occasion.
And for these moves that would naturally appear as contrary to the purposes of peace, they have received more and more concessions. These concessions were squeezed from the Israelis by the international parties who never placed any pressure upon the offending, violent Pals. It would appear that these international parties were great fools as such failed policies of negotiation could only be expected to keep the parties in an enteral balance of conflict, at best.
Through their endeavors as arbiters between these two warring parties, the international groups are always quick to pronounce that they only have the interests of both the Israelis and the Pals uppermost in mind, but in fact, it should be noted, it is actually their own interests that they have uppermost in mind.
They might fairly be termed as ‘fools’ if there goal was peace, as only a fool would reward one party acting contrary to peace(violence) while punishing the party acting in concordance with peace(concessions). Of course, these wise men are too wise to be fools and it is pretty obvious now and, always was, that their goals are bent towards anything but peace. A tenuous incompatibility between the parties maintains tension in the region and a basis towards greater plans.
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