Why is the Palestinian Authority arresting West Bank activists? | New Israel-Palestine Conflict

Tarqi al-Khudeiri has returned home with his family to the West Bank city of Ramallah, but the 22-year-old activist, who has a well-known face and presence at city demonstrations, is still shocked at the hands of the arrest. Palestinian security forces last week.

“Prevention security forces called my father’s mobile phone last Saturday and informed him that we should be at their residence for a ‘pleasant’ 10-minute conversation,” Al-Khuderi told Al Jazeera. “Dad and I promised to go home together.”

Officers then showed a video of a protest, alleging that Al-Khudeiri had thrown insults at the end of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, which he denied in the category.

“Everyone knows that I have a good relationship with members and activists from different political parties,” he said. “These protests were in support of the resistance and in solidarity with our people in Gaza during the Israeli attack. It makes no sense to use these protests to insult political leaders.”

Security forces changed their minds and informed Al-Khudeiri that his life was under threat when he was confronted with the alleged crime and unknown people came out to get him.

“Security forces told me to spend 24 hours in their residence as protection,” he said.

Al-Khudeiri, who has diabetes and other chronic illnesses, told his father to return home and bring the medicines to the safe house.

“Suddenly, without saying anything, they put me in a car and took me to the security complex [prison] Jericho, ”he said.

Violent interrogation

The young activist was violently interrogated that night for many hours, and was treated so “with anger and incineration” that he was shocked.

“They threatened to hang me with my hands – a form of torture known as shabah – and physically and verbally assaulted me,” he said. “They put their hands behind my back and left me covered and sat me on a low chair with no back for long hours.”

In the first 24 hours of his arrest, al-Khudeiri’s family had no idea about his whereabouts. Eventually he was crawling with insects and was taken to a single cell that was “not suitable for humans”. As her blood sugar dropped to a dangerous low, her ears for hearing about her diabetes became deaf until she had a hypoglycemic attack.

His detention was extended for another 24 hours, and he was banned from seeing a lawyer.

We ask the Prime Minister #Palestinian @DrShtayyeh Release immediately #Active Tariq Al-Khudairi was arbitrarily arrested on May 22 solely for exercising his right to do so #freedom of speech. The Palestinian Authority must stop suppressing peaceful dissent! pic.twitter.com/d1e2b1i2Tg

– Amnesty International (@AmnestyAR) May 24, 2021

Translation: We call on the Prime Minister to release @DrShtayyeh immediately to Tariq al-Khude for exercising his right to freedom of expression, who was arbitrarily arrested on 22 May.

The interrogation resumed the next day.

“It became clear to me that this issue of allegedly insulting a political leader was just an excuse to arrest me and grill me about other issues,” al-Khudeiri said. They questioned student activism, what Israel arrested in 2019, and other activists and former prisoners.

“They didn’t like the fact that they showed up against the Palestinian Authority and accused me of being a member of Hamas,” he said. “I replied that I am not, but even if I were, it would not be a problem, because they represent the resistance against the Israeli occupation.”

In the end, the interrogation informed him that the accusation accused him of “igniting conflict”, “pushing” and “insulting symbolic leaders”.

Al-Khudei appeared before the prosecution on Tuesday, compared to what the interrogators told him, said he was innocent and claimed that they kept him in complex security for his protection. They wanted to extend the detention for 15 days but eventually released “under his charge”.

Violation of freedom of expression

The case of Al-Khudeiri is one of the latest arrests by Palestinian Authority security forces for Palestinian activity and university students in the occupied West Bank.

Other detainees include Mahdi Abu Awwad, Mustafa Al-Khawaja, Akram Salamah, Anas Qazzaz and Hussam Amareen al-Quds University medical student.

Justice lawyers: The Jericho Magistrate’s Court has rejected a request to release political detainee Hussam Amarin, and as a result, he has withdrawn the important examination scheduled for next Saturday at the Medical University. #Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/Zl69lZ55eA

– Quds News Network (@qudsn) May 27, 2021

Translation: Lawyers for Justice: The Jericho court has rejected a request to release the political detainee Hussam Amareen, and as a result has been denied an important examination scheduled for next Saturday at al-Quds University Medical School.

According to Shaker Tameiza, a lawyer for the Addameer Prisoners’ Rights Group, the arrest campaign began after the end of the Israeli Gaza Strip attack, and protests in the West Bank were popular, expressing support and solidarity with Gaza relatives. .

“The rate of these arrests is alarming,” Tameiza told Al Jazeera. “If this continues, we could see hundreds of political arrests in a few months.”

In violation of the law, detainees are taken from their hometowns to the security complex in Jericho – activists colloquially call them the “Jericho Slaughterhouse”.

“According to the testimonies we have heard, the detainees were subjected to torture in the form of shaba, verbal abuse and physical beatings,” he said.

“The law says that all defendants must be tried in their city,” he continued. “Being taken to Jericho means lawyers don’t have access to it right away.”

All arrests are based on violations of freedom of expression, such as social media posts and chants made during protests.

“Most of the charges against the activists are roughly the same, such as‘ igniting sectarian and racial conflicts ’, which is an insult to the PA,” Tameiza said.

According to the Bar Justice Network, the political arrests – which have escalated since last week – “contradict, explicitly and clearly, the latest release decree issued by the President of the Palestinian Authority.”

Protests that the PA has seen as a threat

The crackdown on activists is not new, and is based on what political analyst Khalil Shaheen described as the PA’s “survival policy”.

The PA maintains the legitimacy of the international community by taking only the so-called discourse of a two-state solution and the negotiation of the peace process, he explained.

“This means that he sees any other policy, even if it is rooted in popular protests, as a threat to him. Deviating from this PA strategy causes the government to confront the activists as it is not in the interest of the PA to turn the protests into an Intifada ”.

In the past, the PA has dealt with popular protests by selecting them or maintaining a measure of control over them as pressure to return Israel to the negotiating table.

However, recent events and developments on earth – Sheikh Jarrah protests and Israeli attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, attacks on Palestinians in 1948 territories, rockets fired from Gaza – have served to fuel that situation.

“The PA is concerned that an armed confrontation with Israel will extend to the occupation of the West Bank,” Shaheen said. “In addition, a new generation of activists is emerging, who are not politicized by party members and therefore cannot be elected. These young people have been at the forefront of clashes with Israeli forces in both Jerusalem and Haifa and traditionally unrecognized by the PA.”

The campaign of arrests as a tactic of fear is happening at the same time as the Israeli “law and order” operation is being carried out in the 1948 territories that rounded up hundreds of Palestinian citizens in Israel, consistent with the behavior of authoritarian governments. Shaheen said.

“The PA governs out of fear because it is desperate to maintain its authority,” he said. “That’s why they postponed the election because they knew it would be an embarrassing failure for the Fatah main party.”

For activist Al-Khudeiri, this is not the time for factions to gain individual political points.

“The Palestinians need to maintain that unity that we saw in Sheikh Jarrah and the rest of Jerusalem, Gaza and the last union we saw in Palestine in 1948,” he said.

“We must stand together under one flag as a way to bury the so-called peace process in the face of Israeli normalization, occupation and security coordination, which is just as dead as it is. “.

Palestinians demonstrated in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, in solidarity with Gaza on May 18 [File: Abbas Momani/AFP]