PA security force Israeli army to retreat

Palestinian security forces this morning blocked Israeli troops from entering a city in the occupied West Bank and forced them to leave.

In a video obtained by Ma’an, several Palestinian national security service and police officers can be seen standing in the middle of the road a few metres away from an Israeli military jeep that is attempting to enter the city of Qalqiliya in the northern West Bank.

A Palestinian officer is heard telling another officer to signal to the Israeli military jeep to retreat.

“Tell him ‘lekh’,” he says, using the Hebrew word for “leave”.

Another Palestinian officer is heard asking his commander, “These are our borders, right?” to which the commander answers, “Yes, these are our borders. Let him go back.”

The Israeli jeep eventually moves back.

An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an they would look into the case.

Last month, Palestinian forces blocked Israeli troops from entering the city of Jenin in a similar incident, with both cases representing a rare standoff between Palestinian and Israeli forces, as the Palestinian Authority (PA) regularly allows Israeli forces to enter PA-controlled areas in the West Bank to conduct daily detention raids and other military operations, as per its policy of security coordination with the occupation in contravention of the Oslo accords.

As Palestinian forces pushed back the Israeli jeep in Qalqilya, Israeli forces were entering other towns in the occupied West Bank carrying out predawn raids today, where they detained at least five Palestinians, according to local sources and the Israeli army.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, which documents overnight raids by Israeli forces, said in a statement on Thursday that it had recorded the detention of 100 Palestinians, including 18 minors, since the beginning of 2017.