Hamas condemns PA attacks on West Bank student activists

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, condemned on Sunday the brutal attacks carried out by Palestinian Authority security forces on student activists in the occupied West Bank.

The statement from Hamas came after undercover PA forces kidnapped student Musa Dweekat, an activist in the Islamic Bloc at Al-Najah University. Dweekat’s arrest is part of a wide-scale PA-Israel joint campaign against Hamas-affiliated students in West Bank universities during the student election season.

According to Hamas, it was a “violent and brutal” undercover operation which led to the student’s arrest. “The scene reflected the fact that the Palestinian people are now ruled by a gang that has no morals or values.”

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Dweekat was not the first student to be arrested by the PA at Al-Najah University; his detention followed that of Ibrahim Shalhoub. Al-Quds University’s Abu Dis Campus then banned the Islamic Bloc and the PA restricted the freedom of the Bloc to organise at Al-Najah.

“All of these measures,” said Hamas, “demonstrate that the PA suppresses freedoms and democracy in the West Bank.” The movement called for human rights groups to highlight the PA’s oppression and suppression of freedom of speech.

One Hamas MP in the West Bank city of Hebron, Samira Al-Halayqa, said that the PA campaign against the students’ Islamic Bloc is part of the “systematic” attacks on the resistance movement.