The puppet authority is killing the Palestinians

Nizar Banat was not the first victim of Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority who believes that security coordination with the Israeli enemy is “sacred”; nor will he be the last as long as this puppet authority continues to burden and control the Palestinians. This is the Oslo-created PA which has hijacked the Fatah movement and Palestine Liberation Organisation, and all of its institutions that claim to speak in the name of the Palestinian people.

In my article last week, I said: “The magnificent Palestinian uprising that was seen during the Israeli attack against Gaza in May, which included Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories, the likes of which Palestine has not witnessed since the 1948 Nakba, should not have been in vain. It should be the basis for uniting the Palestinian ranks and putting the Palestinian house in order. The first step should be to oust Abbas and turn over his page in history, just as Netanyahu’s was. In doing so, the Oslo page will also be turned, and we can start with a fresh, blank sheet. Such a move begins and ends with resistance.”

Two days later, Palestinian activist Nizar Banat was killed by Abbas’s security forces after being dragged from his bed. This was not enough for the security goons; they stripped him and brutally beat him and cursed him in front of his wife and children. Then they took him away; it was the last that his family saw of him.

Banat was not armed; he was not a criminal; he was not a spy. His only “crime” was that he dared to speak out and exercise his right — indeed, his duty — to reject all forms of corruption and oppression practiced by the PA for the benefit of the Israeli occupation. He was expressing the feelings of all Palestinians peacefully through his posts on social media, out of love for Palestine and with dreams of its liberation from the occupation and its agents. His punishment was death at the hands of Abbas’s security forces, which were trained by US General Keith Dayton following Hamas’s victory in the 2006 elections and its assumption of power In the Gaza Strip. Dayton’s mission was to train Abbas’s security personnel to fight Hamas and return the Gaza Strip to the control of the puppet authority. He repeatedly told the Palestinians during their training that he was not training them to fight the Israelis, and that their focus should be entirely on the “outlaws” in Palestinian society.

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Those “outlaws”, of course, are the Palestinians who resist the Zionist occupation. Abbas exploited this and added to the list everyone who rejects his rule and demonstrates peacefully against him, or writes articles exposing his corruption and his work with the Israeli enemy. Such demonstrations are dispersed violently by his security forces, who pursue activists and journalists and arrest them. Abbas is also responsible for informing the Israeli authorities about the whereabouts of resistance fighters after every operation in order for them to be killed or imprisoned, particularly if they are from Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

It is painful to say that, bad as they are, Israeli prisons are more merciful than Abbas’s prisons. Prisoners held by the PA face torture and worse at the hands of his security forces.

Mahmoud Abbas was not shy about declaring his concern for Israel’s security and stability explicitly two years ago at the opening of the Palestinian Forum for Freedom and Peace in Ramallah, attended by Israeli officials. “We do not seek, and we will not seek, to flood Israel with millions in order to change its social culture,” he insisted. “This is nonsense that you read in the Hebrew media and elsewhere. We are working for the future of Israeli youth.” This was an oblique reference to the Palestinian right of return, which he has personally abandoned.

For the sake of Israel’s future, therefore, he is killing everyone who resists the occupation and defends Palestine’s right to liberation and the right of Palestinian youth to a better future and a dignified life.

Abbas has served the Zionist movement more than Ariel Sharon; raised the status of the Israelis more than Menachem Begin; and destroyed the Palestinian cause more than Netanyahu. He has trampled on the history of Palestine, and he has killed Nizar Banat, a crime which has crossed the boundaries of shame.

Even as he works to silence critics and the resistance and thus prepares the way for Zionist settlers to take more Palestinian land, the irony is lost on him that they are the people who have usurped the land of the PA security personnel who are assigned to protect them from the indigenous inhabitants. It’s an absurd, and absurdly unjust, situation.

Huge demonstrations have been held in Ramallah and other West Bank cities against Abbas and his corrupt authority since Banat’s murder. “Leave Abbas!” the protesters chanted. “The people want to overthrow the regime”.

These huge demonstrations were met by Abbas’s security forces with bullets and tear gas. They dragged and beat the protesters with batons. The same “brave” security personnel disappear whenever the occupation army violates the areas that are supposed to be under PA control.

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The Palestinian Authority under Abbas derives its legitimacy from foreign governments, not the people of Palestine. It has become a typical Arab regime: corrupt and tyrannical. It is the product of the cursed Oslo Accords, under which it is tasked with protecting the Israeli occupation. The people under occupation are expected to preserve the security of the occupying power. It is crazy. Anyone who disagrees with this is oppressed, arrested, and killed.

This authority of shame must be completely delegitimised. It was established on a wrong premise to protect the Zionist enemy, not to protect and benefit the Palestinians. It did not consider the liberation of Palestine; liberation has never been its objective. In fact, the liberation of Palestine will begin with the liberation of Ramallah from the Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas and all the Oslo men must be overthrown out of love for Palestine, to honour the martyrs, and out of mercy for the prisoners. This gang of rogues must go; their corruption, nepotism, and treachery are unacceptable. The future of the Palestinian people depends on this.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.