'It's not Palestinian Authority's job to shoot the Israelis'

‘It’s not Palestinian Authority’s job to shoot the Israelis’

The Secretary General of the Fatah Central Committee – the leading party in the Palestinian Authority, Jibril Rajoub, told Palestine TV that the PA’s security forces are not tasked with resisting the Israeli… pic.twitter.com/kTTpgaca0M

— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) January 3, 2025

Jibril Rajoub, secretary general of the Central Committee of Fatah, has declared that Palestinian security services are not tasked with engaging with or resisting the Israeli occupation. His remarks come as the Palestinian Authority (PA) faces intense scrutiny over its deepening security coordination with Israeli forces and brutal crackdown in the occupied West Bank, which has received a stamp of approval from Tel Aviv.

The statement coincides with the PA’s controversial “Protecting the Homeland” operation in the Jenin refugee camp, where Palestinian security forces, backed by Israeli occupation forces, have conducted extensive operations against what they term “sedition and chaos.”

The operation, which began on 5 December, has resulted in nine Palestinian deaths, including young journalist Shatha Al-Sabbagh, with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reporting that the campaign has received explicit approval from the Israeli occupation army.

The PA’s security apparatus, established under American guidance through Lieutenant General Keith Dayton’s training programme, has evolved into what critics describe as a proxy force for Israeli interests. A 2017 study revealed that the security sector employs approximately half of all Palestinian civil servants, consuming nearly $1 billion of the PA budget and receiving about 30 per cent of total international aid, including most US funding. The security forces’ budget exceeds the combined spending on education, health and agriculture.

BLOG: The PA wants its repression hidden in plain sight

The scale of the security apparatus is striking, with more than 80,000 personnel creating one of the world’s highest security-to-population ratios at 1:48. During a 2017 meeting with then-US President Donald Trump, the effectiveness of this coordination was praised, with Trump noting how the PA and Israeli forces “get along unbelievably well” and “work together beautifully.”

Critics have labelled the arrangement a “five-star occupation,” arguing that it relieves Israel of direct policing responsibilities while enabling aggressive settler-colonial policies. The PA’s security doctrine has shifted from protecting Palestinian communities to actively suppressing resistance, including peaceful protests, often through brutal means. This has included illegal arrests and torture, as evidenced in cases like the death of activist Nizar Banat in 2021.

In what observers view as an attempt to suppress coverage of its activities, the PA has recently suspended Al Jazeera’s broadcasts, claiming the network was “broadcasting inciteful content and spreading misinformation.” The move has been widely interpreted as an effort to conceal the scale of repression against Palestinians in the West Bank.

The current operation in Jenin, a refugee camp of less than half a square kilometre housing 23,000 residents, has particularly highlighted the PA’s role. Israeli Channel 14 has confirmed that the occupation regime issued a clear deadline for the PA to complete its task of eliminating resistance in Jenin, under the pretext of ending “lawlessness.”

The security coordination continues despite ongoing Israeli military operations in Gaza, widely considered to be a genocide, and escalating settler violence in the illegally occupied West Bank. Critics argue that the PA’s actions have effectively transformed it from a representative of Palestinian aspirations into a security subcontractor for the occupation, with its security forces serving as what observers term “the first line of defence” for Israeli settlements and the occupation army.

READ: Settler attack leaves elderly Palestinian with severe head injury