What fate awaits Abbas and his Authority?

Mahmoud Abbas has six security agencies which operate mainly in the (A) classified area of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and which exchange roles with the Occupation forces in suppressing the Palestinian people. These six agencies are the General Intelligence, Preventive Security, Military Intelligence, Civil Police, National Security and Presidential Security. A budget of more than a billion dollars has been allocated to these agencies, equivalent to the budget of the Ministries of Education and Agriculture.

People around the world may be shocked by the number and formation of these agencies, which were designed specifically for a people suffering under Occupation, not to preserve their security and safety, but to protect the security of Israel. These agencies that interfere in the affairs of the Palestinians on a daily basis are unparalleled in the whole world, even in the most dictatorial regimes that have highly specialised agencies but do not interfere in the lives of citizens whatsoever.

OPINION: Remembering the First Intifada and the birth of Hamas

Since the members of these agencies had set foot in the Occupied Territories under the Oslo Accords, overt and covert security prosecution had been taking place between 1993-1995, where they have been carrying out their assignments with complete dedication and loyalty. Their only concern is to eliminate any actions that threaten Israel’s security or any serious opposition of the Oslo Accords, while political life in Israel became lively and had fierce opposition and violation of the agreements, where the Occupation forces and settlers were given carte blanche to kill and arrest Palestinians and expand settlement activities.

For more than 30 years, these agencies have taken turns with the Occupation forces in arresting citizens, including students, workers, professors, scientists and journalists. Not for a crime they committed, but rather for their anti-occupation activities and their opposition to the Oslo Accords, which undermined the rights of the Palestinian people recognised in international law, most notably the right to self-determination.

These agencies have been given the freedom to tamper with the security and safety of the Palestinian citizens. They raid their homes at night to arrest whoever they want after terrorising their residents, assaulting them and vandalising their belongings, exactly like the Occupation does while, during the day, they rampage through the streets, storming workplaces, universities and schools to arrest and shoot citizens, preventing any demonstration denouncing the crimes of the Occupation.

I have worked for so many years with legal experts and field research teams to monitor and document the crimes committed by these agencies. The outcome of this research has been terrifying, as there audio and video testimonies of untold horrors on torture, home invasions, the placing of spying devices and cameras in bedrooms and the beating of women and children during raids and searches to arrest wanted persons.

The research revealed the strong and deep connection between these agencies with the Israeli, American and European security agencies. These agencies receive direct financial support from the latter and field training in repression and investigation, to the point that Israelis from the Shin Bet come specifically to the city of Jericho to give regular lectures to students affiliated with the University of Independence, which specialises in security sciences.

Those in Europe, Britain and America who provide the financial support to the security agencies of the Palestinian Authorities are happy with what it does.

OPINION: Celebrating revolution by annihilating it is Abbas’s style

They have never linked the aid they provide or put a condition on receiving it to the achievement of democracy by the Palestinian Authority nor commitment to the Human Rights Charter, which they have been preaching about day and night, as long as it preserves the security of the Israelis, just the same way they do not put conditions on the aid they provide to Israel with its commitment to the rules of international law.

These agencies have completely merged with their Israeli counterparts and have imbibed their security doctrine, and their belief is now that, whoever is considered an enemy of the Occupation is necessarily an enemy of these agencies. Not only this, but also anyone from these agencies or from  the Fatah movement, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, who opposes this policy and raises his voice could be excluded and even liquidated, as has happened on many occasions. In a special testimony by one of the officers, he said: “The members of these agencies are trained to carry out orders, even if the target is their father or mother, regardless of any degree of kinship or societal norms.”

The campaigns launched by these agencies for decades and, up until today, are extensive and systematic, completely similar to the daily campaigns of the Occupation. The goal is to eliminate activists who oppose the Occupation and the agendas of the Authority. Throughout the years of their work, these agencies have arrested thousands, killed under torture more than 60 citizens, and looted and robbed millions of citizens’ savings.

The irony is that the ready-made accusation directed at most activists because of their opinions or gathering to protest the crimes of the Occupation and criticise the Palestinian Authority is “resisting the Authority”, “insulting high figures” and “inciting sectarian strife”. The last accusation raises a lot of amusement and astonishment, since the Occupied Palestinian Territories do not have warring sects like some neighbouring countries, as Christians and Muslims, side by side, suffer from the crimes of the Occupation and struggle to get rid of the Occupation and establish an independent State.

The war criminal ‘victim’: Netanyahu’s inevitable fate

These agencies consist of more than 70,000 members, equating to 16 security officers for every 1,000 citizens—a ratio typically seen only in totalitarian police regimes. It includes ranks, colonels, brigadiers and generals, that those watching from afar would believe that these are the heads of an impregnable and sovereign state but, in reality, they are servants and slaves of the Occupation, moving between the areas classified as (A, B, and C) under special cards. They are humiliated and insulted at checkpoints, and when the Occupation forces storm their areas, they hide in their holes until the Occupation completes its mission. These agencies have never confronted or stood against the attacks of the Occupation forces or settlers on citizens, and they have not arrested any settler to hold him accountable for the crimes he committed in the Territories under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. On the contrary, if they arrest a settler, they hand him over to the Occupation to release him to repeat his crimes.

Therefore, it is illogical to describe the relationship between these agencies and the Occupation forces as “coordination”, but rather it is one-sided cooperation that amounts to treason and espionage with the enemy, by collecting information about activists, preparing files and passing them on to the Israelis and Americans.

Furthermore, exhausting Palestinian society through repeated arrests and confiscating the movable and immovable assets of those targeted has caused serious damage to the main interests of the Palestinian people and made them subject to the cruelty of the Occupation.

The late Yasser Arafat decided to rebel against this system that he had created with his own hands after seven years of security cooperation and the collapse of the Camp David talks, where many members of these agencies joined the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000. However, the sources of corruption, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, conspired against him while he was being bombarded and besieged in Ramallah, and one of the current leaders known for his success had poisoned him through a dentist, according to leaked documents from the investigation committee into his assassination.

After Arafat’s assassination in 2004, the security services were restructured and General Dayton was sent to train officers. An American-European-Israeli committee was formed to supervise the work of these services and ensure they were doing what was necessary to prevent any hostile actions against Israel. The ferocity of these services increased and they continued their arrest and torture campaigns on a large scale, without the position of donors and supporters ever changing.

The Palestinian Authority’s prisons were filled with detainees, and torture spread like a pandemic in all security headquarters. Jericho Prison was called the “slaughterhouse” due to the severity and brutality of the torture operations.

The communication of these services with their Israeli counterparts reached its peak without shame or fear, as officers from the Shin Bet attended and supervised the investigation sessions. Those who were found of interest were transferred to Israeli prisons to complete the investigation and be put on trial.

OPINION: The PA wants its repression hidden in plain sight

The political level headed by Abbas stuck to the doctrine of security cooperation with the Occupation, considering it “sacred”. Whenever criticism of this cooperation intensified due to the expansion of settlements and killings, Abbas or the Central Committee of the Fatah movement would announce the freezing of security cooperation, but it was nothing but empty talk, as cooperation at all stages did not stop for a moment.

Today, after the events of 7 October and the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, nothing has changed. These agencies continued their work as usual, violently confronting all means of showing solidarity with the Gaza Strip, killing 16 citizens and injuring others, including children, and launching arrest campaigns in rotation with the Occupation forces in what is known as the “revolving door”. This brutal and intensified repression in the West Bank distracted the people there from the genocide happening against the people in the Gaza Strip.

Despite the fierce settlement campaign throughout the West Bank, the assault on Al-Aqsa Mosque, the settlers’ attacks on citizens by beating, shooting and burning property, and Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s threats to impose Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority’s security services, under direct orders from Abbas, have increased the level of repression across the whole of the West Bank cities, until it imposed a tight siege on the Jenin camp for more than thirty five days.

The Palestinian Authority’s security services followed the steps of the Occupation forces in besieged cities, villages and camps, as it prevented the residents of Jenin camp from leaving the camp, and prevented children and students from going to their schools. The residents were deprived of food, medicine and fuel, and the forces stormed homes, burned them down and destroyed some of them.

They also burned citizens’ cars, used RPG launchers, and snipers climbed onto the roofs of buildings to kill anyone who moved.

Journalist Shaza Al-Sabbagh was killed while she was with her nephews, and Mahmoud Al-Jalqamousi and his son were killed and his daughter was injured while trying to get water, bringing the number of people killed by these services during their siege to nine.

Similar to the response of the Occupation and its spokesmen when they commit a crime and deny responsibility for it, the spokesman for the Palestinian Authority’s security services, Anwar Rajab, issued shameless statements to blame the factions and hold them responsible for the killings, which contradicted the testimonies of eye-witnesses who were at the scene of the crime when it happened.

OPINION: Between Israeli attacks and winter cold, helpless Gazans struggle to survive

Furthermore, in order to falsify the facts and to enable the Palestinian Authority to pass its narrative, it worked on fighting the free media, especially Al Jazeera. Abbas issued a decision to close Al Jazeera’s offices in Ramallah and freeze its broadcast, and instructed a local court to block its websites, in line with a previous decision by the Occupation government to ban Al Jazeera’s broadcast for the same reasons that prompted him to take such a decision – which is to expose the crimes of the Occupation forces during their storming of the Jenin camp earlier.

At this dangerous and tough time the Palestinian people are living, not a single politician with the slightest degree of logic and reason would make a decision to besiege a camp that is considered in the Palestinian history as one of the fortresses that bear witness to the catastrophe of the Palestinian people since 1948, and which the Occupation is trying with all its power to remove from the list of witnesses. The Occupation had, indeed, tried through repeated raids over the last year to do so, but it failed.

Sincere efforts were made by various civil society organisations and groups to bring the concerned parties to the negotiating table, but the President of the Palestinian Authority aborted all these attempts, preferring to submit to the desires of Tel Aviv and Washington, and implement agendas that fragment the unity of the Palestinian people, and expose their security and safety to danger.

Abbas, on the UN platforms is used to demand protection from the international community and implementing resolutions on ending the Occupation.

Yesterday, the representative of the Palestinian Authority in the Security Council shed tears due to the horrific crimes committed by the Occupation in the Gaza Strip against the medical facility, staff, and the ongoing attacks on hospitals, the latest of which was the burning of Kamal Adwan Hospital.

How could the international community take them seriously? Should it protect the Palestinian people from the crimes of the Occupation or from the crimes of the Palestinian Authority? The Palestinian Authority’s apparatuses have turned Jenin Hospital into a military barracks and attacked medical staff during the ongoing siege on Jenin camp.

It is a surreal scene caused by a corrupt group with special interests, who are specialists in concluding deals and begging at the doorsteps of the Occupiers to obtain privileges that enable them and their families to live in comfort at the expense of the rights, security, safety and well-being of the Palestinian people while, at the same time, it issued some statements condemning the crimes of the Occupation, in order to cover up its own corruption.

OPINION: Israel’s attacks on hospitals are war crimes; the world must respond 

Throughout ancient and contemporary history, peoples who have been subjected to Occupation have suffered from a handful of weak-willed individuals or groups organised by the Occupation to destroy the morale of these peoples, and attempted to subjugate them to transform this Occupation into permanent colonialism, but all these attempts failed when the people gathered their capabilities and were determined to get rid of the Occupation, just as the Europeans did when they confronted the Nazi occupation and their agents.

The Palestinian people have experienced such phenomena for a hundred years. During the British Mandate, the so-called “Peace Units” were formed in 1936, which were used by colonialism and Zionists to spy on people and pursue and assassinate activists in national liberation movements.

Over time, after their mission was completed, they were disposed of, and the Palestinian people have continued to struggle and fight tirelessly to this day.

The fate of the Palestinian Authority and its apparatuses is bleak and unknown, and there is a great feeling of anger among the population regarding its policies. It has become a huge burden for its supporters as well, after it has exhausted its mission for which it was made.

Today, the extreme right that leads the Occupation government finds a good opportunity to impose sovereignty over the West Bank, expel the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, and transform the security services into traffic police!

It is no longer possible to reform these services and unite them into one security service that watches over the Palestinian people and their protection. They have become accustomed to a method of work that only serves the Occupation and its agendas, and advising Abbas to change the course of his political authority will be of no use. It is too late, period. The damage he has caused to the most just cause in history cannot be repaired through advice.

Abbas will soon be turning 90, and he continues deliberately to ignore the dangers surrounding the Palestinian people. The Occupation is closing in on him to the point that his very existence is threatened. Killing, arrests and settlements are at their peak, and the decision to annex the West Bank is ready, waiting for Trump to enter the White House. If the dreams of Smotrich and the current right-wing government are accomplished, what fate awaits Abbas and his Authority?!

OPINION: Jimmy Carter, Israel and the apartheid question

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