The PA’s efforts to keep Palestinians colonised

The Palestinian Authority’s dependence on Israel and the US makes it traitorous to Palestinians. This week, Israeli media reported that the PA’s Intelligence Chief Majed Faraj will be meeting with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials in Washington.

Faraj has been part of the PA’s security establishment since 1994 and was appointed head of Military intelligence in 2007. By 2009, Faraj became head of the PA’s General Intelligence Service. It is a far cry from his earlier involvement with Fatah in his youth, during which time he was incarcerated by Israel several times.

What security coordination means for the PA and Israel is the complete destruction of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. And what agency is better placed to lend a hand than the CIA? Its track record speaks for itself.

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It is worth remembering Ghassan Kanafani’s adamant statements that Palestinians are facing colonial and imperialist domination and that the anti-colonial struggle in Palestine is a struggle against both.

Perhaps the Tenet Plan as proposed by CIA Director in 2001, George Tenet, illustrates the level of involvement that the US has in ensuring smooth security coordination for Israel’s benefit. Besides the US supplying the PA and Israel with communications and surveillance equipment, the plan makes it incumbent on the PA to divulge information about Palestinian anti-colonial resistance – “terrorists”, in US official rhetoric.

“The PA will move immediately to apprehend, question and incarcerate terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza and will provide the security committee the names of those arrested as soon as they are apprehended, as well as a readout of actions taken,” one stipulation reads.

As reports emerged in 2009 of CIA involvement in training the PA’s security services, the agency’s spokesman at the time Paul Gimigliano stated, “The notion that this agency somehow runs other intelligence services … is simply wrong. The CIA … only supports, and is interested in, lawful methods that produce sound intelligence.”

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Of course, the statement would never be taken seriously. Not only have Palestinians been severely tortured by the PA’s security services; it is common knowledge to anyone with a basic interest in US foreign policy that the CIA teaches torture.

The Palestine Papers, which were leaked to Al Jazeera and published in January 2011, elaborate on the role US General Keith Dayton’s role in establishing training centres for the PA’s security services, which in turn became involved in detaining and torturing Palestinians associated with Hamas.

In the current scenario, with Abbas vying for power in Gaza, ongoing links between the PA and the CIA can only spell additional disaster for Palestinians. We have recently seen how the PA’s security services weakened Jenin to the point of enabling Israel to forcibly displace thousands of Palestinian refugees from the camp.

The colonisation of Palestine is hot happening in a vacuum, yet Palestinians have been abandoned by the international community. Instead of looking at the perpetrators of violence and holding them accountable, the world waits for the oppressors to annihilate those legitimately fighting for freedom. Let us also not forget the PA’s rhetoric of foreign agendas last month, as Faraj meets with CIA officials in Washington this week – where does the PA draw the line between national interests and foreign intervention?

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