Political Arrests Under the Palestinian Authority

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The Palestinian Authority began taking measures against opponents of the Oslo Accord and against Palestinian mujahideen from the very first day it took over the reins of limited self-rule in Gaza and Jericho, in accordance with the provisions of the Oslo Accord and the interim Cairo Agreement of 1994, which set out the details of the process of transferring civil authority from the hands of the occupation to the hands of the Palestinian Authority. The measures began with the establishment of the Palestinian security services and the preparation of files on the resistance factions and the leaders who rejected the Oslo Accord, and so on. Then the process of imposing authority began through multiple means, foremost among them intimidation: in 1994 the Authority opened fire on worshippers who had just come out of the Palestine Mosque, killing and wounding hundreds within two hours. I myself, the author of this article, was the first to be subjected to intimidating gunfire by Palestinian intelligence officers in 1995, and I was hit by four bullets.

The Security Dimension in the Agreements with Israel

Israel cannot sign an agreement with any Arab party unless that party pledges to defend Israeli security. Israeli security interests were paramount in the Camp David Accords, just as they were in the May 1983 agreement with Lebanon, and just as they are in the agreements with the Palestinians and the Jordanians. And if the Arab side were to refuse to meet Israel’s security requirements, Israel would not proceed with drafting agreements.

In the letter he sent to the Israeli prime minister a few days before the Oslo Accord, Arafat pledged to renounce terrorism and pursue terrorists, and pledged to discipline the ranks of the PLO in this regard. The Oslo Accord came to affirm this matter, stipulating security cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis, and affirming that overall Israeli security fell within Israel’s own jurisdiction. Then the Taba Agreement of 1995 came to set out the details on various issues. The agreement states that the Palestinian Authority must pursue terrorists and eliminate the infrastructure of terrorism, and that it must also refrain from pursuing, in any way whatsoever, those who cooperated with Israel. In other words, the Authority was to pursue the mujahideen and fighters, and leave the spies and agents to their own devices.

Israel tied progress in negotiations to progress made by the Palestinian Authority in the security field, which meant progress in striking at Palestinian resistance fighters and liquidating the Palestinian resistance factions. The Authority received rewards whenever it achieved progress in this field, and was subjected to penalties whenever it dragged its feet or failed to deliver. The Palestinian Authority had to continually prove its fidelity to the Oslo Accords and its determination to strike at the Palestinian resistance in order to win approval and secure the flow of donor funds, whose disbursement is controlled by the United States and Israel. Despite this, Israel kept the Authority under constant pressure, never granting it a certificate of excellence, contenting itself with merely praising the Authority’s efforts whenever it wielded the heavy stick, while demanding still greater effort.

To this day, donor funds remain tied to progress in the security field, and to the Authority’s efforts to strip the resistance factions, foremost among them Hamas, of their weapons. America brought in a Palestinian prime minister who stands against the resistance, and tied the flow of funds to him as the person who occupies the post overseeing their disbursement. Whoever wants a government salary in Palestine must strip off every garment of shame and openly proclaim his devotion to Israeli security.

The Early Arrests

The Palestinian Authority began wide-scale political arrests after taking over authority in the main cities at the end of 1995, in accordance with the Taba Agreement, particularly among the ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, on the grounds that these were the two Islamic factions that embraced armed resistance as a path to liberating Palestine. Hundreds were arrested during that period, including members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades affiliated with Fatah, who served their prison terms in the headquarters of the security services rather than in ordinary prisons.

But imprisonment at that time was not harsh or severe, and a spirit of leniency prevailed toward those who were called “brothers” from factions other than Fatah. A detainee could sometimes leave his place of detention to take care of some business, or to visit relatives and family, or to take part in private celebrations or condolences; he could obtain whatever clothing he wanted, and in many cases he enjoyed an unlocked cell door and moved about outside it with a degree of freedom. Moreover, the guards’ treatment was rarely harsh, and the guard often found in it a good opportunity for political and social exchange with his prisoners.

Israel took notice of this and described the Authority’s arrests as “revolving door” arrests: that is, a door through which a person enters and turns around to exit from the same place he entered. Israel said that the Palestinian Authority was engaged in camouflage and unserious arrests, and that it needed to commit to everything required of it if it wanted to make progress in the negotiating process.

The Palestinian Authority was not at ease with these arrests, because their popular reception was very negative, badly harming an image that was not good to begin with. Many had accused the Authority of being one of the tools of the occupation, and the arrests came to entrench that accusation. This negative reception reached many members of Fatah itself, who saw in the arrests an affront to themselves and to their history of struggle, and they often found themselves in embarrassing situations with fellow former prisoners with whom they had shared the suffering of Zionist occupation prisons. I myself experienced this, in that many Fatah members expressed their shame at my being held in a Palestinian detention facility, and at their own practice of repression against the sons of Palestine who opposed the occupation.

Hosting

The members of the Palestinian Authority were not harsh toward detainees from the resistance factions, and they tried to avoid friction that they saw would end in embarrassing reactions against themselves. A spirit of cooperation with the detainees and avoidance of provocation generally prevailed among them. Their leniency was evident in allowing in materials the detainee wanted, such as books, writing materials, and radio receivers. Nor was the Authority stingy with the food provided to detainees, which was plentiful except in cases of a sudden surge in the number of detainees.

… this accusation, and consider them mercenaries of the salary they receive at the end of the month.

The Legality of the Arrests

There is nothing in Palestinian law that legitimizes this type of arrest; on the contrary, Palestinian law prohibits political detention and affirms the prisoner’s right to defend himself and to resort to the appropriate legal frameworks. This is why all these arrests took place outside the law, arbitrarily, and without authorization from a judge or legal body. Detainees were rarely brought before a court, even though some of them, such as Sheikh Jamal Mansour, God rest his soul, spent nearly three years in detention without trial.

Some detainees, including the author of this article, appealed to the High Court, and a ruling was issued for their release, but the Authority did not release them. I obtained a release order from the Palestinian High Court, but the executive authority paid it absolutely no heed, and I remained in detention until Arafat himself authorized my release.

It is clear, however, that these arrests were carried out in fulfillment of the Palestinian Authority’s security commitments toward Israel. That is, there are agreements far more powerful than Palestinian law, and the Authority knows that failing to carry out such activities would deprive it of its very justification for existing, while individual officers know that what they do justifies their collecting a salary at month’s end.

The Next Phase of Arrests

People grew agitated after the outbreak of the 2000 intifada, and began holding sit-ins at Palestinian detention facilities such as Junaid Prison, eventually forcing the Palestinian Authority to release all detainees. The Authority grew weak in the face of the developing Palestinian intifada, in which all sons of the Palestinian people took part, including members of Fatah, and it could no longer bear the mounting embarrassment. With this, one phase of political arrests came to an end.

The arrests subsided until June 14, 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip. The West Bank and Gaza were under siege, people were in dire financial straits, and Israeli and American pressure on the Authority was intense for political reasons connected to Israeli security.

The Palestinian lull in arrests ended the day Hamas took control of the Strip, and political arrests and interrogations began in both the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas began a campaign of arrests among the ranks of Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority began arrests among the ranks of Hamas, though the background to the arrests differed. The Ramallah authority said it began arrests among the ranks of Hamas in order to prevent Hamas from carrying out a military coup like the one it had carried out in Gaza, and thus justified pursuing Hamas’s weapons. This justification could be entirely acceptable were it not for the fact that the West Bank is under direct Israeli occupation, so that Hamas cannot move militarily in the open without being subjected to the occupation’s repression. Hamas’s weapons are pursued by Israel, while the Authority’s weapons are licensed by Israel.

There was enormous Israeli and American pressure on the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to take security measures against Hamas and all the resistance factions, and the entirety of financial assistance was tied to the actual activities the Authority carried out in this field. Moreover, America made Salam Fayyad’s appointment as custodian of the Palestinian treasury a condition for the Palestinians receiving assistance. In other words, the matter had nothing to do with Palestinian security, but with the requirements of Israeli security, which the Authority had pledged to fulfill. Indeed, had there been no Palestinian security commitments in Israel’s favor, Palestinian-on-Palestinian fighting would never have occurred, nor would this sharp split on the Palestinian scene have occurred.

As for Hamas, it justified its arrests as security measures to preserve internal Palestinian security in the Strip, saying that there were elements from Fatah working to create problems and crises, fuel infighting, and prevent stability. But Hamas could not justify the arrest of many politicians who carried no weapons and did not take to the streets as fighters.

The Violence of This Phase

The arrests of this phase were not calm and measured; they were sometimes violent and bloody, saturated with hatred, animosity, and dark grudges. Both the Fatah and Hamas sides practiced violence and torture against detainees, and some detainees suffered lasting physical disabilities, while others died. Palestinians endured extremely harsh forms of torture that even the Zionist occupation would be ashamed to practice.

The American administration and Israel praised the Palestinian Authority’s policy of arrests, and its seizure of Hamas’s institutions and their conversion into Fatah-run administrations, and both states reiterated their insistence on uprooting Hamas from the West Bank. In return, the two states promised to continue offering facilitations to the Authority, both in terms of money and in terms of easing the daily hardships of Palestinian life connected mostly to military checkpoints and citizens’ movement between areas.

Now, at the time of writing this article, it appears that the intensity of the arrest campaign has eased somewhat, even as torture continues. The campaign in the West Bank is now calmer than it was a few months ago.

The Crime of Political Detention

The ugliest consequence of political detention is the generation of internal grudges and hatreds among Palestinians, which ultimately leads to fragmentation, disintegration, and internecine fighting. Our daily experience in this field is clear and evident to everyone, and it shows that detention is a blatant provocation of various emotions and generates a desire for revenge; we have observed the angry reactions of detainees’ families, and their desire for revenge expressed through their words and comments.

The historical tragedy, however, lies in the fact that displaced, oppressed, wronged Palestinians are arresting other Palestinians in defense of Israeli security, in exchange for vague promises that have so far yielded nothing. It is very hard to find, anywhere in history, a flogged man standing guard at the gates of his own torturer’s kingdom, and it does not appear that the Palestinian leaderships have read history well — or perhaps they simply have no interest at all in learning from it and drawing lessons.

Perhaps every Palestinian ought to ask: are the gains the PLO leadership has achieved through the negotiating process worth having one Palestinian arrest another because he struggles against Israel? Or perhaps Palestinians ought to say: if a Palestinian arresting another Palestinian in defense of Israeli security is the price of establishing the Palestinian state, then we do not want this state.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الاعتقالات السياسية لدى السلطة الفلسطينية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.