US, EU Support Violations of Human Rights as Palestinian Authority Escalates
Repression, Brutality

by Khaled Abu Toameh
December 24, 2010 at 5:00 am
http://www.hudson-ny.org/1749/palestinian-authority-brutality-repression

On a number of occasions over the past two years, Palestinians who protested
in public against the policies of the Palestinian Authority have been
assaulted and beaten by US-trained Palestinian policemen. Palestinian
journalists and human rights activists who tried to document these assaults
have also been beaten.

Abbas and Fayyad have not hesitated to use violence against their critics.
Many of those who spent time in Palestinian prisons and detention centers in
the West Bank say they were subjected there to various methods of torture.

One can understand why a radical movement like Hamas would want to crack
down on freedoms in the Gaza Strip, but what one cannot understand is why
the Palestinian Authority, which relies heavily on US and EU taxpayer money
for its survival, is allowed to get away with human rights violations.

In the West Bank, the Western-funded government of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam
Fayyad has been waging a campaign aimed at silencing the opposition and
intimidating journalists. The Palestinian Authority claims that the
crackdown is necessary to thwart any attempt by Hamas to extend its control
to the West Bank.

As a result of this campaign, hundreds -- some says thousands -- of
Palestinians are being held without trial in Palestinian Authority prisons
in the West Bank. Among the detainees are university students and lecturers,
journalists and political activists suspected of being affiliated with Hamas
and other Palestinian opposition groups.

Even Palestinian government employees are now complaining about the
iron-fist policy of Abbas and Fayyad. In recent weeks, several employees
said they received warnings from the Palestinian security services and
senior Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah not to meet with "Jewish
correspondents" or any other foreign journalist suspected of being
"pro-Israel."

Only a quarter of the Palestinians living in the West Bank believe they can
criticize the Palestinian Authority.

In the Gaza Street, the situation is even worse – less than a fifth of the
Palestinians living there believe it is possible to criticize Hamas.

These feelings were revealed in a recent public opinion poll conducted by
the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in the West Bank.

The results show that a majority of Palestinians do not trust the
Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and the Hamas government in the Gaza
Strip, especially when it comes to freedom of expression and human rights.

The war between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which reached its peak
in 2007, when the Islamist movement managed to seize full control over the
Gaza Strip, has been accompanied by a sharp increase in human rights
violations by both parties.

The Palestinian government in the West Bank also controls the three major
newspapers, Al-Quds, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda and Al-Ayyam. In that world, there
is no room for any newspaper that does not serve as a mouthpiece for Abbas
and Fayyad.

Consequently, Palestinians have to rely on media organizations in Israel,
the Arab world and the West to learn, for example, about the severe power
struggle between Abbas and former Fatah security commander Mohammed Dahlan,
who has been accused of working to topple the Palestinian Authority.

Under Hamas, the situation is not any better. In the Gaza Strip, it is hard
to find a Palestinian journalist or human rights activist who will agree to
criticize Hamas in public. Hamas policemen and militias have also been
employing an iron-fist policy to keep Palestinians in the Gaza Strip from
speaking out.

Hamas prisons are full of detainees whose only crime is that they are --or
were -- members of Fatah.