Rights and Accountability 26 January 2016
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority works closely with the Israeli occupation.
Earlier this month, for instance, Israeli officials praised the PA for “cracking down” on opposition and resistance to Israel’s occupation in the West Bank.
The PA’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has previously called this so-called security coordination a “sacred” duty.
But there’s near unanimity among Palestinian political factions that this collaboration with the occupation must stop.
The PA’s intelligence chief Majid Faraj boasted to Defense News recently that his forces had arrested 100 Palestinians in recent months and were working closely with Israeli occupation forces to prevent the unpopular PA from collapsing.
“We, together with our counterparts in the Israeli security establishment, with the Americans and others, are all trying to prevent that collapse,” Faraj said.
Faraj added that his goal was to protect Israel from the Islamic State group.
“They’re already in Iraq, Syria, Sinai, Lebanon and Jordan, but Ramallah, Amman and Tel Aviv must remain immune from them,” the PA general said.
Keeping yourself occupied
Meanwhile, the PA remains totally impotent and inactive in the face of Jewish extremist terrorism from the Israeli army and settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Under the 1993 Oslo accords that established the PA, the Palestinian forces have no jurisdiction over settlers, which means they are not allowed to intervene even if they directly witness settlers attacking Palestinians.
This and other facts about the PA’s support for the Israeli occupation are laid out in these infographics created by Visualizing Palestine.
Visualizing Palestine calls them “The Palestinian Authority guide to keeping yourself occupied.”
The PA is the West Bank’s largest employer, and around one third of its annual budget is allocated to “security” and “public order” – as much as on health, education and agriculture combined, Visualizing Palestine states.
“All new recruits are vetted by Israeli and US officials, and have been widely deployed to crack down on nonviolent Palestinian civil society activities, while doing nothing to protect Palestinians from attacks by Israeli settlers or soldiers,” it adds.
The information in the graphics is aggregated from a number of reliable sources, including human rights groups and UN agencies, all listed at the Visualizing Palestine website.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of panel 2 said that the PA spends more on military/police than on health, agriculture and education combined. A corrected panel, provided by Visualizing Palestine, has been inserted. It states that the PA spends as much on military/police as on health, agriculture and education combined.
Comments
Arithmetic
Permalink Dr Harry Feldman replied on
By conventional arithmetic, 18% + 13% +1% = 32% > 31%!
So when Visualizing Palestine asserts that 'The PA spends more each year on its military/police apparatus than on education, health and agriculture combined', did they think nobody would notice?
Rounding
Permalink epk replied on
This could still work out if the results are rounded to the closest integer value. Still, even in that case they should made this point clear.
This minor error has been
Permalink Ali Abunimah replied on
This minor error has been corrected by Visualizing Palestine and our article has been updated accordingly.