Israel taking steps to deport solidarity activists while PA defames them

Israel is currently taking concrete steps towards deporting internationals and solidarity activists who reside in the West Bank. Surprisingly, the Palestinian Authority are legitimizing Israel’s deportation efforts by accusing some foreigners of inciting against the PA. This must be Israeli/PA security coordination evolving into a whole new level where international activists are also a target.

Haaretz reported on Friday that Israel’s immigration police have been granted the power to remove foreigners without permits from the West Bank; this order was signed on July 6th. The Israeli occupation army has been given the power to arrest foreigners in the West Bank, move them into detention centers until deportation measures are concluded so the activists would be deported.

A senior PA official, according to The Jerusalem Post, has charged that foreign nationals living in the West Bank have participated in recent protests against the Palestinian Authority. According to the paper, the senior official continued to say “The involvement of Western nationals in protests against the Palestinian Authority is completely unacceptable, we will be forced to cut off all ties with non-Palestinians who incite against the Palestinian leadership.”

After the recent anti-Mofaz visit protests which took place in Ramallah, I’ve been sensing increased efforts from officials and non-officials to defame the protestors and protest organizers. Last week, I commented on three statements made by both PA and Fatah officials trying to defame and discredit Palestinian protestors as foreign agendas and Mossad agents. On a less official level, many Fatah and Abbas supporters on Facebook started spreading photos of international journalists who were covering the protests,  claiming they were foreign conspirators who aim to destabilize and destroy the PA. I’ve even seen a whole set of pictures taken by one Fatah Youth where he focused on taking pictures of females and foreigners in order to support the claim that the protests are driven by a foreign agenda.

Following are a few tweets from Nabi Saleh today from Abir Kopty:

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even in the photo album the majority of people are palestinian, I'm in that album, so are a bunch of my friends, who go to birzeit university and elsewhere, and are active against colonization... it's like they're saying anyone who looks "different" doesn't have the right to express their opinion.... PATHETIC!

Jalal Abukhater

Jalal Abukhater's picture

Jalal Abukhater is a Jerusalemite, he is a graduate MA(hons) International Relations and Politics from the University of Dundee, Scotland.