Al-Aqsa founder The most prominent person arrested was Zakaria Zubeidi, one of the three founders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the effective commander of underground Fatah fighters in Jenin. Zubeidi was also a co-founder, along with the assassinated Mer Khamis, of the Freedom Theater. Zubeidi was granted amnesty by Israel after the intifada on condition that he remain under the supervision of the PA. He is now under interrogation in a Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where he has declared a hunger strike.“They are playing with Zakaria, juggling him between the civil and military court in order to circumvent their own so-called law,” says Jonatan Stanczak, managing director of The Freedom Theater.The PA absorbed hundreds of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades members into the ranks of its security forces in 2007, giving them jobs and buying their illegal weapons in an amnesty negotiated with Israel. Many of them were subsequently equipped and trained in Jordan and at a newly constructed police academy in Jericho, with financial backing from the US, the EU and several individual European countries.“What happened in Jenin confirmed that the integration of gangsters into the PA security services without their accountability was a fatal mistake that has exacted a heavy cost,” Palestinian analyst Hani Al-Masri tells The Report. “It has created a negative impression among the citizens who saw that the source of the chaos this time is the security services themselves.”The renewed instability in Jenin, which followed isolated shooting attacks on Palestinian police stations in the West Bank, has convinced senior Palestinian officials that the more volatile former fighters have failed to absorb the new discipline. Some are also suspected of illegal trade in weapons on a burgeoning black market, which links Fatah rebels, Hamas and Israeli criminals. Dozens of firearms, including M-16 assault rifles and night vision equipment believed to have originated in the Israeli black market, have been seized in raids by Palestinian security forces.PA officials are concerned that some of the rogue elements may have sold weapons to Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants operating in the West Bank or received money from Iran or Hizballah. “These undisciplined groups worked to create security-free areas that would be a challenge and threat to the PA,” Major General Adnan Damiri, the Security Forces spokesman, tells The Report.“The PA security institution has learned the lesson from this phenomenon and will not allow its repetition.”Damiri calls the attempted assassination of Shami in Jenin at the start of July the work of rogue elements seeking “revenge” for the crackdown. “It continues the security chaos,” he says. “The security campaign will continue until the undisciplined elements within PA security have been completely uprooted.”
Swooping on Hamas Hamas, meanwhile, was hoping that these internal divisions would keep their foes in PA security too busy to bother them while Fatah purged the rebel elements from its ranks.However, a senior PA security official tells The Report that three weeks after the security crackdown began, Preventive Security officials swooped on a Hamas stronghold in Halhul, north of Hebron, and arrested 25 Hamas operatives suspected of trying to rebuild the movement’s military infrastructure in the West Bank.In 2008, in an attempt to finally impose law and order on the West Bank after the chaos of the intifada and the Arafat era, Palestinian civil police and armed security forces fanned out through previously lawless areas in a largely successful effort to bring community policing and normal justice to ordinary Palestinians.Traffic cops began writing speeding tickets and petty criminals were not only arrested but dealt with in a formal manner in a court system revamped with US and European support. Detectives were trained in basic forensics and fingerprinting.For the first time in many years, Palestinian police officers started to be viewed as servants of the public instead of gunmen loyal to the regime or rival political factions.Four years later, the new crackdown has forced the PA security forces to admit that they have deep problems within the ranks of their own officers. The PA also decided to confiscate arms held by large families fearing they might fall into the wrong hands or be used in internal clashes, adding to the potential chaos.Palestinian leaders are also nervous about the general climate in the Middle East. Although Abbas’s rule has so far remained largely unchallenged by the historic changes roiling the Arab world, the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, civil war in Syria, and rising tensions in Lebanon and Jordan have produced a wariness in the Palestinian leadership that the current low level of sporadic shooting attacks could mushroom into a full-blown rebellion.The senior PA security official says that the chaos could “pave the way for a Palestinian Arab Spring against the Abbas regime.”Palestinian leaders are particularly concerned that parts of the West Bank could once again become what the Jenin Refugee Camp used to be: a no-go area for PA security.A loss of PA control in such areas would show the Abbas government as weak and undermine its efforts to pursue UN recognition of an independent Palestinian state, as well as harming relations with Israel and the international donor community whose contributions continue to support the PA budget.Incensed Palestinian officials were particularly incensed by comments made on May 29 by Defense Minister Ehud Barak at a security conference in Tel Aviv, where he floated the possibility of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank. A PA security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an Israeli pullout would leave the Palestinian security forces stretched too thin to deal with the continual security threats against both the PA and Israel.Security experts in the region tell The Report that the PA security campaign has concentrated on confiscating unauthorized arms instead of addressing the roots of dissent.Politically, the crackdown could backfire, proving to skeptics that the security forces lack discipline and that instead of protecting the rights of ordinary Palestinians, they are more interested in protecting the regime and Israeli security.Those fears appeared to be realized on June 30, when dozens of uniformed and undercover personnel violently dispersed a gathering of Palestinians at Manara Square in Ramallah. The demonstrators were protesting against plans by Israeli Vice Premier Shaul Mofaz to meet with Abbas in the city in July. It was to be the first top-level diplomatic contact for nearly two years, and the first such meeting of any kind since Abbas held a series of private encounters in Amman and London with President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Barak in 2011.In the wake of the public protests and the violent clashes with Palestinian police, the meeting with Mofaz was canceled. The Palestinian police reaction to those demonstrations has done little to enhance their reputation among the Palestinian public.Fatah youth activist Hazem Abu Helal tells The Report that the peaceful protest was intended to convey a message to the PA: Palestinians are frustrated by the lack of progress in peace negotiations with Israel.Negotiations, when held, seem to have achieved little for the Palestinian people.“The Palestinian march confirms the rejection by the Palestinian people of receiving Mofaz in Ramallah at the headquarters where he besieged Yasser Arafat before his martyrdom,” Abu Helal says, recalling that Mofaz was chief of staff and then defense minister at the height of the intifada.The combination of the security crackdown against former Fatah fighters and growing political dissent could prove an explosive mix for the Palestinian leadership.Security experts warn that without progress on other fronts, the PA my only be able to dampen the discontent for so long.