Friday, August 22, 2008

Deepening chasm


Continued moves by Fatah against Islamic charities and institutions in the West Bank are testament that reconciliation is a pipe dream

By Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah
Al-Ahram Weekly

".....Meanwhile, the Fatah-dominated security agencies continued to round up an average of 10-20 suspected Islamic activists on any given day. The detainees are interrogated, often harshly, on their relationships with Hamas. Some of them are reportedly beaten savagely, with at least one elderly person from Nablus, identified as Marwan Al-Khalili, 67, suffering a brain haemorrhage as a result of torture.

Moreover, several journalists and cameramen are still being detained in PA jails for being "over critical" of the PA and "tarnishing" its image. In recent days, the PA security agencies went to unprecedented extents in suppressing freedom of speech and expression.

In Hebron, for example, a man, identified as Walid Suleiman, was summoned for interrogation at the local Preventive Security Forces office this week. There a young officer interrogated him in connection with an article written by a relative and published by the pro-Fatah Maan news agency. Suleiman told the interrogator that he had nothing to do with the article and that the author had his name printed above the article. However, the young Fatah officer told Suleiman that he was aware that he was not the author of the article, saying that he only suspected that "the ideas" of the article was his, not the author's. [.....ah, the PA Thought Police at work!]

"How am I supposed to reason with people like this?" Suleiman asked Al-Ahram Weekly.

The attempted eradication of Hamas's civilian infrastructure in the West Bank is officially justified as a response to Hamas's clampdown on Fatah in the Gaza Strip. However, it is amply clear that Fatah's efforts to eradicate Hamas's political influence in the West Bank are more systematic than anything done by Hamas against Fatah in the Gaza Strip......"

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