Palestine is in uproar today following the death of political activist Nizar Banat, apparently beaten to death during a raid on his home by PA security officers.
Banat was one of the prominent critics of the PA and had been arrested several times in the past by Palestinian security forces. He was also a candidate for the cancelled legislative elections, after which he and his party appealed to the EU and the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to order an immediate cessation of financial aid to the authority. He had recently called on the EU to halt financial aid to the PA and launch an investigation into the “squandering of European taxpayer money.”
His family issued a statement which included, "The occupation (Israel) acts within limits, within rules and laws. The Palestinian Authority does not respect laws- they came to assassinate, not arrest."
This tragedy is the culmination of the recent clampdown on political opponents of the PA in the West Bank. At the last count 195 supporters of Mohammed Dahlan, exiled Fatah chief and arch-critic of Mahmoud Abbas, have been arrested or 'brought in for questioning'. Amongst them have been several candidates for the legislative elections who, if the vote had taken place, would now probably be sitting in the legislature rather than a prison cell.
Several supporters of Hamas have also been rounded up - I have no problem with those who have been attempting to incite an intifada on the West Bank, but if not the PA have no right to arrest them for supporting an organisation that they deemed fit to run in the elections and a suitable partner for the PA in the planned coalition government.
As well as Mr Banat, other political activists have been arrested, including Issa Amro who is so well known that the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, held a meeting with him during his recent visit to the region.
Mr Banat had also criticised the PA over last week's vaccine fiasco, an episode which showed just how weak the PA actually are. I know this did receive some coverage in the western media, but for those that missed it, here's what happened.
The PA agreed with Pfizer to buy 4 million doses, but the company said that it would not be able to start delivering the order before October or November of this year. PA Health minister Mai Al-Kaila said, "Under the pressure of the Palestinian government to deliver the vaccines as soon as possible so that we can arrange a normal return to schools and universities, and reopen the economy, Pfizer suggested that we immediately deliver one million doses, surplus to Israel, to be deducted from the Palestinian order scheduled for delivery in the coming months."
Israel duly delivered the first batch of 102,000 vaccines on 18th June, with the PA health ministry announcing that it has the capacity to vaccinate 60,000 people a day.
When the news broke, opponents of the PA, notably Hamas, and some political activists immediately criticised the PA for striking a deal with Israel on the pretext that it was a form of “normalisation with the Israeli occupation.”
In the face of such criticism the PA announced it was cancelling the deal and sending the vaccines back as they were due to expire at the end of June. That doesn't make much sense because even if the PA had only managed to vaccinate around 20,000 people a day, rather than the 60,000 they claimed, all the vaccines would have been used by 23rd June, with more to come from Israel.
The excuse of the expiry date led to accusations that Israel were attempting to poison the Palestinians and using them as a dumping ground for old, unwanted vaccines, despite the fact that the Israelis are currently using the same batches with same expiry date to vaccinate the remainder of their population, notably children. The coordinator of the health sector in the Palestinian NGOs Network, Aid Yaghi, said, "The expired vaccine deal is a political, health and moral scandal for the authority, and this is another indication of the absence of oversight and accountability in the authority, and if this deal had passed, it would have led to a health disaster for the Palestinians.
At a time when our proud people are struggling on all fronts in the face of the occupation and its settlers and the Corona pandemic, the occupation continues in desperate attempts to harm the health of our people, by trying to pass a shipment of expired vaccinations."
Strange how vaccines which were still perfectly usable had gone from being described as 'due to expire' to 'expired'. It appears that 90,000 vaccines have been returned to Israel - presumably the other 12,000 had already been used - and that hush-hush negotiations are taking place to try to resuscitate the deal, but the whole episode is an indictment not just of the weak PA government but also of their opponents who chose to make political capital out of the deal rather than welcoming it in the fight against coronavirus. It's an example of something I wrote on here on 4th June: "Sadly, there are some Palestinian leaders and activists who fear that agreeing to policies that improve the situation in the territories would only serve to legitimise the current situation."
As I write this the death of Mr Banat has not yet made the BBC website and not merited a mention in most of the British media. Even if it eventually does, it is a disgrace that the unprecedented, even by their standards, repression of political freedom by the PA has received no coverage whatsoever, and none of those prominent Palestinian supporting MPs have given it even a passing mention - they are either unaware or don't really care, both equally damning.
www.theguardian.com