The Wild Wild West Bank

If Israel were to roll up tonight and demolish my house, arrest my father and shoot my neighbors, Dayton’s security forces will be nowhere to be found. So it’s definitely not my security that these forces are protecting. But if I pick up a gun and vow to fight Israel and its settlers, I’ll be labeled an ‘outlaw’ and tracked down by Dayton’s boys.he Wild Wild West Bank

By Mohammad

Although Abbasshole recently referred to life in the West Bank as ‘good’, it’s feeling more and more like living in the Wild West. Foreign settlers roam, heavily armed, burning the natives’ lands and killing their children, while an American general leads his army in raids against ‘outlaws’.

That would be US General Keith Dayton, who has been charged over the past three years with developing and training a ‘Palestinian’ security force to implement ‘law and order’ in the West Bank. As for whose benefit this security clampdown is, it certainly is not for average Palestinians. If Israel were to roll up tonight and demolish my house, arrest my father and shoot my neighbors, Dayton’s security forces will be nowhere to be found.

So it’s definitely not my security that these forces are protecting. But if I pick up a gun and vow to fight Israel and its settlers, I’ll be labeled an ‘outlaw’ and tracked down by Dayton’s boys. Usually that would’ve meant arrest and a bit of torture here and there before being handed over to the Israeli masters. But things have gotten decidedly more bloody this week.

On Saturday night, Shalom Fayyad ordered Dayton’s boys to arrest Hamas’ military commander in the West Bank. Mohammad Samman had been on Israel’s wanted list for 7 years and had eluded capture all those years. A mass wave of arrests against Hamas affiliated over the past few weeks seemed to have led the PA forces to his hideout, in the Kfar Saba neighborhood of Qalqilia. The house, in which Samman, his aide Mohammad Yassin and the homeowner were staying, was surrounded by a huge contingency of security forces who enlisted the help (under gunpoint, naturally) of the two Hamas men’s relatives to convince them to give themselves up. The fighters refused and according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Yassin stepped outside the house to appeal to neighbors to lift the siege. He was immediately gunned down, and a firefight ensued between the trapped Samman and the soldiers surrounding the house. By dawn, Samman and the homeowner had been killed, along with three PA men.

Never had an internal Palestinian gunfight ended so bloodily, and the status of those killed immediately brought back a tension in the Gaza Strip and West Bank not seen since the days of Gaza’s infighting. The PA decried Samman and Yassin as ‘outlaws’ who were threatening ‘state security’ (but there is no Palestinian state. Hmmm). Shalom Fayyad visited Qalqilia in the aftermath and said that he would not apologize for what happened, that the PA was insisting on imposing law and order. But again, whose law and order? Samman and Yassin were not threatening Palestinians, but they were actively working against Israel. That the PA would go as far as to liquidate the two men suggested a new stage in coordination between the Israeli occupation and its Palestinian security contractor. The response from Hamas was swift and predictably angry. The killings occurred during the ongoing unity talks in Cairo, and to many Hamas supporters this seemed like the final straw after the party had dropped its objection to talking to Fatah as the latter continued to arrest hundreds of political opponents in the West Bank. Hamas’ spokesmen made it clear: their fighters would not give themselves in any more.

Yesterday, the scenario repeated itself and again in Qalqilia, the town entirely encircled by Israel’s apartheid wall. A large number of PA troops surrounded a building in which three more Hamas fighters were hiding. Again, the same tactics were used: enlist relatives to convince the fighters to give themselves up, and take them dead when it doesn’t work. One of the fighters was wounded and taken prisoner; the other two were killed, along with another PA officer.

Hamas’ military wing later named four top PA security officers it claims were directly responsible, and announced that all four were ‘wanted’ to the Qassam Brigades and would be dealt with like Israeli soldiers.

The political and social ramifications of the murders (because that is what they are-there is absolutely no justification for them) are potentially huge. The Kfar Saba neighborhood represented a real turning point in the interaction between Hamas fighters and Israel’s Palestinian security contractors-and the second incident was an immediate manifestation of that change. I doubt that we will be seeing a repeat of the scenes from Gaza two years ago in the West Bank any time soon, because militarily Hamas is still underground here.

There will be further incidents, further assassinations and possibly reprisal attacks against PA forces. It will further polarize Palestinian society, but the sad thing is that it doesn’t need to. Many Fatah supporters feel alienated by Abbas and are openly hostile to Fayyad. However, Fatah’s figureheads shelved their principles long ago in favor of short sighted political status and openly support the killings in public.

The sad thing is this ‘good behavior’ will not get Palestinians anywhere towards achieving their fabled state. It just makes it easier and less costly for Israel to normalize and expand its occupation, settlement and unofficial annexation of the West Bank. Meantime, the Qalqilia killings will just distract Palestinians from fighting this occupation and turn their attention to internal strife.