PA steps up cooperation with Fatah armed groups
Israel fears violent W. Bank eruption after annexation
The Palestinian Authority security forces have stepped up their cooperation with activists belonging to the ruling Fatah faction in the West Bank, a Fatah official confirmed on Thursday.
The increased cooperation came in the wake of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to renounce all agreements and understandings with Israel, including security cooperation between the PA security forces and the IDF, the official told The Jerusalem Post.
The PA security forces have begun working with various Fatah-affiliated groups, including the faction’s armed groups Tanzim and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the official revealed.
The cooperation began shortly after the outbreak of the coronavirus in the West Bank in early March, when the PA security forces sought assistance from Fatah activists in enforcing lockdowns and other security measures in several Palestinian cities,
GUNMEN FROM Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades take part in a military show earlier this week in Nablus to protest Israel’s plan to annex parts of the West Bank.
villages and refugee camps.
“The Palestinian Authority was unable to enforce its measures on the ground alone due to political, security and economic reasons,” another senior Fatah official told the Post. “The Palestinian security had to rely on volunteers from civil-society organizations and Fatah members in each city, village and refugee
camp.”
The volunteers and activists have since been working under the Supreme Emergency Committee, headed by PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.
The committee established several subcommittees to assist in enforcing the state of emergency declared by Abbas to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. One of these subcommittees belongs to Fatah and includes hundreds of members of the Tanzim and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who were tasked with security-related missions, including manning checkpoints at entrances to Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
Following Abbas’s decision to halt security coordination with Israel, the PA security forces have stopped operating in many areas of the West Bank, particularly Area B, which is jointly controlled by Israel and the PA.
The absence of the PA security forces has paved the way for members of the Tanzim and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to increase their activities in
these areas, often to the dismay of many Palestinians, who expressed fear that the Fatah gunmen would replace the PA security forces in imposing law and order and combating crime.
“The increased activities of the Tanzim and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades will undermine the Palestinian Authority and its security forces,” said Abdel Karim Jubran, a political analyst from Ramallah. “The biggest fear is that Hamas and Islamic Jihad would exploit the anarchy to step up their political and security activities in the West Bank.
“We have already seen many Hamas and Islamic Jihad members involved in various activities, including relief work, in several areas, especially Hebron, Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarm. At the beginning, the Palestinian Authority made an effort to stop Hamas and Islamic Jihad from operating in the West Bank. Now, however, the Palestinian security forces and several mayors are not doing anything to stop these activities.”
Samir Khaldoun, a former security prisoner and senior Fatah official from Nablus, said he did not rule out the possibility that the Fatah gunmen would play a major role if and when violence erupts between the Palestinians and Israel.
“The Tanzim and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades played a big role during the Second Intifada,” Khaldoun told the Post. “In recent weeks, the two groups seem to have resumed their activities after receiving a green light from the Palestinian leadership. Until recently, the Palestinian security forces showed zero tolerance toward the public appearances of armed militias. Now we see that matters on the ground have changed, and these security forces are working closely with Fatah armed groups.”
A senior Tanzim member in the town of Eizariya, east of Jerusalem, confirmed that his men were now working closely with the PA security forces. “Recently, we had a meeting with the [Palestinian] security commanders,” he said. “They pressured us to assume security responsibilities in our town. Basically, they wanted us to replace the security forces in enforcing law and order.
“Now they are asking us to work in areas where the Palestinian security forces have stopped operating because of the decision to halt security coordination with Israel. They told us that Palestinian security officers would assist the Tanzim members, but without appearing in their uniforms because there’s no security coordination with the Israelis.” •
to an attempt to resurrect aspects of the pre-1860 period. African-Americans were deprived of voting rights, segregation became a form of American-style apartheid, the KKK rose and lynching increased.
Alongside this racist system, the Confederate flag returned to adorn state institutions and a lobby pushed to see the Confederacy as quintessentially American.
Oddly, there was more reverence for those like Lee than Grant, the Union general sometimes portrayed as a corrupt, callous, drunkard. Other Union generals, such as William T. Sherman or Phil Sheridan, did not do well in history. Sheridan is thought to have said that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Sherman burned cities and invented total war.
While the Union generals suffered critique in US historiography, the Southerners received reverence in popular culture. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and others appeared honorable and pure in 20th-century films and documentaries.
There is some inconsistency here because James Longstreet, a key Confederate general, was seen as a relatively ineffectual commander in film, despite his apparent opposition to slavery and his record after the war supporting Grant’s presidency. He suffered for being seen as “disloyal” to the South, even though he was a Confederate general. Today, he will once again suffer being seen as a “traitor” and “white supremacist.”
What we have today is a reaction to this, which has given the whole discussion over whether these men were decent or not, or supported slavery or not, a clear conclusion: The Confederacy was a white-supremacist cause, and its soldiers and generals were traitors.
As statues of the Confederates have been toppled – and calls to rename US military bases that are named after Confederate generals are pushed forward – US President Donald Trump waded in on Wednesday, arguing that Fort Hood or Fort Bragg are part of America’s history and heritage. “These are traitors” were the replies on social media.
If you search Twitter now for “Bragg” and “traitor,” most of the talking points have the same refrain on this. These American generals, whose names adorn bases and who were generally not seen as traitors either in the time of Lincoln or after, are now seen as traitors.
This isn’t just a reaction to Trump or the recent protests. There has been a rising crescendo to write off the Civil War as a war against traitors. Many commentators seem to agree. Joy Reid writes: “Name another country anywhere on earth, I challenge you, that has ever named military bases after and raised statues to traitors.”
ample recourse to their own views on white supremacy or slavery.
They tended to write letters and diaries. Many wrestled over whether they should be loyal to their state or the federal government. Many went to West Point and ended up fighting their friends. They had mostly served together in the Mexican war, subjugating Mexico. They may have served in the Indian wars.
These men who joined the Confederate army didn’t see themselves as betraying their country to a foreign power; they chose state loyalty over federal loyalty. Many younger men were conscripted to the Confederate army.
In many countries, the passage of time tends to soften the image of civil conflicts. Kurdish fighters in Iraq who fought Saddam Hussein’s regime are not seen as “traitors” today, and neither are those Shi’ites who served with Iran’s army against Iraq in the 1980s.
History has many examples that lack clarity on who is a traitor. Those men who fled Poland or France to serve with the Allies ended up sometimes on the right side of history; other times on the wrong side. Frenchmen who fought Vichy were first thought to be traitors and then heroes. Poles ended up in exile as the Soviets and Communists occupied Poland after the war. History is not always simple. The Irish who rejected the deal Michael Collins signed: Were they traitors, heroes or neither?
In the US the issue is more deeply linked to the issue of slavery. No one would care if the southern generals were “traitors” if they had not backed slavery. The question then is more about slavery – and regarding this issue, American history is also complex.
Not far from Appomattox is Monticello, where Thomas Jefferson had his home and his slaves. Why is Jefferson today seen in the US as more acceptable than many southern soldiers who never owned slaves? Jefferson owned and abused slaves. Many of the US founding fathers had slaves. In this respect, they might be called white supremacists as much as the Confederates.
Furthermore, those like Sheridan and others who fought against Native Americans after the Civil War were brutal in their treatment of nonwhites. John Chivington, who massacred Native Americans at Sand Creek in 1864, was a Union officer. He fought against the Confederacy, but was his cause less white supremacy than those he fought?
THE US today appears to want to rip away the history of the period before 1860 – perhaps even before 1960. It doesn’t want to explain or discuss this history. US Democratic candidate Joe Biden was in his twenties when African-Americans and whites could not marry in many US states. It is quite shocking that it was not until 1967 that people from different “races” could marry one another in many places.
Unlike many countries that have tried to wrestle with their pasts, such as the Fascist or Communist past of many countries in Europe, the US debate wants a more clear bifurcation between the “traitors” and “white
supremacists” and the others.
When I was younger in the US, the debate was more complex. In high school in Arizona we read a paper titled “Lincoln: Honkie or Egalitarian,” which discussed whether Lincoln was in fact a white supremacist. In those discussions we examined whether those American founding father, or even ostensibly liberal politicians such as Woodrow Wilson, were racists.
This more-nuanced view might reveal that US history is not a simple story of traitors and patriots. But that’s not what the US wants to discuss today.
There is another question that may loom over all this. What about the minorities, nonwhites, who served the Confederacy? If all the Confederates were traitors, it might be good to look at the history of some Jewish Confederates, such as Judah Benjamin, a politician and member of Jefferson Davis’s cabinet.
A son of Sephardi Jews from London, he was born in the British West Indies and moved to the United States. Was he a traitor and white supremacist or a local politician thrown into a maelstrom who thought he was serving his state? It’s not clear if there are any statues of Benjamin in the US today, so they can’t be torn down.
In the end, the US debate is more about Trump and what is happening today than about history. But history will suffer a rapid revision in the name of redressing historiography’s past misdeeds in portraying the South as honorable and a glorious “lost cause.” •
investigations into issues that concern them personally.
“The repeated generalization of statements against ‘the media’ could jeopardize reporters and photographers who are doing their professional missions: regardless of their political stances.” •
not even if it means these voters continue to be disappointed. •