Battles signal growing chaos
GUN battles in central Nablus, with young Palestinians fighting police and setting blazes that shut the city down, signal growing chaos in the northern West Bank that could spiral out of control. The city centre’s transformation into a combat zone happened with little overt warning.
But this week, the Palestinian Authority’s security forces carried out a rare operation to arrest a prominent member of the Islamist group Hamas, Moussab Shtayyeh, enraging many in Nablus, who accuse the PA of being Israeli pawns and tacitly accepting the occupation of the West Bank.
After the arrest, central Nablus was a no-go zone. Youths hurled stones at PA armoured trucks and lit fires on the streets as the sound of gunfire rang through the city.
Several people in Nablus, most of whom requested anonymity, fearing retribution if they criticised the PA and its 87-year-old president, Mahmud Abbas, whose popularity in the West Bank has slumped to historic lows, spoke about the situation.
“There is tension because of Moussab Shtayyeh’s arrest by the Palestinian forces and we are targeting them because they are co-ordinating with the Israeli occupation forces,” said Hamza, a young man in his 20s.
A young Palestinian journalist, who declined to give his name, said young people fighting the PA were not linked to the Islamist groups Hamas or Islamic Jihad, nor were they disenchanted members of Abbas’s secular Fatah movement. “They are young Palestinians, part of a new generation that isn’t under anyone’s thumb who are angry at both Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” he said.
The northern West Bank has seen near daily unrest in recent months but that has typically involved Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters.
Israel has conducted hundreds of raids in the area since March, pursuing militants it accuses of involvement in a spate of deadly attacks on Israelis.
Dozens of Palestinians, mostly fighters, have been killed in the Israeli raids that have hit several towns and
cities, including Nablus and especially nearby Jenin, a historic militant stronghold. But Israel regularly calls on the PA to take firmer action in areas of the West Bank nominally under its control, notably cities like Nablus.
Last week, after two Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in clashes near Jenin, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said he would “not hesitate to act in any place that the (PA) does not maintain order”.
Leading Israeli security commentator Alon Ben David said the flurry of army raids had “further eroded the challenged status of the Palestinian Authority”, with conditions ripe for a new intifada, or uprising, like those of 1987 to 1991 and 2000 to 2005.
He said that Abbas’s authority was minimal and succession battles were brewing.