Palestine insanity

Hmmm, were there Hamas prisoners in Palestinian jails?

I was asking a general question

It was the main prison for Palestinian militants, supposedly.

So I guess there'd be hamas types in there.

I was trying to work out who ran it- the British and US it seems. I thought maybe it was run by a specific Palestinian faction. I wasen't quite sure of the facts around it.

I can't really believe that as soon as the US/UK moved out the Israelis moved in, without them knowing about it in some way. It was run by the Palestinian authorities but with UK/US suprervision

If US/UK monitors were withdrawn then the Israelis would never have trusted the Palestinians so it doesn't need to be a conspiracy. They would have definitely spoken to each other before leaving and then informed the Israelis once they had decided to do it.

I personally think that the Israeli attitude to law enforcement is to be encouraged. After adopting the miraculously successful shoot to kill policy from Israel. I think that the "attacking police stations with helicopter gunships" policy should be adopted in light of the Met's inability to control gun crime.

As people have said, it was a Palestinian Authority jail, so in all likelyhood it would have had Hamas prisoners as well. The imprisonment of the PFLP leader Ahmed Saadat and several PFLP fighters goes back to when Israel had Arafat beseiged in his Ramallah compound back in 2002. Saadat and the men Israel were after for the assasination of their tourism minister also took refuge there. Under international pressure, in a deal with the Israelis to save his own skin, Arafat sold out Saadat and the other five PFLP militants and incarcerated them in the Jericho jail under the condition that US and UK jailers would be there too (both arab and Israeli press reject the nonsense that they were just "monitors").

No one seems to be mentioning two key facts. Firstly, the Palestinian high court ordered Saadat's release as there was no evidence that he had ordered the assasination. Secondly, the tourism minister that the PFLP spectacularly assassinated (the gunmen posed as waiters and made a clean get away) was a sub-fascist bastard killed in retaliation for Israel's own assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa, the PFLP's previous general-secretary (see the Wikipedia article on the PFLP). He was part of the far-right Moledet pary. From the wikipedia article: "Zeevi made it quite clear that he supported forced transfer [of the Palestinians]. He famously compared Palestinians to "lice" and "cancer" ". The fact that such a figure was in government shows how far to the right Sharon really was. Good riddance.

Furthermore, Saadat's English lawyer appeared on BBC 24 to claim that it was the US and UK "monitors" who were in effect holding the 6 illegaly, against their will. Israel critised Hamas and Abbas for saying they were about to release Saadat, when what they would actually have been doing was upholding the rule of law, while Israel flattened the prison.

Finally, the UK's claims that their prison guards were in danger of loosing their lives is transparently false - unless they meant from the Israeli attack. If the Palestinian government was going to uphold the court's decision and release the prisoners, then what danger would the "monitors" have been in exactly? Why would a mob bother when the actual authorities were talking about doing it themselves?

In my opinion, this was more to do with the Israeli elections, and possibly (and even more disturbingly) it was intended as a deliberate provocation to move Hamas out of cease-fire and into a new wave of suicide bombings in Israel so that Israel can re-occupy the Zone-A (nominally PA controlled) areas and trigger a 3rd Initfada.

That's speculation, but it seems like a lot of effort and risk for just a pre-election stunt.

Interesting photos, by the way

Cheers rkn I'm going back to the West Bank soon, so if you need any help with the feature, drop me a line. I have met one Palestinian who sometimes calls himself an anarchist (though he says working in the ISM office pisses him off so much at times he becomes to dictatorial too be one - ha ha). Keep an eye on my blog for new pics and reports soon.

Yea looks like a demo of PFLP supporters. You can just about make out their logo on those flags - it's of historical Palestine with a big arrow going back into it (symbolising the right of return for the refugees). You see it graffitied everywhere in the west bank - especially in the universities and some villages. Though the PFLP is not as popular as it once was (still the second biggest party in the PLO though) with the rise of Hamas. Saadat is now a member of the Palestinian parliament though, so they do still have support. In the Presidental elections that Abbas won at the beginging of 2005, the PFLP did not field a candidate and instead backed the independant Mustafa Bhargoughti who did really well and won nearly 20% of the vote.

Incidentally, my impression of Hamas is that its Islamist extremist status is over hyped: at its grassroots it's basically a national liberation movement with some Islamicist overtones. A bit like the PFLP was basically a national liberation party with some Marxist overtones.

Well yea, probably. They did used to describe themselves as Marxist-Leninst though. And they are definately considered leftists amoungst Palestinians.

Hi John!

Well I guess it was an attempt at a short term popularlity boost during the darkest days of the 2nd intifada, their hi-jacking heigh-day being long over. My guess is that doing more stuff like the Zeevi hit instead of killing random Israelis, would probably win them more popularity.