The Zionist Plan for ‘Cleansing’ Gaza of its Palestinians is Not New – Like Many Such Ideas It Originated with their Nazi friends

 There is a German word for what is being proposed – Judenrein or today Arabrein

There is nothing new in Donald Trump and Netanyahu’s plans for the ‘evacuation’ of the Palestinians from Gaza. The Nazis’ devoted much time and energy to a similar ‘problem’.

From 1939 onwards hundreds of thousands  of Jews, Poles and Gypsies, were preventing the Warthegau, that part of Poland which was conquered and incorporated into Greater Germany, being settled with German colonists. Most of them were expelled to the Generalgouvernment, that part of Poland into which they intended to pour all the racial ‘mush’ (Himmler).

Volksdeutsche of Łódź greeting German cavalry in 1939

The Nazis managed, with difficulty, to resettle half a million Volksdeutsche in their place just as Israel hopes to settle Jews in Gaza. 

Hans Frank

Many were the conflicts within the Nazi bureaucracy between the Gauleiter Arthur Greiser and the Governor-General of the Generalgouvernment, Hans Frank. For those who are interested in Nazi resettlement policies you can read Christopher Browning’s article on Nazi resettlement policies.

Arthur Greiser

It was only when the Nazi plans for the resettlement of the Jews to the East were thwarted that they turned to extermination. So it is with Gaza, except that the Zionists reversed the process, first they began the extermination process and only then turned to expulsion.

Palestinian journalists demonstrate outside the Palestinian Authority against the banning of media

Yet despite this that pathetic poodle of US imperialism, Keir Starmer and his contemptible fool of a Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, could not bring themselves to criticise Trump. As the Guardian’s Peter Walker put it, ‘Prime minister and colleagues use political code to push back at proposal without directly criticising US president.’

Even Ed Davey of the Lib Dems criticised the loathsome Trump whilst pushing for the resurrection of that old lame duck, the two-state solution. Starmer has built his career on slavish loyalty to the American Empire and Trump is not going to stop him.

Starmer told us  how he was ‘moved’ by the image of Emily Damari, the Israeli hostage who was reunited with her family. The images of Palestinian hostages, who had been starved, beaten and tortured, did not make any impression on this apology for a human being. However it is doubtful that anything could move Starmer apart from a subsidy from one of his millionaire friends towards his wardrobe.

When Israel was established as a ‘Jewish’ State it fabricated a narrative that the Palestinian refugees had run away, on orders from the Arab regimes, despite pleas from the Zionists to stay. This was comprehensively debunked, first by Erskine Childers and Rashid Khalidi and then Israeli historians Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe.

I was brought up to believe this nonsense.  Israel had closed its archives and even reclassified documents that had been released in order to hide the truth. [see Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs].

Benny Morris explained that ‘Defense Ministry officials apparently hope their actions will raise doubts about the conclusions and credibility of various scholars.’ This enabled people like Israel’s vile Ambassador, Tzipi Hotoveli, to proclaim that stories of the Nakba were an ‘Arab lie’.

Only 3% Of Jewish Israelis Think Trump's Ethnic Cleansing Plan For Gaza Is Immoral

Today there is no pretence. Israelis in their overwhelming majority want the Palestinians of Gaza (and the West Bank) either expelled or  exterminated. Some 82% of Israeli Jews support Trump’s plan and just 3% consider the proposals immoral. The rest think it impractical. This is what memory of the Holocaust has become in Zionist hands.

It is worth bearing in mind that Israelis are far more racist towards the Palestinians than Germans were to Jews. Anti-Semitism in Germany was never respectable. The Nazis had to work hard to persuade Germans and they never succeeded. Anti-Semitism was confined to the core of the Nazi party itself. Between 1930 and 1933 Hitler downplayed anti-Semitism to the point of non-existence.

Of course people will find this difficult to accept given the way the media portrays the reasons why Hitler came to power. However all serious historians agree. For example Ian Kershaw wrote in Popular Opinion and Dissent in the Third Reich that the more than five million extra votes that the Nazis obtained in the 1930 elections ‘were in no sense anti-Semites’. David Cesarani suggested in The Final Solution  that  Hitler’s attacks on Jews ‘diminished to vanishing point’. Even Zionist historian Yehuda Bauer accepted this. 

In 1939 Hitler began to fulfil his desire to create ‘living space’ lebensraum for the German people by conquering first Poland, then Western Europe and finally Russia. That is precisely what Israel is doing. Achieving its Arab-free living space.

For 15 months they carpet bombed Gaza under the pretence that they were seeking to destroy Hamas when it was obvious to anyone, bar Jews for Genocide and that inveterate liar Starmer, that Hamas was the one thing they hadn’t destroyed.

Hospitals, schools, clinics, universities, journalists, residential homes and agricultural land – all were subject to the an intensity of bombing that made the destruction of Nuremberg, Dresden and Hamburg seem like a picnic.

All the while Butcher Biden supplied the 2,000 lb bombs that enabled the devastation. Now Trump comes along and says that of course Palestinians can’t live in the rubble whilst still continuing to supply the 2000 lb bombs. The hypocrisy and mendacity of our rulers knows no bounds.

We have a weak and shaky ceasefire, which hasn’t stopped Israel killing Palestinians in Gaza although the bombing has (temporarily) stopped. There isn’t an agreement that Israel has made that hasn’t been broken and they are still killing people in Lebanon. Netanyahu and much of his coalition would like to restart the slaughter because to the Zionists not enough Palestinians have yet died.

Yet whatever Israel does, as far as Starmer, Trump and our own Jews for Genocide in the form of the Board of Deputies, are concerned it is acting in self-defence. It is an interesting legal concept as to whether an occupying power has the right of self-defence. Perhaps Russia has such a right in Ukraine! Maybe we should consult our favourite ‘human rights lawyer’ Sir Kid Starver.

I fear that Israel will find a pretext to restart the war against Gaza. What Trump has done is to provide Israel with a pretext to break the ceasefire, as Netanyahu has promised, after the first phase, in which case we will see a continuation of the genocide. This is a very real danger. Of course it will be difficult politically to restart the slaughter but that will depend on the American administration. One thing is for certain. The Arab regimes could stop it in a day if they stopped the oil.  And the Arab masses could stop it if they overthrew those regimes.

Israeli military operation in Jenin: Palestinian homes attacked with simultaneous blasts

Instead Israel’s war on the Palestinians has spread to the West Bank. For the past 5 years I have raised funds for the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre in Jenin refugee camp. Three times the Israeli military has deliberately wrecked the interior of the Centre.

Today I have no idea if Al Tafawk is even standing because much of Jenin’s refugee camp has been blown up and numerous people, including children have been killed. Yet still Western leaders have the audacity to about Israel’s ‘self-defence’. If only Goebbels had had such good propagandists as the BBC provide he could have achieved far more without the opprobrium.

Israeli Soldiers Celebrate Destruction in Jenin

Israel’s attack on Jenin we should not forget was preceded by 25 days of violence by the Quisling Palestine Authority. Yet even now organisations like Britain’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign are afraid of calling these Quislings by their name. First Israel banned Al Jazeera and then the PA banned it.

See Two Days after Speaking to the Palestine Chronicle – Jenin Journalist Killed by Palestinian Authority

See The PA and Israel are allies in silencing the truth

Trump’s plan though is unlikely to be carried out. The last thing the Egyptian and Jordanian states want is hundreds of thousands of Palestinians determined to seek their revenge. Despite their role as collaborators, neither regime has a death wish.

If the Zionists cannot achieve an empty Gaza by ethnic cleansing then mass murder and genocide is the alternative and the only thing standing in the way are Hamas and the Palestinian resistance.

This of course is where Britain’s political police come in. They will do their utmost to arrest and persecute anyone who supports resistance to Israel’s genocide. All in the name of ‘the fight against terrorism’. This is the state of British ‘democracy’ today and we can rely on Britain’s compliant judiciary to do their best to help.

There has been one of those absurd ‘debates’ about whether Israel is committing genocide. As if not using the word changes the reality. I suggest people read Yuval Abraham’s article in +972 Magazine, Bomb the area, gas the tunnels: Israel’s unbridled war on Gaza’s underground as to what Israel’s tactics were. Abraham writes that:

The Israeli army intensively bombarded residential areas in Gaza when it lacked intelligence on the exact location of Hamas commanders hiding underground, and intentionally weaponized toxic byproducts of bombs to suffocate militants in their tunnels…

The investigation, based on conversations with 15 Israeli Military Intelligence and Shin Bet officers who have been involved in tunnel-targeting operations since October 7, exposes how this strategy aimed to compensate for the army’s inability to pinpoint targets in Hamas’ subterranean tunnel network. When targeting senior commanders in the group, the Israeli military authorized the killing of “triple-digit numbers” of Palestinian civilians as “collateral damage,” and maintained close real-time coordination with U.S. officials regarding the expected casualty figures.

 So there we have it. Israel was prepared to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians on the off chance that they might kill a member of Hamas.  And then creatures like Lammy & Starmer dare to call Hamas ‘terrorist’.

In the process three Israeli hostages — Nik Beizer, Ron Sherman, and Elia Toledano — were killed by asphyxiation as a result of a Nov. 10, 2023, bombing that targeted Ahmed Ghandour, a Hamas brigade commander in northern Gaza. Even if the bombs didn’t kill them then the carbon monoxide they produced did.

Israel soldiers were not willing to fight in the tunnels but thought that carpet bombing would do the trick. Fortunately it didn’t and at the end of the war Hamas and the Resistance was killing more of Israel’s war criminal military than it was at the beginning.

Imagine if Hamas exploded a bomb in the middle of Tel Aviv because they believed a senior officer of the Israeli army was passing by?  Or Russia bombed a market place because it believed a Ukrainian general was doing his shopping there. The pages of the tabloids would be filled with blood curdling rhetoric.

Israel’s figures of Hamas fighters killed were always phony. Every male civilian they killed was a Hamas ‘terrorist’ but at the end of the day the Zionists ended up fooling themselves, which was why, when the ceasefire came into effect, Israelis were stunned to see hundreds of Hamas fighters in their distinctive olive green uniforms handing over the healthy and well-fed Israeli captives, unlike the emaciated and tortured bodies of the Palestinian captives that Israel had seized.

Israel’s 2,000 lb bombs were supplied by the United States despite knowing how they would be used but ‘bloody’ Blinken stymied any declaration that human rights violations were being carried out. Why?

Because under the Leahy law if the US State Department declared that Israel was committing war crimes then the U.S. Government would have been barred from using funds to assist in those crimes. Instead investigations into Israel’s war crimes never progressed beyond an initial stage.

"אז יאמרו בגויים הגדיל ה' לעשות עם אלה, הגדיל ה' לעשות עמנו היינו שמחים"

ועוד יותר טוב ועוד יותר טוב.

תודה לך הנשיא טראמפ.

Together, we will make the world great again 🇮🇱🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/3Wjx0VZRTK

— בצלאל סמוטריץ' (@bezalelsm) February 4, 2025

Netanyahu and his far-right partner Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Finance Minister,  ‘proud homophobe’ and fascist are itching to get back into the bombing on the grounds that if you haven’t succeeded yet try, try and try again. But what is clear is that Hamas and the Palestinian Resistance has not been defeated and is unlikely to be defeated. 

At the moment Israel’s genocidal lust and desire for more living space is now translating into war on the people of the West Bank.

Even Trump cannot simply declare that he wants Palestinians to leave Gaza because he wants the gas fields in the sea off Gaza. Instead he dresses it up as concern for the Palestinians. He wrote that the Palestinians in Gaza would have "far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region."

There is nothing new in this duplicity. As Abdaljawad Omar wrote:

the same language has been used before. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson justified the Indian Removal Act as a necessary measure for the “happiness” of Native Americans, ethnically cleansing them under the guise of protecting their way of life....

The logic remains unchanged — displacement framed as pragmatism, ethnic cleansing cloaked in the language of order and progress, and for Trump: Palestinians as an obstacle to a beautiful beachfront where everyone could live, including “some Palestinians.”  

In Trump’s impossible Gaza plan can still do a great deal of harm Michelle Plitnick wrote that ‘in one of the cruelest, most repulsive twists of the Trump argument, he actually argued that his plan for ethnic cleansing was intended to benefit the Palestinians.’

This could be so magnificent. But more importantly than that is the people that have been absolutely destroyed that live there now can live in peace in a much better situation because they are living in hell. And those people will now be able to live in peace. We’ll make sure that it’s done world class.

It is noticeable that German leaders have said next to nothing. But why should Germany’s leaders say anything? The worse it gets for Palestinians the more they can come to terms with their own holocausts. After all, if even the Jews perpetrate a holocaust then it can’t be that bad.

Today Gaza is unliveable in because Israel deliberately made it so. For the Palestinians to be removed would be to reward the war criminals. That Trump can suggest it and the media can actually debate it seriously demonstrates how low moral standards have sunk in the western world.

One wonders what Western leaders would say if Putin had carpet bombed Ukraine and then said he was removing the population to save them further trauma and he expected Britain, Germany and France to take them in and foot the bill! All in order that they could have ‘beautiful’ lives free from Russian bombs! Yet this is what Trump is saying and our leaders cannot even spell out the implications for fear of offending his fragile ego.

We are entering a period of great uncertainty. The Palestine solidarity movement has a responsibility to step up its protests and begin to make life uncomfortable for those in power. Instead of allowing the Metropolitan Police to disrupt our protests we should be disrupting the rhythms of London. The first thing we should be doing is to hold the demonstration which was initially planned for the BBC – with or without the agreement of Britain’s political police.

Tony Greenstein

See also 

The Gaza 'war' was a lie, as is the ceasefire. Trump just told you

Jonathan Cook

The PA and Israel are allies in silencing the truth

The PA and Israel are allies in silencing the truth

I witnessed firsthand the PA’s brutality against journalists in Gaza. Its possible return does not bode well for us.

Published On 1 Feb 2025 

A group of Palestinian journalists protest in front of the Palestinian Legislative Council headquarters against the decision of the Palestinian Authority to close Bethlehem-based private TV channel, Al-Roah, in Gaza City on October 17 1999 [File: Mohammad Saber/AFP]

On December 28, 21-year-old journalism student Shatha Al-Sabbagh was assassinated near her home in Jenin. Her family accused snipers from the Palestinian Authority (PA) deployed in the camp of shooting her in the head. Al-Sabbagh had been active on social media, documenting the suffering of Jenin residents during the raids by Israel and the PA.

Just a few days after Al-Sabbagh’s assassination, the authorities in Ramallah banned Al Jazeera from reporting from the occupied West Bank. Three weeks later, PA forces arrested Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamad Atrash.

These developments come as the Israeli occupation has killed more than 200 media workers in Gaza and arrested dozens across the occupied Palestinian territories. It has also banned Al Jazeera and refused to allow foreign journalists to enter Gaza. The fact that the PA’s actions mirror Israel’s reveals a shared agenda to suppress independent journalism and control public opinion.

To Palestinian journalists, that is hardly news. The PA has never been our protector. It has always been a complicit partner in our brutalisation. That is true in the West Bank and it was true in Gaza when the PA was in power there. I witnessed it myself.

Growing up in Gaza, I watched how my people were oppressed by Israeli forces and by the PA. In 1994, the Israeli occupation formally handed over the Strip to the PA to administer under the provisions of the Oslo Accords. The PA remained in power until 2007. During these 13 years, we saw more collaboration with the Israeli occupation than any meaningful attempt at liberation. For journalists, the PA’s presence was not just oppressive, it was life-threatening, as its forces actively stifled voices to maintain its fragile grip on power.

As a journalism student in Gaza, I experienced this suppression firsthand. I walked the streets, witnessing PA security officers looting shops, their arrogance apparent in the brazen act of theft. One day, when I attempted to document this, a Palestinian officer violently grabbed me, ripped my camera from my hands, and smashed it to the ground. This wasn’t just an assault, it was an attack on my right to bear witness. The officer’s aggression only ceased when a group of women intervened, forcing him to retreat in a rare moment of restraint.

I knew the risks of being a journalist in Gaza and like other media workers, I learned to navigate them. But the fear I felt near the PA forces’ ambush points was unlike anything else. That was because there was never logic to their aggressive actions and no way to anticipate when they might turn on you.

Walking near the PA forces felt like stepping into a minefield. One moment, there was the illusion of safety, and the next, you faced the brutality of those who were supposedly there to protect you. This uncertainty and tension made their presence more terrifying than being on a battlefield.

Years later, I would cover the training sessions of Qassam Brigades under the constant hum of Israeli drones and the ever-looming threat of air strikes. It was dangerous but predictable – much more so than the actions of the PA.

Under the PA, we learned to speak in code. Journalists self-censored out of fear of retribution. The PA was often referred to as “cousins of Israeli occupation” – a grim acknowledgement of its complicity.

As the PA was fighting to stay in power in Gaza after losing the 2006 elections to Hamas, its brutality escalated. In May 2007, gunmen in presidential guard uniforms killed journalist Suleiman Abdul-Rahim al-Ashi and media worker Mohammad Matar Abdo. It was an execution meant to send a clear message to those who witnessed it.

When Hamas took over, its government also imposed restrictions on press freedoms, but its censorship was inconsistent. Once, while documenting the new policewomen’s division, I was ordered to show my photos to a Hamas officer so he could censor any image he deemed immodest. I often managed to bypass these restrictions by swapping my memory cards preemptively.

The officers weren’t fond of anyone overriding their orders, but instead of outright punishment, they resorted to petty power plays—investigations, revoked access, or unnecessary provocations. Unlike the PA, Hamas did not operate within a system of coordination with Israeli forces to suppress journalism, but the restrictions journalists faced still created an environment of uncertainty and self-censorship. Any violation on their part, however, was met with swift international condemnation—something the PA rarely faced, despite its far more systematic repression.

After losing control of Gaza, the PA shifted its focus to the West Bank, intensifying its campaign of media suppression. Detentions, violent crackdowns, and the silencing of critical voices became commonplace. Their collaboration with Israel was not passive; it was active. From surveillance to campaigns of violence, they play a crucial role in maintaining the status quo, stifling any dissent that challenges their power and the occupation.

In 2016, the PA’s collusion became even more apparent when they coordinated with Israeli authorities in the arrest of prominent journalist and press freedom advocate Omar Nazzal, who had criticised Ramallah for how it handled the suspected murder of Palestinian citizen Omar al-Naif at its embassy in Bulgaria.

In 2017, the PA launched a campaign of intimidation, arresting five journalists from different outlets.

In 2019, the Palestinian Authority blocked the website of Quds News Network, a youth-led media outlet that has gained immense popularity. This was part of a wider ban imposed by the Ramallah Magistrate’s Court that blocked access to 24 other news websites and social media pages.

In 2021, after the violent death of activist Nizar Banat in the PA’s custody sparked protests, its forces sought to crack down on journalists and media outlets covering them.

In this context, the prospect of the PA returning to Gaza following the ceasefire agreement raises serious concerns for journalists who have already endured the horrors of genocide. For those who survived, this could mean a new chapter of repression that reflects the PA’s history of censorship, arrests and stifling of press freedoms.

Despite the grave threats that Palestinian journalists face from Israel and from those who pretend to represent the Palestinian people, they persevere. Their work transcends borders, reflecting a shared struggle against tyranny. Their resilience speaks not only to the Palestinian cause but to the broader fight for liberation, justice and dignity.

---

Eman Mohammed is an award-winning Palestinian-American photojournalist and Senior TED fellow currently based in Washington, DC.

Abbas and Hamas Abuse and Torture of Palestinians is a Gift to the Israeli Government

Palestine: Authorities Crush Dissent

A new Report by Human Rights Watch Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent finds that both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority systematically use torture as an instrument of policy. The Report begins with an overview of what the situation in the Occupied Territories is:

In the 25 years since Palestinians gained a degree of self-rule over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, their authorities have established machineries of repression to crush dissent, including through the use of torture.

Both the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza have in recent years carried out scores of arbitrary arrests for peaceful criticism of the authorities, particularly on social media, among independent journalists, on university campuses, and at demonstrations. As the Fatah-Hamas feud deepened despite attempts at reconciliation, PA security services have targeted supporters of Hamas and vice versa. Relying primarily on overly broad laws that criminalize activity such as causing “sectarian strife” or insulting “higher authorities,” the PA and Hamas use detention to punish critics and deter them and others from further activism. In detention, security forces routinely taunt, threaten, beat, and force detainees into painful stress positions for hours at a time.

It is no surprise that the PA, which is a sub-contractor for the Israeli State and military, should torture Palestinians. This group of thugs and misfits has no other reason to exist other than to prevent a new Palestinian uprising. As the Quisling-in-Chief, Mahmoud Abbas once said, co-operation with the Israeli security services is ‘sacrosanct’. Or as the Times of Israel put it:

Strange as this may sound, despite the ongoing political schism between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the open hatred between Ramallah and Washington, the security coordination remains in place, at the direction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and both Israeli and Palestinian security forces have a share in preventing attacks on Israelis.

What will be of surprise to many is that Hamas, which purports to be a Palestinian resistance organisation, should also engage in the torture and abuse of Palestinians. It should not however be that surprising. As an Islamist organisation that was the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is a right-wing religious group. It has no social programme worthy of the name. Like all similar religious groups its politics are backward looking, socially and politically. Islam is a means of justifying repression. Hamas’s origins lie in the desire of the Israeli state to find a counterweight to secular Palestinian nationalism. Hamas was virtually the creation of the Israeli state.

The actions of both Hamas and Fateh/PA are deeply shameful. The Times of Israel article below is headed ‘Calls by Palestinians to safeguard rights ring hollow’. After all how can Palestinians oppose Israel’s use of torture when the so-called Palestinian organisations do exactly the same? It is no surprise that the Zionist media will exploit this for all its worth.  Both Abbas and Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister, should hang their heads in shame.

There is no point in either Hamas or the PA denying that torture is routinely used. The Report by Human Rights Watch is clearly a thorough and painstaking one. Neither Hamas or the PA are prepared to record all interrogations so their denials will cut no ice.

Those who have had illusions in Hamas should, as a result of this, think again. It would seem that their main goal is not to create a free and independent Palestine but a police state run according to their interpretation of Islam.

In using torture and other methods of silencing dissent Hamas is playing the Zionist game.

Palestine: Authorities Crush Dissent

Arbitrary Arrests, Torture Systematic

 (Ramallah) – The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas authorities in Gaza routinely arrest and torture peaceful critics and opponents, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. As the Palestinian Authority-Hamas feud has deepened, each has targeted the other’s supporters.

The 149-page report, “‘Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent:’ Arbitrary Arrest and Torture Under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas,” evaluates patterns of arrest and detention conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 25 years after the Oslo Accords granted Palestinians a degree of self-rule over these areas and more than a decade after Hamas seized effective control over the Gaza Strip. Human Rights Watch detailed more than two dozen cases of people detained for no clear reason beyond writing a critical article or Facebook post or belonging to the wrong student group or political movement.

“Twenty-five years after Oslo, Palestinian authorities have gained only limited power in the West Bank and Gaza, but yet, where they have autonomy, they have developed parallel police states,”

said Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch. “Calls by Palestinian officials to safeguard Palestinian rights ring hollow as they crush dissent.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 147 witnesses, including former detainees and their relatives, lawyers, and representatives of nongovernmental groups, and reviewed photographic evidence, medical reports, and court documents. The report reflects substantive responses to the findings from the main security agencies implicated in the underlying abuses.

Systematic arbitrary arrests and torture violate major human rights treaties to which Palestine recently acceded. Few security officers have been prosecuted and none have been convicted for wrongful arrest or torture, as far as Human Rights Watch has been able to determine.

“The fact that Israel systematically violates Palestinians’ most basic rights is no reason to remain silent in the face of the systematic repression of dissent and the torture Palestinian security forces are perpetrating,”

Palestinian riot police confront demonstrators protesting security coordination between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah on June 23, 2014. © 2014 Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

said Shawan Jabarin, executive director of the Palestinian human rights organization al-Haq and a member of the Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa Advisory Committee.

Human Rights Watch met with the Palestinian Authority Intelligence Services in Ramallah, but was unable to accept an offer from Hamas authorities to meet in Gaza because Israel refused to grant permits for senior Human Rights Watch officials to enter the Gaza Strip for this purpose. Israeli authorities also rejected Human Rights Watch’s request for senior representatives to enter Gaza during October 2018 to present this report at a news conference.  

Both authorities deny that abuses amount to more than isolated cases that are investigated and for which wrongdoers are held to account. The evidence that Human Rights Watch collected contradicts these claims.

Palestinian authorities often rely on overly broad laws that criminalize insulting “higher authorities,” creating “sectarian strife,” or “harming the revolutionary unity” to detain dissidents for days or weeks, only to release most of them without referring them to trial, but often leaving charges outstanding. Palestinian Authority security forces also held 221 Palestinians for various periods between January 2017 and August 2018 in administrative detention without charge or trial under a regional governor’s order, according to the Palestinian statutory watchdog Independent Commission for Human Rights.  

A number of former Palestinian Authority detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch had also been detained by Israel, which coordinates with Palestinian Authority forces on security issues. In Gaza, Hamas authorities sometimes condition release on the detainee signing a commitment to halt criticism or protests.

On September 27, the Independent Commission for Human Rights reported that Hamas security forces in Gaza had arrested more than 50 people affiliated with Fatah and that Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank had detained more than 60 affiliated with Hamas, in the span of just a few days.

In the cases documented, Palestinian forces often threatened, beat, and forced detainees into painful stress positions for prolonged periods, including using cables or ropes to hoist up arms  behind the back. Police often used similar tactics to obtain confessions by people detained on drug or other criminal charges. Security forces also routinely coerced detainees into providing access to their cellphones and social media accounts. These measures appear aimed at punishing dissidents and deterring them and others from further activism.

While the authorities regularly receive citizen complaints and have systems to investigate them, only a minority have resulted in a finding of wrongdoing, according to data provided by the agencies. Even fewer led to an administrative sanction or referral for criminal prosecution.

Palestinian authorities should abide by the international human rights treaties they acceded to over the last five years. Hamas authorities said in a letter to Human Rights Watch that it considered itself committed to uphold all international treaties ratified by the State of Palestine. Compliance requires Palestinian authorities to ensure that an independent body inspects detention sites and that the authorities investigate complaints credibly and impose appropriate sanctions if warranted.

The systematic practice of torture by Palestinian authorities may amount to a crime against humanity prosecutable at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Human Rights Watch has long encouraged the ICC prosecutor to open a formal probe into Israeli and Palestinian conduct in Palestine, which is a party to the ICC.

The US and European states provide support to Palestinian Authority security forces. While the US in 2018 slashed funding for health and education services for Palestinians, including all its support for the United Nations Relief Works and Agency (UNRWA), it continued to set aside funding for security forces, including allocating US $60 million in International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) nonlethal assistance to Palestinian Authority security forces for the 2018 fiscal year and $35 million for the 2019 fiscal year. Qatar, Iran, and Turkey financially support Hamas authorities. All of these countries should suspend assistance to agencies that routinely torture dissidents – including, for the Palestinian Authority, the Intelligence Services, Preventive Security, and Joint Security Committee, and, for Hamas, Internal Security – as long as systematic torture and other serious abuses continue.

“The attacks by both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas on dissidents and demonstrators, reporters and bloggers, are both systematic and unpunished,”

Porteous said.

“Governments that want to help the Palestinian people develop the rule of law should not support security forces that actively undermine it.”

Accounts from Former Detainees

“I was heading home. At the Einab checkpoint, I happened to see the prime minister’s convoy being held up on the checkpoint. I filmed this scene. After the car I was in and the convoy was allowed to cross the checkpoint, we were stopped by one of his escorts. I was arrested and taken to the station of the Preventative Security Forces in Tulkarm. I was detained in Tulkarm and in Ramallah for four days.”

·         Jihad Barakat, 29, journalist on his arrest by Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces in the West Bank in July 2017.

“I had written on a hot summer day, ‘Do your children [referring to Hamas leaders] sleep on the floor like ours do?’ I think the post bothered security forces and, as a result, I was summoned to appear before Internal Security and later was charged with the crime of ‘misuse of technology’… I was detained for 15 days... Later, I was released after an agreement with the Interior Ministry. The agreement pledged not to write or incite against the government.”

·         Amer Balousha, 26-year-old activist and journalist on his arrest in July 2017 by Hamas authorities in Gaza.

“A plainclothes officer met me at the door [of the Intelligence Services Prison in Jericho]. He blindfolded me, handcuffed my hands behind my back, and started hitting me and slamming me against the walls… this lasted for about 10 minutes. The officer took me to the warden’s office and took the blindfold off, telling me that this was my “welcome”... [an officer] then said hang him, as in take him to shabeh. I was transferred from the office to the toilets, there they blindfolded me again, handcuffed me behind my back, put a piece of cloth and rope at the center of my handcuffs and pulled it up to the side of the door. There was a hook between the door and the ceiling. They pulled the cloth up, raising my hands behind my back. My legs were not shackled, and the tip of my legs were touching the ground. I was held in this stress position for 45 minutes. An officer hit me with a big stick on my back, between my shoulders, more than once... After they put me down, I felt my hands were numb up to my shoulders and I could not hold myself up… [the next day] the Juicer (nickname for his interrogator in Jericho) told me that ‘I promise you that you will not leave this place except on a wheelchair.”

·         Alaa Zaqeq, 27, detained by PA security forces in April 2017 for three weeks based on his activism as a graduate student with a student group affiliated with Hamas.

“I was forced to stand blindfolded the entire day in a room called the bus. There were 5 or 10 people with me. On occasion they sat us down in small chairs, but we needed permission for everything we did, including sleeping or speaking. I spent 30 days there… After the first day, the beating started, they asked me to open my hands and started striking me with a cable and whipping my feet.”

·         Fouad Jarada, 34-year-old journalist with the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, arrested in June 2017 by Hamas forces three days after a Facebook post critical of a Hamas ally and a string of critical news reports. Authorities held him for more than two months on charges of “harming revolutionary unity,” releasing him only when the PA agreed to arrest journalists considered close to Hamas in the West Bank.

“I still have nightmares… [that] the cell is strangling me and I cannot breathe.”

·         Fares Jbour, 24, held for 24 days in January 2017 over his activities with a Hamas-affiliated student group at a university in Hebron in the West Bank

“The guys are afraid of writing. They don't try. They don't share. They don’t even put “like” to anyone who wrote anything criticizing the government. They are scared.”

·         Mohammad Lafi, 24-year-old rapper from the Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza, held for five days in January 2017 by Hamas authorities after he released a music video entitled “Your Right” that called for people to demonstrate and participated in protests around the electricity crisis.

“I feel I am being monitored, as if I’m under a microscope. I was released, but, until now, I feel I am not free. They broke our desire to defend citizens’ rights.”

·         Taghreed Abu Teer, 47-year-old journalist with the Palestinian Broading Corporation, detained for 11 days in April 2017 by Hamas authorities after attending conferences for rival Fatah in Ramallah.

“I live in a country where it is forbidden to express my opinion. This country is not the one we dream about, not at all. I don’t think that there is a Palestinian who would accept that all this struggle would go, and all the years of our lives, not just ours, but those before us, so that in the end we would have a system of government that has taken the shape of a dictatorship. It cannot be… it is very painful that we have a regime before ever having a state. Our problem with the PA is that they are building security forces and controlling people when we don’t even control the checkpoint.”

·         Hamza Zbeidat, 31-year-old who works for a development nongovernmental group, detained for two days by PA security forces in May 2016 for a Facebook post that called on Palestinians “to struggle against the PA like we struggle against Israel.”

Abbas and Hamas use systematic torture to crush dissent – Human Rights Watch

In major NGO report on Palestinian Authority and Gaza, dozens of ex-detainees — critics, activists, political opponents — describe brutality including beating, forced contortion

By TOI staff and AP 23 October 2018, 10:00 am 11

Illustrative: The hands of a young man tied with rope (nito100; iStock by Getty Images)

Human Rights Watch on Tuesday accused both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas of routinely engaging in “systematic” unwarranted arrests and torture of critics, suspected dissidents and political opponents, and of developing “parallel police states” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, respectively. 

In a 149-page report based on interviews with 147 witnesses, Human Rights Watch detailed a common method of abuse and torture known as shabeh — used both by the PA and Hamas — in which detainees are placed in painful physical positions for lengthy periods of time. Such practices cause distress and trauma to detainees, while often leaving “little or no trace on the body,” the report said.

The widespread occurrence of such brutality indicates that “torture is governmental policy for both the PA and Hamas,” HRW stated.

Shabeh techniques include forcing detainees into squats, powerfully stretching their arms above or behind them, and leaving them standing or sitting in child-sized chairs for hours on end.

Palestinian security troops in Hebron, November 14, 2017. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

In one example from Gaza, 

“a PA civil servant, arrested after a friend tagged him in a Facebook post calling for protests on the electricity crisis, spent most of his days in the Internal Security’s Gaza City detention center subjected to positional abuse… causing him to feel ‘severe pain in my kidneys and spine’ and as if his neck would ‘break’ and his ‘body is tearing up inside,'” the report said.

In the West Bank, a detained journalist had his hands tied by rope to the ceiling of a holding room while officers “slowly pulled the rope to apply pressure to his arms, which caused him to feel so much pain that he had to ask an officer to pull his pants up after he used the toilet because he could not do it himself.”

According to the report, “Palestinian forces in both the West Bank and Gaza regularly use threats of violence, taunts, solitary confinement, and beatings, including lashing and whipping of the feet of detainees, to elicit confessions, punish, and intimidate activists.”

 

 The report, titled “Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent,” cited more than 20 cases in which activists were arrested for critical news articles or social media posts, as well as membership in certain groups or movements frowned upon by authorities. Hamas and the PA regularly abused each other’s activists in the territories they control, it added.

Saying the systematic use of torture could amount to a crime against humanity under the United Nations’ Convention against Torture, HRW called on the United States, the European Union and other international powers to halt all aid to the Palestinian agencies responsible for persecution and abuse — including the PA Preventative Security Forces, General Intelligence Services and Joint Security Committee, and the Hamas-run Internal Security — “until the authorities curb those practices and hold those responsible for abuse accountable.”

“Twenty five years after Oslo, Palestinian authorities have gained only limited power in the West Bank and Gaza, but yet, where they have autonomy, they have developed parallel police states,” said Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch.

“Calls by Palestinian officials to safeguard Palestinian rights ring hollow as they crush dissent,” he said.

“Systematic arbitrary arrests and torture violate major human rights treaties to which Palestine recently acceded,” the rights group said, and warned that the “systematic practice of torture by Palestinian authorities may amount to a crime against humanity prosecutable at the International Criminal Court.”

Hamas security forces in Gaza City, April 4, 2013. (Wissam Nassar/FLASH90)

Both Hamas and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority denied the accusations.

The two Palestinian factions split in 2007 after Hamas violently seized the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. For more than a decade, Hamas has maintained an iron grip on power and suppressed any signs of public dissent, including street protests and on social media.

Despite having Western backing, Abbas has also silenced dissent in the areas of the West Bank he administers under past agreements with Israel. Last year, he clamped down on social media and news websites with a vaguely worded decree that critics say allows his government to jail anyone on charges of harming “national unity” or the “social fabric.”

Mohammed Khatib, a 20-year-old law student and activist with Hamas’ student branch in the West Bank, told The Associated Press he was arrested last month and held for 19 days at a Palestinian intelligence center in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He said he was forced to stand for hours at a time and hung by his handcuffed hands to a door for 15 minutes, a stress position meant to cause pain but leave no sign of injury.

“This is not only a violation of human rights, it is a violation of human dignity, a violation of basic morals,” he said, adding that he believed the aim was to intimidate him.

HRW’s report also highlights other tactics used to silence Palestinian dissent and punish activists, among them the seizing of phones, leaving investigations and charges open, and coercing detainees to promise to stop any further criticism.

In Gaza, Taghreed Abu Teer, a 47-year-old journalist, told the AP that she was held by Hamas authorities for 11 days and interrogated under “humiliating circumstances” for her activities with the rival Fatah movement.

Palestinian police take part in a training session in the West Bank city of Ramallah in 2014. (Issam Rimawi/Flash90)

She said she was kept in a dark cell for days at a time and forced to stand for lengthy periods. Although she was not physically beaten, she said she could hear the screams of men being tortured nearby, and that at one point, a man with a whip threatened to beat her as well. More than a year and a half later, she still cries when she recalls the “unforgettable experience.”

“As long as I was in the cell, I was wondering what had caused me to end up here,” she said. She spoke at a relative’s home so her six children would not hear about the ordeal.

Abu Teer said interrogators threatened to charge her with collaboration with Israel, widely feared as a stigma, and that most of the questions focused on a three-day trip she made to the West Bank, where she met senior Fatah officials and briefed them about the situation in Gaza. She said interrogators accused her of inciting the Palestinian Authority to make financial cuts and other punitive measures against Gaza, a tactic meant to squeeze Hamas.

She denied all the allegations, saying she had only led protests and lobbied for ending the Hamas-Fatah split.

While she was never charged, Hamas officers advised her “to be quiet” and focus on her home and family, “which I considered a veiled threat rather than advice,” she added.

alestinian security forces routinely torture critics, rights group says