Our Arab East is full of matters we are proud of and cherish. In this small corner of the world, human civilization was born and grew, and here Hammurabi set his humanitarian laws that were transferred to all parts of the earth and became the backbone of all human societies from the far north to the far south. The East is the cradle of the heavenly religions, the moral spirit of humanity. Here our master Jesus began spreading his message; the title of love and brotherhood among humans, and here came the greatest prophet Muhammad with the divine message that was and still is the fundamental basis of law in all human laws. The Arab East is a symbol of hospitality and generosity. Our Arab East is also full of contradictions and negatives that shame us and wound our dignity from severe poverty and extreme wealth, from fascist Salafism and tyranny and authoritarian oppression, from new slavery and violations of freedoms and human rights. In our Arab East, political entities were established that could not transform into states and have not come close to being homelands where citizens live in the full sense and depth of the word. We have half states where people live forcibly without a future or hope, their only concern has become migration to parts of the earth that have turned from warring entities into states and homelands for their people living there in prosperity and freedom.
The Palestinian people, who were displaced from their land and have paid and continue to pay dearly day after day to reclaim their land and dignity, yearn for their country to be a different image from their Arab sister countries. The people of Palestine placed most of their hopes on being the “nucleus of the state” promised to them by the Oslo people, a country of prosperity and flourishing... a country of law and citizenship... a country of freedoms, pluralism, and respect for others and their privacy... a country whose leadership serves the people and manages their daily affairs in the best way.
Yes, the Palestinian dreamed of a homeland... but the beautiful dream quickly faded and flew away, and the Palestinian woke up to find himself facing the bitter truth: that he did not even get “half a state.” And this entity, despite its tender fingers, preceded its Arab brothers, the Arab entities, in chaos and the spread of the law of the jungle. There is severe poverty increasing day by day and extreme wealth for a few increasing hour by hour with deliberate and studied neglect of the law “Where did you get this from?”. Today in Palestine, ten families own more than 68% of the national income, and there are people from the Authority’s cronies (this situation also exists in the Gaza Authority) whose wealth exceeds the entire budget of the Palestinian Authority, and this wealth accumulated in a few years without accountability or oversight.
Today in Palestine, bribery and favoritism rule. Your family affiliation and party identity decide your fate. Your certificate and experience mean nothing unless approved from above. Examples of favoritism and nepotism dominate, and anyone interested can hear from thousands of academics and experts in Palestine about their experience in this field. It suffices here to point out that more than 80% of the Authority’s employees are from the ruling party’s families, and more than 75% of the new millionaires have assumed important positions in the Authority or have relatives in responsible positions. The possibility of competition for the children of the poor and those not affiliated with the Authority’s party is very small if not nonexistent.
Today in Palestine, men and women of journalism, science, research, and civil society are pursued for nothing but expressing their opinion about the Authority and its modest supporters. They criticized the current situation and openly complained about this tyranny and miserable condition. These people were imprisoned and dragged to the Authority’s courts as happened with Professor Abdel Sattar Qasim and other colleagues. The policy of silencing and gagging freedom of expression has become a “normal” matter in internally and externally occupied Palestine.
Repeatedly in recent years, the Palestinian Authority has tried to restrict freedom of demonstration and protest. For this purpose, the Authority did not only use harsh laws and decrees against our people but also deployed its security forces and intelligence to pursue and confront protesters, as happened in teachers’ demonstrations when they dared to demand their rights. For security agencies of the people’s Authority to stand and prevent the people from demonstrating and protesting for their freedom from occupation and tyranny is a new kind of human rights violation invented by the Authority.
Today in Palestine, women are blind, their image is blind, and their name is blind... The Central Elections Committee is a governmental institution that implements the decisions and directives of the Interior Minister and the President’s office. This institution approves candidate lists for local elections that violate Palestinian women’s rights in an exceptionally extremist manner. Some lists do not contain the photos of female candidates or even their names; these men suffice by replacing the candidate’s name with so-and-so’s wife! or so-and-so’s spouse! or so-and-so’s daughter!
Today in Palestine, citizens enjoy basic health insurance and the right to education, which is a fundamental human right, but this is only half the truth and half the right!... The other half is that expensive treatments abroad or in occupation hospitals mostly remain for patients affiliated with the Authority’s party and their circle. Tens of millions of dollars are spent on surgeries abroad for officials, their children, relatives, and acquaintances, even though Palestine has internationally renowned specialists, and here it suffices to mention Al-Maqasid Hospital, specifically the neurosurgery department. The Authority annually receives dozens of scholarships from friendly countries, distributed in the Authority’s pockets according to favoritism laws far from transparency, financial need, and scientific competence.
And the right to higher education remains tied to the approval of those enthroned on the throne.
Today in Palestine, there are eleven security agencies with a high density of security personnel relative to the population, exceeding those in Germany or Sweden. This does not mean that we enjoy greater security than in Germany... The difference is that security agencies in Germany are regulated by laws and rules set by parliament and monitored by oversight and accountability committees, especially in human rights. In Palestine, security agencies roam as they please without oversight or accountability. This situation is not new; former Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei threatened to resign in 2005 if all manifestations of security chaos caused by security agencies did not stop! And the testimony of former Interior Minister Nasr Yusuf before the Legislative Council on 19.10.2005, confirming that some security leaders do not respond to his instructions, clarifies the dilemma we were in... Considering that the security agencies’ disregard for oversight and accountability has increased many times since then, especially after the departure of the symbol leader Abu Ammar, we conclude that today in Palestine we live in a state ruled by two entities: security and legislative in parallel. The security chaos in Palestine has many faces; torture and illegal detention are the least of the calamities and results of this chaos. In Palestinian security prisons, innocents are killed and some tortured to death... Abu Al-Ezz Halawa from Nablus was the last executed by security agencies without a verdict or judicial decision, and the political leadership remained silent on this crime and fabricated it as usual. Abu Al-Ezz Halawa was not the first to die in Authority prisons in occupied Palestine and will certainly not be the last. In the past, we complained about occupation security agencies, and now in Palestine, we see that Authority security agencies not only follow the same path but master it with greater precision and inventiveness in violating human rights. The issue that fortunately attracted some of our people’s attention but unfortunately has not yet received the attention of human rights institutions in Palestine nor political forces is the case of the six youth kidnapped by Palestinian security agencies without charges or fair trial.
Here we speak of the young men Haitham Siyaj, Basel Al-Araj, Muhammad Harb, Saif Al-Idrisi, Muhammad Al-Salamin, and Ali Dar Al-Sheikh, three of whom (Harb, Siyaj, Al-Araj) were arrested on April 9 near the village of Arura, Ramallah district, after 10 days of their disappearance, while the other three were later arrested on charges of cooperating with them. Today, the youths detained by the Palestinian Authority are approaching their fifth month behind bars without clear charges or trial, except for successive detention extension decisions, the last of which extended detention for 45 days ending on October 1. Six days ago, these detainees began an open hunger strike protesting the Authority’s treatment of them and their detention conditions. The Palestinian security agencies did not only arrest them without charges and torture them, a clear violation of their human rights, but now punish them for starting hunger strikes by preventing their contact with lawyers and cutting visits from their families.
Violations of Palestinian human rights in occupied Palestine by the Palestinian Authority have become a daily topic, and it is time for political forces to stop turning a blind eye to this issue and for Palestinian human rights institutions to speak out about violations of Palestinian human rights by the Authority, or Palestine will become the worst example in the East of human rights violations by the Authority and the silence of civil society institutions.
