Published: May 9th, 2012
The Palestinian Authority has been boasting
over the past four years of its success in restoring law and order to the West
Bank city of Jenin.
Journalists from all around the world were
invited to Jenin, once notorious for dispatching suicide bombers to Israel, to
report on the Palestinian government’s successful efforts.
Palestinian leaders and government officials
told the journalists how their security forces have managed to end the state of
chaos and lawlessness that used to prevail in Jenin.
They talked about how Fatah gangsters and
thugs who used to roam the streets, imposing an atmosphere of intimidation and
terror on the population, have vanished.
Most of the gangsters, the Palestinian
government officials noted, had been recruited to various branches of the
Western-funded Palestinian security forces and were indirectly receiving
salaries from American and European taxpayers’ money.
Many Western correspondents rushed to Jenin
to cover the story about the success of the Palestinian Authority in restoring
law and order.
One of the most popular stories was the fact
that Zakaria Zubeidi, the former commander of Fatah’s armed militia, Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades, which was behind dozens of terror attacks against Israel, was
now running a local theater and promoting coexistence and peace. But while the
international, and Israeli, media were breaking the “good news” about Jenin, the
journalists failed to understand what was really going on in Jenin and its
surrounding villages. Some journalists, in fact, chose to turn a blind eye to
the grim reality on the ground.
A Western
journalist who wanted to do an investigative report into the case was warned by
senior Palestinian security officers that she would be putting her life at risk
if she insisted on carrying out this mission.
Last week, the truth about the situation in
Jenin finally exploded in the faces of everyone: the local governor died of a
fatal heart attack following an unsuccessful assassination attempt. For the
Palestinian Authority leadership, the assassination attempt was what lifted the
veil: Palestinian leaders in Ramallah realized that they could no longer
continue to hide the truth about what was really happening in Jenin.
Radi Asideh, the security commander of the
Jenin area, admitted that it was the Palestinian
security establishment that was responsible for the
anarchy and lawlessness. “There is a defect inside the security
establishment and officers were responsible for this,” he revealed.
The biggest mistake, Asideh added, was that
the Palestinian leadership had turned its back to the defect, allowing the
situation to deteriorate at the expense of the people’s security.
Palestinians say that anarchy and
lawlessness are to be found also in other areas in the West Bank where the
Palestinian Authority claims to have imposed law and order. And, they add, in
most cases it is the Palestinian Authority’s security forces that are
responsible for the chaos and corruption.
If the Western journalists and
donors continue to ignore the reality on the ground, the West Bank could soon
fall into the hands of gangsters and armed clans, as has been the case in Jenin
— among the main reasons the Palestinian Authority collapsed in the Gaza Strip
in 2007, speeding the rise of Hamas to power.Originally
published by Gatestone Institute http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org
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