Anarchists Against the Wall US Tour

Anarchists Against The Wall (AATW) have joined Palestinian villagers in a joint popular struggle which has been a potent tool in the hands of Palestinians and a focus of much of the solidarity movement. This struggle has remained steadfast for over 7 years and continues to be one of the most effective ways to resist Israel's construction of the wall and settlements.

AATW are in the midst of a fund raising tour in North America. They are raising funds to pay for legal defense for hundreds of Palestinians and Israeli activists who are arrested and put on trial for their part in the resistance.

For details about tour locations and dates please see http://tour.resist-il.org/confirmed

AP: Settlers have broken ground on nearly 550 West Bank homes since end of freeze, survey shows

Ma'ale Adummin settlement #2, originally uploaded by michaelramallah.

According to an Associated Press count, rate of construction since September 26 is four times faster than over the last two years.

By The Associated Press

Israeli settlers have begun building new homes at a quick pace since the government lifted its moratorium on West Bank housing starts - almost 550 in three weeks, more than four times faster than the last two years.

And many homes are going up in areas that under practically any peace scenario would become part of a Palestinian state, a trend that could hamper U.S.-brokered peace talks.

According to an Associated Press count, ground has been broken on 544 new West Bank homes since September 26, when Israel lifted its 10-month freeze on most new settlement building.

The survey, while not comprehensive, marks the most extensive effort yet to quantify the construction. It was based on visits to 16 of the West Bank's more than 120 settlements as well as phone calls to more than four dozen settlements and interviews with construction workers and mayors.

"This figure is alarming and is another indicator that Israel is not serious about the peace process, which is supposed to be about ending the occupation," said Ghassan Khatib, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' self-rule government in the West Bank.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has played down the new construction, saying it "has no real effect on the map of a possible (peace) agreement."

However, the renewed settlement construction has jeopardized peace talks relaunched only last month, with the Palestinians threatening to walk away if the freeze is not extended. And it could make the daunting task of partitioning the land even more difficult.

The building spurt of the past three weeks compares to average annual housing starts of about 2,000 in recent years, including just under 1,900 in 2009 and just over 2,100 in 2008, according to government figures. That is a rate of about 115 in three weeks, making the current pace more than four times faster.

The actual number is likely higher. When officials provided a range, the AP used the lowest figure. And it did not include 133 apartments a contractor said he was building in three settlements, because he did not say how many were already started.

The settlement watchdog Peace Now estimates there have been more than 600 housing starts and plans to release its own detailed report next week.

Much of the building activity witnessed by the AP involved leveling ground, and some settler leaders argue it is premature to define that as housing starts.

Asked about the AP count, a spokeswoman for the settler group Yesha Council said: "I prefer not to get into the numbers game because it's misleading."

About two-thirds of post-freeze work is preliminary and could be halted if the freeze is renewed, said the spokeswoman, Aliza Herbst.

Still, the scale of the construction is likely to harden Palestinian demands that a settlement freeze be reimposed as a condition for proceeding with the talks. Efforts by the United States to coax Israel into another building slowdown have so far failed.

In crisscrossing the West Bank, an AP team saw bulldozers and jackhammers tearing into rocky slopes in a number of locations.

One of the new building sites is in Karmei Tzur, a settlement with about 135 families located on the "Palestinian side" of the planned route of Israel's West Bank separation barrier, seen by some in Israel as the basis for drawing Israel's future border.

On Monday, jackhammers pulverized rocks on a barren slope as trucks carted off debris and heavy machinery drilled holes in preparation for pouring foundations. A woman answering the phone at the settlement's main office said 56 new apartments were being built.

A drive through Kiryat Arba, home to more than 7,000 Israelis, revealed two construction sites, for a total of at least 22 apartments, according to Palestinian laborers. And in the settlement of Revava, bulldozers were seen leveling ground along a slope. A contractor at the site said his company is building 83 apartments there.

In Kiryat Arba, Revava and many other settlements visited by the AP, officials declined comment on construction. In two places, armed guards denied reporters entry.

Other settlement officials were more forthcoming.

Avi Roe, who heads the Binyamin regional council, which represents about one-third of the West Bank settlements, said he is aware of at least 200 housing starts in his area.

Another 344 housing starts were confirmed by AP visits to settlements and interviews with mayors, construction workers and other officials.

Netanyahu imposed the settlement curbs last November in a bid to draw the Palestinians to the negotiating table. Netanyahu, who leads a rightist governing coalition, has said the slowdown was a one-time gesture.

The Obama administration has been trying to persuade Israel to extend the freeze and is expected to step up the effort after next month's midterm elections. Washington has floated the idea of a one-time two-month extension, during which Israelis and Palestinians would be asked to reach agreement on the future borders of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinians insist on a freeze for the duration of negotiations, saying two months is unrealistic to reach a border deal.

Nearly 300,000 settlers now live in the West Bank, along with 2.2 million Palestinians. Settlers have covered the territory - captured by Israel in the Six Day War in 1967, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem - with an increasingly intricate web of established communities and nearly 100 unauthorized hilltop outposts.

Despite the recent building spate, settlement leaders complain that approval for the largest construction projects is being held up. Israeli media reported this week that construction of more than 3,700 apartments awaits the signature of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who has final say in the West Bank.

"I'm pessimistic about the near future," said Benny Kashriel, mayor of Maaleh Adumim, a settlement of 33,000 near Jerusalem. He said he hasn't been able to start new construction since the end of the moratorium.

A breakdown of an Associated Press count of new construction in West Bank settlements since Israel's moratorium on housing starts ended on September 26:

-- At least 200 housing starts in the Binyamin region, which contains one-third of the West Bank's more than 120 settlements, according to Avi Roe, the head of the regional council.

-- Ariel: 45 apartments being built by former Gaza settlers, according to Yitzak Vasana, a spokesman for the group.

--Beit Arieh: 25 apartments, according to Avi Naim, head of the settlement.

-- Barkan: 62 apartments, according to Shmuel Elad, head of the settlement.

-- Emanuel: 46 apartments, according to Rabbi Ezra Garashi, head of the
settlement.

-- Har Adar: 20 apartments, according to Aviram Cohen, head of the settlement.

-- Har Hebron, a group of 15 settlements: 50 apartments, according to regional council leader Zvi Bar-Hai.

-- Itamar: at least three, based on the comment by a settlement spokesman, Moshe Goldschmidt, that there were a few housing starts.

--- Karmei Tzur: 56, according to a woman answering the phone at the settlement office.

--- Kedumim: at least 12, based on a site visit and conversation with a land
surveyor.

--- Kiryat Arba: at least 22, based on a site visit and conversations with
Palestinian construction workers.

--- Oranit: at least three, based on a comment by a settlement official that there were a few housing starts.

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More coverage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11596718

Uri Avnery: The State of Bla-bla-bla

Dome of the Rock from roof of the Austrian hospice, originally uploaded by michaelramallah.

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Will Germany enact a law that demands that every Turk aspiring to citizenship swear allegiance to the "German Federal Republic, the Nation-State of the German People?" Sounds like a ridiculous idea.

Will the US Senate adopt a law that would compel every candidate for citizenship to swear allegiance to "The United States of America, the Nation State of the…" Of whom? "The American People?" "The Anglo-Saxon People?" "The Christian People?" An absurd idea.

But the Knesset is about to enact a law that demands from every non-Jew who desires Israeli citizenship to swear allegiance to "The State of Israel, the Nation-State of the Jewish people." It seems that our benighted law-makers do not see anything questionable about this.

And there already hovers in the air a bill that demands that all Israeli citizens, or perhaps only the non-Jewish ones, swear allegiance to this Nation-State of the Jewish People, or else.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed extending the building freeze in the settlements for two or three months - if the Palestinian leadership recognizes the State of Israel as the Nation-State etc. etc.

And one may well ask: what is the source of this obsession, this demand from near and far, strangers and non-strangers to declare that Israel is the "Nation-State of the Jewish People?"

The State of Israel has already existed for 62 and a half years. It is a regional military power, a state with nuclear capabilities, with an economy that arouses envy in a world steeped in crisis, it has a dynamic cultural, scientific and social life. So why this obsessive need for confirmation of its existence and its ideological definition?

Why the fanfares accompanying the announcement of every second-rate artist who agrees to appear in Israel?

What do we have here? What is the reason for this gaping lack of self-confidence? This obsessive need for confirmation and for the respect of the entire world? A collective mental disturbance? A matter for political psychologists, or perhaps for political psychiatrists?

I cannot abstain from comparing this pathetic need to our mood when I was young.

In the middle of the 1940s, the Hebrew Yishuv (community) was about 600,000 strong. But our self-confidence was enough for a nation of 60 million.

We had no state. We were still fighting against foreign rule. But a large number of ideological groups were hatching grandiose plans. The "Canaanites" were speaking about "the Hebrew Country" from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates. Groups on the Right advocated the "Kingdom of Israel" from the Nile to the Euphrates. The "Bema'avak" ("In the Struggle") group (to which I belonged) spoke about a united "Semitic Region" that would include Palestine, all the Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia.

A local water expert published a plan for the rational division of the waters of all the region's rivers – Tigris and Euphrates, Orontes and Litani, Jordan and perhaps also the Nile – for the good of all the region's peoples. Nobody thought that these plans were an expression of megalomania.

And here we are now, 12 times larger. We have a state that most of the world's peoples can only envy. And we are begging to be recognized. We demand that the Palestinian people, who have no state yet, recognize our self-definition. That a bride from Ramallah, who wants to marry her cousin in Haifa, recognizes the "Nation-State of the Jewish People." Isn't that ridiculous?

Now really, cynics will say, why do you take this seriously? After all, it's only one of Netanyahu’s and/or Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's tricks to achieve personal gains.

That's true, of course.

Netanyahu uses this trick to sabotage the peace negotiations that haven't yet started. He wants to prevent negotiation that may, God forbid, lead towards peace – a peace that would compel us to evacuate the settlements and return the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

The peace negotiations are the enemy. Better to kill an enemy while he is still small, preferably even before he sees the light of day. The demand to recognize the State of Bla-Bla-Bla is an instrument of abortion.

If Netanyahu believed that this aim could be achieved by the demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Vegetarian State, he would propose that.

So why deal with it seriously and discuss it?

Lieberman speaks to his potential voters, headed by one and a quarter million immigrants from the Soviet Union, who have not yet struck roots in this country. They were raised on a totalitarian cult of power, internal terror and the super-power arrogance of their former homeland, before its collapse.

Lieberman's political ideas – an ideological oath of allegiance, the transfer of peoples and territories, and in future also gulags for the enemies of the regime – are taken from the mental world of Stalin.

For Lieberman, all this talk about an oath of allegiance to the Jewish Soviet is nothing but a means to gain the leadership of the Israeli Right, and from there to the leadership of all Israel. For this end he is ready to declare war on 20 percent of Israel's citizens – every fifth Israeli – something without precedent in a democratic country.

That's obvious. So why take it seriously?

For a simple reason: both Netanyahu and Lieberman are convinced that this demand will raise their popularity among Jewish Israelis by leaps and bounds. How come?

Is this public in the grip of a deep inner anxiety? Does it need a daily dose of tranquilizers in the form of recognition of its state, the State of Bla-Bla-Bla?

If I were asked to swear allegiance to the "Nation-State of the Jewish People," I would have to respectfully decline. Perhaps by then a law will be in force that will cancel the citizenship of Israelis who refuse this demand, and I shall be demoted to the status of permanent resident devoid of civil rights.

I would have to refuse so as to avoid lying.

First of all, I don’t know what the "Jewish people," to whom the state of Israel supposedly belongs, is. Who is included? A Jew in Brooklyn, a citizen of the Nation-State of the American People, who served in the Marines and votes for the American president? Richard Goldstone, who is denounced by the leaders of Israel as a liar and self-hating traitor? Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, who was told this week by Lieberman to solve the Burka problem in France instead of poking his (Jewish) nose into our affairs?

And how does the ownership of Israel by these Jews express itself? Will they be able to vote for our government (after this right has been taken away from a million and a half Arab citizens)? Will they determine the policy of our government – joining the Jewish billionaires, casino and brothel owners, who own our newspapers and TV stations and buy our politicians wholesale or retail?

No Israeli law has defined what the "Jewish people" is. A religious community? An ethnic group? A race? All these together? Does it include all those professing the Jewish religion? Everybody who has a Jewish mother? Does it include a non-Jew married to someone with one Jewish grandparent, who today enjoys the automatic right to come to Israel and become a citizen? If 100,000 Arabs were to convert to Judaism tomorrow, would the state belong to them, too?

And what about the confusion between "Nation" and "People?" Does the Nation-State belong to the "Nation" or to the "People?" According to what scientific or juridical definition? Does the German "Nation-State" belong to the German "People" – which, according to some, also includes the Austrians and the German-speaking Swiss?

We have here a knot of concepts, terms and semantic confusions, a knot that cannot be unraveled.

The former Minister of Justice, the late Yaakov Shimshon Shapira, a Zionist through and through, told me once that, as the Legal Advisor of the government, he had advised David Ben-Gurion not to enact the Law of Return – because he would never find an answer to the question "who is a Jew?" It is even more difficult to answer the question "what is a Jewish State?"

And indeed, what does it mean? A state in which there is a Jewish majority – something that may well change in time? A state whose language is Hebrew and whose official holidays are Jewish? A state that belongs to Jews all over the world? A state all of whose citizens are Jews, and Jews only? A state of transfer and ethnic cleansing? And how do the words "Jewish" and "Democratic" go together?

Because of all these questions, Israel has no constitution. In the absence of such, all the confusion will land in the lap of the Supreme Court (after the Arab judge has been removed, of course.)

This week I took part in the demonstration of writers, artists and intellectuals in Tel-Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard, in front of the building where Ben-Gurion announced on May 14, 1948, the founding of “a Jewish state in Eretz Israel – to be known as the State of Israel”.

Why "a Jewish state?" For Ben-Gurion, this was not an ideological definition. He just quoted the resolution of the UN General Assembly, which partitioned the country between an "Arab state" and a "Jewish state." The framers of the resolution did not have any ideological character in mind. They simply took note of the fact that there were in the country two rival populations – the Jewish and the Arab – and decided pragmatically to divide the country between them.

The demonstration reached its climax when the queen of the Israeli stage, Hanna Meron, who had lost a leg in 1970 in an attack initiated by Issam Sartawi (before he became a peace activist and a close friend of mine) read out the Israeli Declaration of Independence. She reminded us that the declaration included the undertaking that the State of Israel would "foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; and will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."

It was a sad demonstration indeed.

The author is a former Israeli Knesset member and founder of the Gush Shalom movement.

CALL TO ACTION: Join ISM in Gaza

The International Solidarity Movement is appealing for volunteers to join our team in the besieged Gaza Strip. In recent weeks people have managed to cross into Gaza so there is at present a rare window of opportunity to enter – and more activists are always badly needed, as attacks by Israel are incessant.

ISM Gaza was reinstated in August 2008, when volunteers traveled aboard the historic, siege-breaking voyage of the first Free Gaza Movement boat.

ISM Gaza has maintained a continuous presence since then and joined fishermen to witness the illegal enforcement of a 3 nautical mile blockade by Israeli naval forces.

ISM volunteers refused to leave when Israel began bombing Gaza in December 2009. They accompanied ambulances and provided vital testimony to the international media as the assault unfolded.

At present ISM activists in Gaza are engaged with grassroots initiatives against the siege. Volunteers accompany Gazan farmers in the ‘buffer zone’, make frequent solidarity visits to Palestinians affected by the blockade, write reports about the situation on the ground, and film, photograph and document the illegal use of live ammunition against demonstrators and farmers.

Visit http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/category/gaza/ to watch videos and read reports.

As the international community becomes more critical of Israel’s policies, it is vital to have individuals on the ground that can attest to the conditions inside the open-air prison of Gaza. Their voices lend strength to efforts abroad, as BDS campaigns gain momentum and freedom flotillas become pandemic.

For further details, please contact gazaism@gmail.com

The requirements for joining the ISM Gaza team are that applicants must:

a) have at least two months previous experience of non-violent direct action solidarity work in the Middle-East, preferably with ISM, including intervention in critical situations;

b) have a good understanding of the history and current political situation in Palestine;

c) have at least fair Arabic language skills (preferred but not required);

d) sign a contract agreeing not to engage in behaviors contrary to Gazan cultural/social norms

e) sign a contract agreeing to remain with ISM Gaza for the length of their stay

f) prepare a written statement outlining their personal wishes should they be kidnapped, injured, or killed.

Activists face broad PA crackdown in West Bank

Nora Barrows-Friedman, The Electronic Intifada, 22 September 2010

Anti-PA graffiti in the Dheisheh refugee camp reads: "Anything can be up for negotiation except the truth?" (Nora Barrows-Friedman)

"The Palestinian Authority (PA) forces came late at night and started shooting inside the camp," Shihab said. "They came in, shooting, acting like the Israeli military. They wanted to make the people afraid. Everyone went to the main street and started throwing stones, because people thought they were the Israelis, not the PA forces."

Shihab, who didn't want to give his last name, is a spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist-Leninist political party, in Dheisheh refugee camp in southern Bethlehem in occupied West Bank. He told The Electronic Intifada that in the last few weeks, the PA's security services have been waging a campaign of intimidation and violence inside Dheisheh, intent on what he called "destroying the unity and community within the camp."

According to Shihab, on 31 August, PA forces attacked the camp in an attempt to find a member of Hamas hours after an armed attack by Hamas activists on a car near a settlement in Hebron during which four Israeli settlers were killed. Since then, PFLP members who intervened by negotiating with the PA forces to convince them to cease their attack and leave the camp during the subsequent clashes inside Dheisheh, have been summoned to the PA police stations and subsequently arrested and thrown in jail.

"The PA wants to defend the occupation. They want to show the Israelis that they can control the Palestinian people," Shihab said.

The Electronic Intifada spoke to Shihab -- and other residents of the Dheisheh refugee camp -- the day after Israeli forces extrajudicially executed Iyad Asad Abu Shelbaya in the Nour al-Shams refugee camp near the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem on 17 September. The Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq disputes the Israeli army's contention that the official with the armed wing of the Hamas political party, the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades, had "run at the Israeli forces." According to Al-Haq, "the blood pooled next to [Abu Shelbaya's] bed and splattered on the wall indicates that he was shot near his bed ... [when he was] confronted by at least five Israeli soldiers while sleeping alone in his bedroom" ("Targeted assassination of Hamas affiliate in Tulkarem," 19 September 2010).

Al-Haq reported that preceding his assassination by Israeli soldiers, Abu Shelbaya was already a target of the PA's forces. "Known to be affiliated with Hamas, [Abu Shelbaya] had been arrested by the Israeli army in 2004 and was held in administrative detention for two and a half years before he was charged with being a Hamas member and imprisoned for a further six months," stated Al-Haq.

"After his release from Israeli prison in 2007, [Abu Shelbaya] had been arrested and brought in for questioning several times by the Palestinian General Intelligence (GI) and Preventative Security (PS) agencies. He had been last summoned by the PS on 5 September 2010," Al-Haq added.

The killing of Abu Shelbaya was condemned by Hamas spokesperson in Gaza Salah al-Bardawil, who said that the assassination was an attempt to "cover up the crimes" of the resumed US-brokered negotiations between Israel and the PA. He added that the assassination was "a plan to divert attention from the concessions Palestinian [Authority] negotiators were making" ("Hamas: Assassination covers 'crimes of peace talks'," 17 September 2010).

Moreover, Abdul Rahman Zeidan, a Hamas representative serving on the Palestinian Legislative Council, was arrested by PA forces before dawn yesterday after approximately a hundred security personnel surrounded his home. The raid and arrest followed his public statements condemning Abu Shelbaya's assassination ("PCHR condemns storming the house of PLC member ...," Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 21 September 2010).

Mourners carry the body of Iyad Asad Abu Shelbaya in the Nour al-Shams refugee camp near Tulkarem on 17 September, one day after he was assassinated by Israeli forces. (Mouid Ashqar/MaanImages)

With peace talks, comes repression

The resumption of the US-brokered direct talks resumed the same day as the attack on the settlers near Hebron, which was followed by a similar operation on 1 September near the West Bank city of Ramallah. The political and armed operation developments have been accompanied by an increase of PA arrest campaigns which have been characterized by Al-Haq as "fueled by political expediency as opposed to genuine security concerns" ("Palestinian Security Services waging a campaign of politically-motivated arrests," 2 September 2010).

In August, dissenting political parties within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed a statement explicitly opposing the PLO executive committee and the PA's unilateral decision to approve the direct talks. Rank and file members of these opposing political parties have been subsequently arrested, detained and subjected to violent attacks by PA forces.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) issued a statement on 15 September admonishing the PA's maneuvers, saying that the arrests -- and probable mistreatment inside the PA's jails -- constitutes a violation of the PA's own laws against political arrests ("Political arrests continue in the West Bank," 15 September 2010).

"According to investigations conducted by PCHR, on the eve of and during the days of Eid al-Fitr [the holiday marking the end of the month of Ramadan], Palestinian security services, especially the Preventive Security Service (PSS) and the General Intelligence Service (GIS), backed by the National Security Service, have resumed arrest campaigns targeting activists and members of Hamas in Hebron," stated PCHR. "During the past three days, PCHR managed to observe and document the detention of approximately sixty civilians by the PSS and GIS. The new arrest campaign targeted traders, students, university professors, employees, muezzins, professionals from different fields, teachers and activists in charitable organizations."

The Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported that as many as 750 Hamas members have been arrested and detained by the PA since 1 September, including twenty persons taken into custody early Monday morning, 20 September ("Hamas: PA detains 20 affiliates," 20 September 2010).

PFLP a special target

The PA has recently staged recent night raids into the Dheisheh refugee camp. (Nora Barrows-Friedman)

However, back in Dheisheh camp, Shihab said the PFLP has been a central target of political attacks, away from the media spotlight given to the Hamas raids.

The PFLP has historically been a central political force within the Dheisheh refugee camp. Before and during the first Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s and early '90s, the political party was popular with the camp's young generation who were interested in its revolutionary vision for Palestine and its support of armed struggle. The PFLP was a major dissenting voice during the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's push for a two-state solution in the mid-1970s, and again during the Oslo accords in 1993, which the party vehemently opposed.

Even though its popularity has waned within the older generation in Dheisheh during the last ten years, many young people inside the camp are newly attracted to the party's anti-imperialist platform, embracing its progressive tenets and secularism.

Outside of Deheisheh, former and current leaders in the PFLP have been recently attacked. In 2001, at the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada, Israeli forces assassinated Abu Ali Mustafa, PFLP's co-founder and military commander in the occupied West Bank. Shortly thereafter, the PFLP's General Secretary, Ahmad Sa'adat, was imprisoned by the PA for four years before becoming the successor after Mustafa's assassination. In 2006, while still in a PA prison, Sa'adat was abducted by Israeli forces who stormed the jail, and he remains inside an Israeli military prison to this day.

Rank-and-file activists with the PFLP and those suspected of affiliation with the party have been subjected to arrest and detention by Israel and more recently, the PA. Israeli authorities have prevented current Ramallah mayoral candidate and PFLP-affiliated member of the Palestinian Legislative Council Khalida Jarrar from traveling outside the occupied West Bank for urgent medical treatment ("EU official: Israel denying lawmaker access to hospital," Ma'an, 20 September 2010).

According to Shihab in Deheisheh, "After the PA came into the camp [on 31 August], our members began receiving summons from the PA police to appear at the local police station. Twenty-six people received the summons, but only 13 went to the police station. Immediately, all 13 people were arrested and put in jail for 15 days. The PA said that after the 15 days are up, they want to take them to a special Palestinian military court -- which proves that this is related to politics, and has nothing to do with throwing stones at the PA forces."

Shihab added that dozens more PFLP members have been summoned to the local police station, but party leaders have told their affiliates to "destroy the summons" and not to appear at the police station, thereby preventing their detention. Most of the individuals summoned are between 20 and 35 years old, Shihab said, and nobody has been able to visit the detainees as of yet.

Since the direct negotiations resumed earlier this month, PA forces have patrolled inside the camp, painting over slogans against the talks and anything signed by Hamas. A young Dheisheh resident told The Electronic Intifada that as soon as the slogans are painted over, youth associated with Hamas or the PFLP spray-paint the slogans back on the wall during the night.

Ata Mena, founder of the al-Wahada ("Unity") Voice radio station inside Dheisheh, told The Electronic Intifada that the PFLP's historic opposition to negotiations with the occupying Israeli government, along with the current repression by the PA forces inside the camp, has exacerbated a growing anger and distrust of the PA.

"The PA thinks that if it can control certain groups in the camp, then they can control the entire camp," said Mena.

"Dheisheh has been here before the Palestinian Authority," Mena added. "People from all political factions -- Fatah, Hamas, PFLP, DFLP [the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine], independents -- were all throwing stones at the PA forces together. They cannot break the unity inside the camp ... The PA is not interested in representing the refugees here, but people are rebuilding their resistance anyways."

However, Shihab added that activists are being forced to go underground, recalling a time during the first intifada when Israeli repression of resistance movements was at its peak.

"This is not only an attack against Dheisheh; this is happening all over the West Bank," he said. "The PA is trying to attack the strongest communities -- people inside the refugee camps. The Israeli military has tried to attack the refugee camps for this very reason. In the invasions of 2002 here in Bethlehem, their first operations were against the refugee camps, because the refugee camps were the first line of defense against Israeli attacks."

Unity under attack

"Today, the PA is using the same strategy," Shihab said. "If you can destroy the unity within the camps, you can control the larger population. The refugee camps are very important for the Palestinian community and the Palestinian culture. One of the most important things in the negotiations themselves is to destroy the unity of the general population -- the PA and Israel can't have a united opposition. So if you destroy the unity within the refugee camps -- when they are divided -- the people will accept these agreements. That's what they are trying to do now."

"This is the state of internal Palestinian politics today," Shihab remarked. "They are the politics under [US Lt. General Keith] Dayton. Dayton came and drew up the new strategies for the PA. The American and European interests have supported what's happening in the PA. The situation before Dayton was completely different, and now there's a climate of fear and intimidation. People are afraid to speak out against the actions of the PA."

Dayton has trained and equipped PA security forces in a counter-insurgency program since he began his contract in December 2005 -- before the elected Hamas party took over Gaza -- under the auspices of the US Security Coordination Team. "Dayton's army," as it's known amongst Palestinians, has specifically been brought into the framework by the US and Israel to "prevent a Hamas takeover in the West Bank" ("'A prescription for civil war'," Al-Jazeera English, 8 February 2010).

Shihab said that the PFLP's responsibility now is to protect everyone in the Dheisheh refugee camp community. "We operate within the refugees' culture, and we support each other regardless of political beliefs or affiliation," he said. "When [al-Qassam Brigades leader] Iyad Asad Abu Shelbaya was assassinated in Tulkarem by Israeli forces, where was the PA for the security they're talking about? Everyone in our community understands that their version of security is the security of the occupation, not the security of the Palestinians. Where is the PA to defend us?"

He added, "where was the PA a month ago, when the Israeli army came into the camp to destroy houses? Where are they every night when [the Israeli army] comes in to arrest people?" Taking a sip of coffee, Shihab said, "They will never succeed at destroying the unity within the refugee camps. We will remain unified."

Nora Barrows-Friedman is an award-winning independent journalist, writing for The Electronic Intifada, Inter Press Service, Truthout and other outlets. She regularly reports from Palestine, where she also runs media workshops for youth in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.