Palestinian security forces work to limit confrontations with Israel

This article originally appeared on The Media Line.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered his security forces to prevent demonstrators from clashing with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. Security officials told The Media Line that Abbas has ordered security officials to deploy in areas where there are often violent demonstrations “and talk to the demonstrators about the gravity of confronting the Israeli soldiers.”

Palestinians are angry over the 32 Palestinians killed this month by Israeli troops. Eleven of them were killed trying to cross the fence from the Gaza Strip into Israel. Of the others, some were killed during clashes with Israeli soldiers and 15 were killed after allegedly attacking Israelis.

Palestinians say several of these were “extra-judicial executions,” and that Israeli police and soldiers executed the Palestinian teenagers even after they clearly posed no threat to the soldiers. Security officials said that Abbas is worried that if he does not allow Palestinians to demonstrate against Israel, they will turn their anger against him.

There have been growing calls in the West Bank to end the “security coordination” with Israel. Abbas has clearly refused to do so. Israeli officials have said that coordination has stopped many of the Palestinian attackers from the West Bank.

“Many are calling for an end to the security cooperation with Israel,” Nidal Abu Dukhan, the head of National Security Forces told The Media Line. “President Abbas has given clear orders and refused.”

During the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, from 2000 to 2005, most of the Palestinian suicide bombers who blew themselves up on Israeli buses and public places came from the West Bank. In the current wave of attacks that have killed seven Israelis since October 1, almost all of the attackers have come from east Jerusalem, not the West Bank. Palestinians in east Jerusalem have Israeli residency and carry the same blue ID cards as Jewish Israelis.

Palestinian security officials say they have clear orders not to let an armed uprising break out in the West Bank, and in the past few days violent demonstrations have died down.

Yet Abbas has not condemned the knifing and stabbing attacks on Israelis and Israelis say he has even encouraged the violence. In a speech to Palestinian TV, Abbas decried the “execution of our children in cold blood, as they did with the boy Ahmed Manasrah and other children in Jerusalem and other places.”

Ahmed Manasrah is a 13 year old who stabbed a 13 year old Israeli, seriously wounding him, before he was shot by a policeman.  The PLO later sent out an amended version of the speech quoting Abbas as condemning the “shooting of our children in cold blood as they did with the child Ahmed Manansra and other children from Jerusalem.”

For its part, Israel released a video showing Manasra being fed jello as he lay in bed in Israel’s Hadassah hospital.

Hamas, for its part, has openly praised the attacks on Israelis.

“Everything that happens in the Palestinian territories is a popular spontaneous uprising and a natural reaction to the excesses of Jewish settlers,” Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef told The Media Line. He said the current wave of attacks is because of “Israel’s desecration of al-Aqsa”, meaning the reports that have engulfed the West Bank that Israel plans to change the status quo at the site that is holy to Jews and Muslims. Israeli officials repeatedly deny this intention.

“I expect the uprising to expand and become a massive movement in the Palestinians territories,” he said.