Analyst: Protests over activist’s death show ‘huge split’ between Palestinian Authority and people

Growing outrage over the custodial death of a prominent Palestinian activist demonstrates a “huge split” between the Palestinian Authority and the people, according to US-based journalist and analyst Kevin Barrett.

In an interview with Press TV, Barrett said activists in the occupied Palestinian territories are protesting the death of Nizar Banat and the Palestinian Authority’s “collaboration with Zionist occupation”.

Banat, a 43-year-old activist and an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority, died Thursday after security forces raided his house in the occupied West Bank and arrested him.

The mysterious custodial death triggered large-scale protests in the West Bank, with protesters calling for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to step down.

Berrett, slamming the Fatah-led governing body, said the PA was created “out of the disastrous Oslo process”, referring to 1993 secret negotiations between the Israeli regime and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that proved a disaster.

“It handed the Zionist expansionists everything they wanted,"  he said, adding that the Israeli regime’s explicit promise to withdraw from all occupied territories in return for peace was “never sincere”, and it was “never carried out”.

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“But this process created the PA as a collaborationist group to help the occupation occupy Palestine, so it turned the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which had been a resistance group, into a branch of the genocidal Zionist occupation,” the analyst said. 

In a damning indictment of the Palestinian Authority’s high-handed approach, Barrett said it “occupies Palestine with about as much brutality as its Zionist masters do”.

“I'm not saying everybody working for the PA is bad, but the problem is the structure of power dictates that they have to run Palestine on behalf of the Zionists. And so the honest Palestinians, the majority of Palestinians end up being oppressed by the PA, as well as by the Zionist,” he said. 

Barrett said the PA is a “human rights abuser” that “terrorizes its own people” on behalf of the Zionists.

“The definition of terrorism is trying to incite fear for political purposes through attacking civilians, and this is what the Zionists have done ever since they invaded and occupied and started committing slow-motion genocide in Palestine,” the US-based commentator said.

“They have terrorized the indigenous population trying to make it go away, whether through murder or expulsion or what have you. And unfortunately, the PA now has to terrorize its own people, on behalf of designers thanks to this misguided, slow process that [former PLO chairman Yasser] Arafat so naively set up as he tried to appease the Zionists and depended on their honesty, which of course was a terrible mistake,” he added.

Death of Banat

Banat, as per his family’s version, was in bed when some two dozen PA personnel broke into his house in the town of Dura, 11 kilometers southwest of al-Khalil, and violently beat him.

His family described the arrest as a “premeditated assassination” as he was beaten ruthlessly with iron rods and wooden batons and even lost his consciousness.

“When he woke up, they arrested him naked and transferred him into an unknown place by 25 members of the security forces,” media reports quoted Banat’s family as saying, demanding full disclosure of facts surrounding his custodial death.

Banat was known for his scathing criticism of the PA leadership and for making social media videos denouncing alleged corruption within the PA. He had been arrested several times in the past.

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His death sparked a wave of protests in the occupied West Bank, as well as condemnations from human rights watchdogs and different Palestinian factions, who demanded immediate and impartial probe.

Palestinian resistance movement Hamas also condemned the death of Banat, and said it reflects the intentions of the PA against Palestinians and political activists.

The group held Abbas and his government responsible for the activist’s death.

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